How a royal wedding gift pushed the Queen to breaking point,
He has spent the past year trying to persuade his disgraced brother Prince Andrew to move out of Royal Lodge, in Windsor Great Park, where he has lived for the past two decades, since the death of the Queen Mother in 2002.
The King has cut Andrew’s private security and £1 million allowance in a bid to encourage him to move into nearby Frogmore Cottage, the former home of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, which is more modest and easier to guard.
But now a new Channel 5 documentary, reveals that the late Queen Elizabeth II was equally pushed to breaking point by her favourite son, when he and the Duchess of York were building their first marital home, Sunninghill Park.
And she finally cut off the purse strings after the bills for the 30-bedroom mansion, which, in a twist on JR’s Dallas ranch Southfork, became known as SouthYork, spiralled out of control, topping their budget of £250,000.
Speaking on the programme Fergie, Andrew & The Scandal of SouthYork, author Andrew Lownie, who has written a biography about the couple, Entitled, said: ‘The Queen, I think, eventually put her foot down and said, you know, this is crazy.
‘At that point, they hadn’t built the swimming pool and the tennis court, and who knows whether the helicopter pad was there then either.’
It is now almost half a century since Prince Andrew married Sarah Ferguson on July 23, 1986, in front of 2,000 guests at Westminster Abbey, including celebrities such as Sir Elton John and Michael Caine.
The wedding list reputedly totalled £1.5million and more than 2,000 gifts were received from all over the world. They were temporarily stored in the Buckingham Palace Ballroom.
Top priority for the couple was to find their marital home, which was a wedding gift from Queen Elizabeth. But the couple could not find anywhere to meet their exacting demands.
Finally, the Queen offered them the site of Sunninghill Park, a 5,000-acre estate with lakes, woodlands and gardens, which sat on the edge of Windsor Great Park, four miles from where Andrew now lives.
The 18th century house, which was requisitioned by the American Ninth Air Force squadron of fighter pilots during World War II, had been earmarked for a young Princess Elizabeth and her fiancé, Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten after their 1947 marriage.
But during renovations, a workman in the library dropped a cigarette and the whole building went up on flames. Despite dozens of firemen battling to save the mansion, it was razed to the ground.
Work began on the newbuild – the first Royal newbuild since Bagshot Park in 1879 – but immediately attracted controversy over its design, by architect Dunbar Naismith, which was more American ranch than English stately home.
‘They tweaked and reshaped the designs over and over again, much to the frustration of their architect, said Talk TV’s Royal editor Sarah Hewson. ‘When Prince Philip, never one to mince his words, saw the plans, he described it as looking like a “tart’s bedroom”.’
Fergie then caused a huge uproar by commissioning the American designer Sister Parrish, who had designed the White House, to decorate Sunninghill Park.
She got a quote for £1 million and handed it to the Queen, who complained that the price was too high, forcing her to switch to the British designer Nina Campbell, who had designed London hotspot Annabel’s.
She was reportedly given a budget of £250,000 – almost half a million today – to cater for the couple’s long list of demands, which included a panic room, cinema room, helipad, swimming pool and tennis courts.
However, their extravagant designs spiralled out of control and broke the couple’s budget. At that stage, midway through 1990, the Palace refused to pay any more.
‘By this stage, Sunninghill Park was proving to be a financial headache,’ added Hewson, ‘in particular, for the Queen, notoriously financially prudent who was having to foot the ever-escalating bills.’
Instead of accepting the decision, Fergie looked around to find another way to earn the money. She came up with another way to fund her dream home, inviting Hello! magazine in to do a lavish photoshoot.
They were paid £200,000 for a 45-page spread, which led to them being derided over their taste: the house was filled with teddy bears, cushions with trite slogans, personalised toilet holders including one that sang God Save The Queen.’
‘Fergie had a very enterprising idea that she would do a photoshoot for Hello!’ said Ingrid Seward, editor-in-chief of Majesty Magazine. ‘Nobody in the royal family had ever done a shoot like that.’
‘Although the Queen never commented publicly on it, she was less than pleased,’ added Hewson. ‘She saw it as lacking decorum that it was an invasion of privacy. Prince Philip, he just thought it was downright tacky and distasteful.’
The Yorks finally moved in on October 5, 1990, throwing a huge housewarming party with a jungle theme. There were fake animals popping out of the bushes, waitresses in leopard skin and Elton John performed Your Song.
Andrew and Sarah mingled with guests including Billy Connolly, Pamela Stephenson David Frost and Imran Khan, before slow dancing on the dance floor.
However, the couple’s marriage was already on the rocks as Andrew, who was a lieutenant in the Royal Navy, was stationed at sea and Fergie was stranded home alone with Princesses Beatrice, two, and baby Eugenie.
Within 18 months, after Fergie was caught having an affair with American playboy Steve Wyatt, Andrew filed for divorce and the SouthYork dream was over.
Fergie, Andrew & The Scandal of SouthYork is on Channel 5 on Saturday July 26 at 8pm.
