Prince Harry Passed on Althorp Despite Earl Spencer Being Ready to Help — As Sussexes Set Their Sights on a Cotswolds Home

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle will not make Althorp their British base after all, despite Harry’s uncle, Earl Spencer, reportedly being willing to help the couple find a suitable home on the historic 13,000-acre estate.

According to The Mail on Sunday, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex never asked Charles Spencer for a property during a family stay at Althorp last month. Instead, Harry and Meghan are understood to have made their own arrangements, identifying a home in the Cotswolds ahead of their expected return to Britain.

The decision is particularly striking given Harry’s enduring connection to Althorp. The Northamptonshire estate has belonged to the Spencer family for more than 500 years, was Princess Diana’s childhood home and is also where she is buried.

Earl Spencer was reportedly prepared to help

Speculation that Harry might establish a base at Althorp intensified following his family’s recent visit to the estate.

However, a source close to Earl Spencer has now pushed back against suggestions that a formal offer had already been made.

The source told The Mail on Sunday that if Harry had approached his uncle about finding somewhere to live at Althorp, Spencer would have made every effort to accommodate him. But Harry, the source said, had already made his own plans.

That distinction changes the picture considerably. Rather than Harry being offered an Althorp property and rejecting it, the report suggests the possibility never progressed that far because the Sussexes did not ask.

Perhaps even more surprisingly, Earl Spencer was reportedly unaware just how close his nephew was to relocating to Britain.

According to the report, Spencer first learned that Harry and Meghan’s return was imminent when the story appeared in newspapers on Thursday morning.

The source said it was understood Harry wanted to return eventually, but the timing had not been known.

A deeply personal visit to Diana’s family home

Harry has remained close to his maternal uncle since he and Meghan stepped back as senior working royals in 2020 and moved across the Atlantic.

He has also returned to Althorp several times in recent years.

Last month, Harry, Meghan and their children, Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet, reportedly spent several days at the estate.

Photographs subsequently shared by Meghan on Instagram offered a rare glimpse of the family there. One showed Harry walking with Archie and Lilibet along a tree-lined avenue.

Another showed Harry and his seven-year-old son carrying bouquets believed to have been intended for Diana’s grave.

Other family images showed Harry playing with Lilibet in a swimming pool while Meghan was also in the water.

The photographs inevitably fuelled speculation that Althorp could become more than somewhere the Sussexes visited — and potentially serve as their future UK base.

Royal biographer Tina Brown added to that discussion when she wrote that it was widely believed Charles Spencer could make a house at Althorp available to Harry.

The latest report, however, suggests the Sussexes had already chosen a different direction.

Why Althorp appeared such an obvious possibility

Few locations in Britain carry as much personal significance for Harry.

Althorp is inseparable from the story of his mother. Diana spent part of her childhood there before marrying the then Prince Charles, and after her death in 1997, she was laid to rest on an island on the estate.

For Harry, having a home there could therefore have provided something very different from a conventional royal residence: a British base firmly connected to his maternal family rather than the monarchy.

The estate’s enormous size could also have potentially offered greater privacy than many other locations.

Yet Harry and Meghan apparently had another destination in mind.

Harry and Meghan reportedly choose the Cotswolds

Rather than settling at Althorp, the Sussexes are understood to have identified a property in the Cotswolds as their British home.

Reports have suggested Meghan may have visited two schools in the area while Harry was attending an Invictus Games event in July.

There have also been claims that the family could move into a Cotswolds property owned by a celebrity, although details of their prospective home have not been publicly confirmed.

The move would give Harry and Meghan a home of their own rather than tying their British living arrangements directly to the Spencer estate.

It would also mark another chapter in the couple’s relationship with the Cotswolds. Before their 2018 wedding, Harry and Meghan reportedly rented a country property in the region.

A Spencer family precedent involving Princess Diana

Interestingly, this is not the first time Earl Spencer has been connected with the possibility of providing a home for a close family member during a major transition.

Following the breakdown of Diana’s marriage to the then Prince Charles, her brother offered her the use of Wormleighton Manor, a 16th-century property in Warwickshire.

Diana ultimately declined.

Decades later, the possibility of another Spencer family property providing refuge for her younger son has once again surfaced — but with a similar outcome.

This time, according to the report, Harry did not need to ask.

Earl Spencer may have been willing to help, but the Duke and Duchess had apparently already decided where their next British chapter would begin: not at Diana’s ancestral home, but in the Cotswolds.