Where Did Kate Middleton Grow Up?
Her childhood home features in The Crown.
Kate Middleton may live at Windsor Castle now, but she grew up in more modest homes in Berkshire.
When her parents, Michael and Carole Middleton, got married, they moved into a 2 bedroom home in Bradfield, a small house in Berkshire. Carole would later describe the house as “a very sweet semi-detached cottage.” She explained, “We stayed there until Catherine was 13, so the children spent a lot of their youth there.”
This Brafield house is where she spent her early years—except when her family moved to Amman, Jordan for two years from 1984 to 1986, for her dad’s job—before returning to Berkshire in 1986. In 1995, the Middletons, now a family of five (the youngest, James, was born in 1987), moved to a home called Oak Acre, located at The Avenue, Bucklebury, Berkshire:
The house had five bedrooms, and it is where Kate went home to during her years at St. Andrews—and likely brought Prince William home to, as is shown in The Crown. In 2008, in fact, Prince William even landed a Chinook helicopter, which, as CNN noted is “normally used for transporting troops,” next door to Oak Acre.
The Middletons don’t live there at Oak Acre, however. In 2012, a year after Kate married Prince William, they moved into a home called Bucklebury Manor, which is more private.
Like the show depicts, the Middletons enjoy eating in their kitchen. In 2017, Carole Middleton shared that her kitchen is her favorite room in the house. “It’s a kitchen/dining/sitting room and it’s the heart of the house,” she explains, describing the open-plan kitchen in her new home. “I love a kitchen supper. Where I have a small number of guests. I’ll cook something delicious and make it look lovely, then we’ll finish with a kitchen disco.”
