After a 20-year tenure at Royal Lodge, time is up for the Duke of York . The King is withdrawing private funding for security at the 30-room property in Windsor, which Prince Andrew has lived in since 2003 and shares with his ex-wife Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York , the Telegraph understands. This means that if he wants to continue living in the Lodge, the duke will need to find a small fortune to fund extensive repairs and maintain multimillion-pound security at the property – or else, hand over the keys.
Andrew’s armed guard reportedly costs the King £3 million ($6.4m) a year – the 10-strong unit will leave at the end of October , when their contracts are said to expire. It’s yet another setback for the beleaguered duke, who started the year with a tranche of published US court documents putting him under fresh scrutiny over his friendship with the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
The legal papers related to a 2015 defamation case brought against Ghislaine Maxwell by Virginia Giuffre , who accused Andrew of abusing her as a teenager..