Secrets of Royal Family’s £20bn: William is worth £1bn, while Meghan and Harry boast £20m fortune

The Royal Family’s £20billion-plus fortune of cash, palaces, treasure, art, 500,000-plus acres of land and even the UK sea bed is laid bare today – making The Firm worth more than Tesco, Britain’s biggest retailer at £17billion. 

King Charles III is now expected to be worth £900million after the death of his beloved mother – while his son William is predicted by The Sunday Times to now be worth £1billion after inheriting his father’s Duchy of Cornwall estate.

Harry and Meghan are estimated to be worth £20million, although brand experts have said that their new life in the US, coupled with their royal connection, could earn them $1billion one day. Princess Anne could be worth £50million, Prince Edward £10million and Prince Andrew £5million despite his own recent legal bills.

The Royal Family’s cash and assets has been estimated to be between £20billion and £24billion, although this includes £1.4billion of property such as Buckingham Palace, which only belongs to the monarch in an official capacity. The Crown Estate is worth £16.5billion.

The Queen’s death has sparked fresh debate about the tax advantages granted to the sovereign’s private wealth. Supporters of the 1993 deal argue it is important the monarch has ‘sufficient private resources’.

This is because Charles is expected to be spared paying inheritance tax on his mother’s £400million fortune.

Here is a breakdown of the royals’ wealth: 

Crown Estate: £16.5billon

The bulk of the Royal Family’s wealth lies in the vast property and land portfolio: the Crown Estate, which dates back 1,000 years and includes castles, shopping centres and even the seabed around the UK. It is estimated to be worth £1.6billion.

The assets range from office blocks in The Strand to holidays homes, Bolingbroke Castle and a swathe of the tidal mudflats in Lincolnshire – held in trust for the sovereign.

It also owns the Savoy Estate, a stretch of prime real estate in central London which houses the iconic Savoy Hotel. Regents Street and St James’s in London as well as retail parks across the country are included in the Crown Estates.

All profits are handed to the Treasury which then passes 25 per cent of the funds back to the royal family in the form of the Sovereign Grant after a two-year period.

The Crown Estates’ income comes from rents paid by a number of retail outlets across the UK. Other funds may come from interests in agricultural land and forests.

The Crown Estate owns virtually all of the UK’s seabed to the 12-nautical-mile (22 km) limit.

Holdings consist of around 116,000 hectares (287,000 acres) of agricultural land and forests, together with minerals and residential and commercial property.

In 2002 The Crown Estate started a £1 billion investment programme to improve Regent Street. They are also investing £500 million in St James’s, including a number of major redevelopments.

Its sprawling portfolio ranges from beef farms in Scotland to a gold mine in Northern Ireland, and from forests in the West Country to the royal park in Windsor.

It owns more than 1,000 listed buildings – 37 per cent of which are Grade 1 Listed – and cares for more than 400 Sites of Special Scientific Interest.

The rural estate, which stretches to more than 360,000 acres.

Prince Charles: £900million

Prince Charles is inheriting the Duchy of Lancaster, plus much of the Queen’s own near-£400million fortune. The new King also has built up his own nest egg.

The Queen was always considered to be one of the richest women in the world, but she kept her bank balance to herself. 

Her personal fortune was put at about £370 million but estimates were guesswork. It is possible Charles will inherit most of this.

The historic Duchy of Lancaster estate provided the Queen with an annual income.

The Duchy of Lancaster provided an independent source of income, historically known as the Privy Purse, which was used for both official and private expenditure and for meeting the expenses of other members of the royal family. In 2021/2022, it came to £23.96 million.

The 18,433 hectare Duchy estate, which was founded in the 13th century is a unique portfolio of land and assets in Lancashire, Yorkshire, Cheshire, Staffordshire and Lincolnshire.

The Duchy also has a significant commercial property portfolio in the Savoy precinct, as well as the iconic Savoy Hotel near the Strand in central London, as well as a portfolio of financial investments and small urban residences.

The Queen is not entitled to touch the capital of the estate but profits from the property empire go into the Privy Purse, providing a ‘private’ source of income for the monarch.

The King is entitled to spend the money as he wishes but his mother the Queen used it to help support members of her family like Prince Andrew, Prince Edward and Princess Anne. 

For many years, the Queen featured high up in royal rich lists.

But in 2015, she fell out of The Sunday Times Rich List’s top 300 wealthiest people in the UK for the first time.

Sometimes estimates did not take into account the difference between the Queen’s personal wealth and the riches she held as sovereign in trust for her successors and the nation.

The Royal Collection, an unrivalled cache of art and artefacts, Buckingham Palace, some other royal residences and the Crown Jewels were not in the Queen’s personal wealth.

They were simply kept by her on behalf of the nation, a part of Britain’s heritage.

St James’s Palace, Kensington Palace, Windsor Castle and the Palace of Holyroodhouse, Edinburgh, as well as Buckingham Palace, are regarded as ‘inalienable’ assets and cannot be sold.

But the Queen had private art, stamp collections, racehorses, a share portfolio, Sandringham and Balmoral. Sandringham, the Queen’s private estate in Norfolk, has been in the royal family for more than a century and has been the home of four generations of sovereigns since Edward VII.

Similarly Balmoral, in the Scottish Highlands of Aberdeenshire, was the Queen’s private property, passed down to monarchs since Queen Victoria, who took outright ownership in 1852.

The Royal Philatelic Collection, founded by the Queen’s grandfather George V and housed at St James’s Palace, is the finest of its kind, specialising in Great Britain and Commonwealth stamps, and was owned by the Queen personally rather than the nation.

Although racehorses are a less reliable asset, stud fees and winnings helped boost private royal funds.

In the 30 years up to 2017, the Queen won about £6.7 million in prize money from horse-racing.

The Queen’s private art collection features paintings by contemporary British artists and painters such as Edward Seago and Salvador Dali.

Income from the Queen’s personal investment portfolio was used to meet her private expenditure.

The value of the portfolio was undisclosed, but the head of the royal household, the Lord Chamberlain, said in 1993 that estimates of £100 million and upwards were ‘grossly overstated’.

Prince William: £1.05billion

Experts believe that after the death of the Queen, and his father taking the crown, he is now a billionaire at 40. 

The value of his father’s Duchy of Cornwall estate soared to a record £1.2billion recently – and now the new Prince of Wales has taken it over. It includes hundreds of farms and even the Oval cricket ground.

The jump of nearly £93million on the previous financial year – up just over 15 per cent – came as the Duchy experienced a post-pandemic ‘bounce back’ thanks to staycations and a record year for trading.

The estate is a thriving portfolio of land, property and investments including the Isles of Scilly, The Oval cricket ground and Dartmoor Prison. William will be entitled to the profits, and voluntarily pays income tax.

The popularity of staycations amid the Covid crisis boosted income from the Duchy’s holiday cottages with record bookings, while the Duchy plant nursery in Lostwithiel, Cornwall also had a strong year.

The Duchy’s total assets rose by £92,838,000, from £1,115,850,000 in 2020/2021 to £1,208,688,000 in 2021/22. Its net asset values – which strip out borrowing – hit a record £1,049,069,000, up from £953,823,000.

Harry and Meghan: £20million

Harry and Meghan are predicted to become the world’s highest-earning celebrity couple with a fortune potentially stretching to $1billion (£700million) within a decade. 

As superstars of the international circuit, the couple are expected to command fees of up to £1million for speeches and appearances.

Diana left £21million to her sons William and Harry, to be held in trust until they turned 25.

Estimates now put Harry’s portion at up to £20million as it gained value over time.

The duke also received an estimated £7million from the Queen Mother’s will after she died in 2002. His overall net worth is believed to be £20million to £30million while Meghan’s is said to be £4million.

When she starred in US TV drama Suits she was paid £2million. She also raked in six-figure sums for film roles and owns property in Toronto.

Before stepping back from royal duties in December 2019, Harry received the vast majority of his income from the Duchy of Cornwall – a portfolio of property and financial investments managed by Prince Charles.

For the financial year 2018-19, this amounted to more than £5million. It is believed Charles, who initially continued to fund the couple, withdrew financial support from the duchy when it became clear their move to the US was permanent.

They also took out a £7.5million mortgage on their nine-bed £11million mansion in Santa Barbara, California.

Prince Andrew: £5million

Andrew was stripped of his royal and military titles as he fought a civil case with Virginia Roberts Giuffre – a sex slave of Jeffrey Epstein, a friend of the Duke of York’s. Andrew would later settle the case in the US.

He lives in Royal Lodge, the late Queen Mother’s home, on a preferential, but undisclosed, 100-year lease from the Crown Estate and owns no property of his own, aside from the £18million ski chalet he so disastrously bought with Sarah, Duchess of York, in Verbier, five years ago.

He has now been forced to sell that after failing to make the second £5million instalment he owed the vendor, French socialite Isabelle de Rouvre, who took legal action to retrieve it.

It is conceivable he could also have some money left from the sale of his former marital home, Sunninghill Park, near Windsor, which was a wedding gift from the Queen. The 12-bedroom property, likened to an out-of-town superstore, had languished on the market for five years before suddenly being bought in 2007 for £15million – £3million over the asking price – by Timur Kulibayev.

Kulibayev is the son-in-law of Prince Andrew’s friend and goose-hunting partner Nursultan Nazarbayev, the former autocratic ruler of Kazakhstan.

Asked about the deal, Mr Kulibayev said at the time that the decision to pay £3million over the asking price for a property that had been on the market unsold for five years had come about because of a briefing from Prince Andrew’s camp that other parties were interested in it. ‘We can confirm at the time of purchase we were told that there were several interested parties,’ said his spokesman.

Royal Lodge is not his to sell but Andrew could conceivably be forced to vacate the property to minimise his outgoings in the near future, especially now both his daughters have moved out and it just himself and his ex-wife rattling around the vast property. 

Princess Anne: £50million

Her house and home farm of Gatcombe Park were bought by Queen Elizabeth II for her daughter and her then-husband Captain Mark Phillips in 1976, for an undisclosed price believed to have been between £500,000 and £750,000. It is worth 

The Crown paid for its renovation, and the property covered approximately 730 acres until the estate was divided following the Princess Royal’s divorce.

Princess Anne and Sir Timothy today live in the main Grade II listed building in Gatcombe Park, with Peter and Zara Phillips each having a cottage on the estate until they got married.

In 2013, Zara and her husband Mike Tindall returned to live on the estate after selling their house in Cheltenham.

Anne’s finances are difficult to calculate – but she is likely to inherit a significant sum from her mother. Widely considered the ‘hardest working royal’, he costs are believed to be met in part from the Sovereign Grant and the Duchy of Lancaster, which is now in the gift of her eldest brother.

She is believed to own a significant collection of jewellery and art. Anne also generates funds from various horse racing events on her estate.

Edward and Sophie: £10million 

The Earl and Countess of Wessex live in a £30million mansion in Bagshot Park, Surrey. 

The Wessexes, much loved by the Queen, do not have huge wealth in terms of assets – but Edward is believed to have inherited significant amounts from his father Prince Philip and grandmother, the Queen Mother.

 Their living costs are thought to be met through the Duchy of Lancaster – now run by King Charles – and all their working royal events paid for by the Sovereign Grant since 2002.

This year it emerged that the Queen’s granddaughter Lady Louise Windsor had been working several days a week at a garden centre over the summer for around the minimum wage.

Game of Homes!: It’s all change for The Royals as Prince William inherits vast £1.2BILLION Duchy portfolio and King Charles gets the Queen’s palaces

King Charles will never be short of a place to live, with at least nine prominent palaces to lay his weary head.

But in a property merry-go-round dubbed ‘Game of Homes’, the Monarch has also handed over the 130,000-acre Duchy of Cornwall to his eldest son. It means William is technically his father’s landlord as long as the King continues to live in his beloved Highgrove estate in Gloucestershire.

The inheritance has made the new Prince of Wales the biggest private landowner in Britain, with a £1.2 billion holding across 23 counties, including farms, housing developments, seven castles, woodland, coastlines and commercial property.

For his part, Charles has inherited a sizeable portfolio, either directly from the Queen – including Balmoral and Sandringham – or as part of the Crown Estate, such as Buckingham Palace or Windsor Castle.

These join those he already owned including Birkhall on the Balmoral estate, inherited from the Queen Mother; Dumfries House and the Castle of Mey, the Scottish landmarks held by his charitable trust; and two Romanian boltholes.

Here we outline some of the more unusual properties Prince William has taken on as part of the Duchy, while the panel below features some of the King’s holdings.

PUFFIN ISLANDS

The Duchy owns most of the 200-plus Scilly Islands and rocks off the Cornish coast, including almost a third of the homes on the five inhabited isles of St Mary’s, Tresco, St Martin’s, St Agnes and Bryher. Tourism accounts for more than 85 per cent of the local economy with visitors attracted by the seals, dolphins, puffins and rare flowers. The Isles of Scilly Wildlife Trust pays the Duchy a rent of a single daffodil a year.

CATEGORY C PRISON

Among the Duchy’s 70,000 acres in Devon is the freehold of Dartmoor prison, whose inmates down the years have included London gangsters Frank ‘The Mad Axeman’ Mitchell and Jack ‘the Hat’ McVitie. It currently holds 640 prisoners.

‘TOYTOWN’

Charles’s proud creation of Poundbury, a town in Dorset, reflects his traditional approach to architecture and urban planning. In line with his green principles, its homes are heated by bio-methane gas. Critics have mocked it as a vanity project and nicknamed it ‘Toytown’ or ‘feudal Disneyland’, but others have praised its simple, attractive aesthetics.

OVAL CRICKET GROUND

Originally a cabbage patch and market garden, the London ground was the first in England to host international Test cricket, in September 1880, and the final Test match of the English season is still traditionally played there.

LEGENDARY CASTLES

Dating from the 5th Century, Tintagel Castle sits on a jagged Cornish headland and is reputedly the birthplace of King Arthur. The Duchy also owns Launceston and Restormel castles, plus 270 ancient monuments, including 12th Century Lydford Castle in Devon, Maiden Castle in Dorset, and the ruins of Berkhamsted Castle, Hertfordshire.

A WAITROSE SHOP

The Duchy owns Tregurra Park in Truro, Cornwall, which includes a Waitrose store, a household waste recycling centre and a 1,379-space car park.

SURF HEAVEN

Plans are under way for 4,000 new homes on 540 acres of mainly Duchy-owned land near the Cornish resort of Newquay which is beloved of surfers.

GARDEN CENTRE

A plant nursery at Lostwithiel, Cornwall – described as ‘a place of sanctuary’ – was designed by Queen Consort Camilla’s sister, Annabel Elliot.

MILLIONS OF TREES

The Duchy owns 4,300 acres of managed woodland, including 2,200 acres in Cornwall alone. Timber is use to make lintels, window frames and beams for regenerated properties. Woodchip is collected to smoke locally produced food. And Greenscombe Wood in the Tamar Valley is one of only four places in the UK where the rare Heath Fritillary butterfly is found.

The Duchy’s woodland are widely dominated by conifers such as Douglas fir, larch and red cedar.

It also owns 11,370 acres of farmland and woods on The Guy’s Estate in the Herefordshire countryside near Ross-on-Wye.

HOLIDAY COTTAGES

Included in the portfolio are 28 ‘attractive period properties’ in Cornwall, Wales and the Isles of Scilly, designed environmentally with light fittings made from bottles and coffee tables fashioned from old wooden chests.

RIVERS AND COASTLINE

The Duchy owns the Salcombe-Kingsbridge estuary in Devon, as well as those for the rivers Dart, Avon (in Devon), Tamar, Looe, Helford and Camel. It also owns coastal foreshore around Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly. Waters are used for fishing as well as mussel, clam and cockle farming.

HIGHGROVE

William’s takeover of the Duchy raises the possibility that he could charge his father rent on the 18th Century house near Tetbury. The restoration of its gardens has been a passion project for Charles, who keeps bees there, and sells jars of their honey for £25 a time.

WELSH FARMHOUSE

It’s believed the Duchy owns Charles’s Welsh home at Llwynywermod near the Brecon Beacons. Charles and Camilla often retreat to the farmhouse on a 192-acre estate that contains two holiday cottages.