Real cost of renting Queen Elizabeth’s $57 million Royal Lodge mansion revealed – realestate.com.au

Andrew Windsor, the English citizen formerly known as a prince, had to pay what amounts to one peppercorn a year to rent the 30-room royal mansion where he has lived for 30 years.

The strange rental arrangement dates back centuries to a time when the spicy little seeds fetched a higher price than today and were often used as a token sum in English property transactions that required payment to be legally validated. New York Post reports.

According to the Guardian, one peppercorn is normally a substitute for a $1.50 rent in a rental agreement, and it is unlikely that Prince Andrew has handed over a little black ball to the royal family every year since he moved into the Royal Lodge on the grounds of Windsor Castle in 2003.

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But even though Andrew is already on his way out of prison, thanks to his ties to the late financier Jeffrey Epstein, politicians are still demanding answers about the crazy scheme.

“There is significant and understandable public interest in the spending of public money in relation to Prince Andrew, which stems in part from the fact that he is no longer a working royal and from serious and disturbing allegations against him,” MP Geoffrey Clifton-Brown wrote in an October 29 letter to the Treasury and the Crown, the newspaper said.

Andrew is forced to leave Royal Lodge, his home in the grounds of Windsor Castle for more than twenty years.

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Andrew gets the boot from the Royal Lodge after being stripped of his princely titles due to his close friendship with Epstein.

Andrew denied the allegations against him, but it seemed enough for King Charles, who in late October stripped his younger brother of his royal titles and taxpayer support and ordered him to leave the Royal Lodge.

But Britain’s elected officials are not entirely satisfied with Randy Andy’s royal exile – and are demanding an account of how he was supported for years in the Royal Lodge.

Andrew rented the 30-room mansion for what amounted to “one peppercorn” a year.

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Andrew reportedly made a one-off payment of around $US1.3 million ($A2 million) when he first acquired a 75-year lease on the Royal Lodge in 2003 – worth about enough peppercorns to fill a large mill – and has since paid around $US10 million ($A15 million) in renovation work on the site.

He is now expected to be moved far away from the royal family to a house on Sandringham Estate, after reportedly commandeering two houses on the Windsor grounds – Frogmore Cottage and Adelaide Cottage, where Prince Harry and Prince William used to live with their families – in exchange for leaving the Royal Lodge.

Andrew – whose only known source of personal income is a small pension from his time in the Royal Navy – will have his future life privately funded by King Charles himself, Buckingham Palace said.

Parts of this story first appeared in the New York Post and were republished with permission.

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