The late queen purchased Gatcombe Park in 1976 as a wedding present for Anne after she married her first husband, Mark Phillips. (According to author Geoffrey Sanders, the estate of more than 500 acres cost about 500,000 British pounds at the time. Its previous owners later said that the royal family was a tough negotiator on the purchase price.) Rebuilt in the 1820s, the Georgian mansion required significant renovations to be inhabitable, but the stonework and floor plan of the main structure and its glass-walled conservatory remained largely intact.
Anne used to be a professional equestrian and even competed in the three-day event at the 1976 Olympics. When she moved into Gatcombe Park, she upgraded the stables and turned them into a modern center for such events. From the early 1980s to 2023, Anne used the grounds to host the annual Festival of British Eventing, which attracted riders from around the world.
Gatcombe Park in June 1976.
Photo by Peter Cade/Central Press/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
When Phillips and sister Zara Tindall were born, Anne declined to give them aristocratic titles and raised them with the expectation that they would chart their own professional paths. Still, the two have stayed close to their mother, even renovating cottages on the Gatcombe Park grounds to serve as their family homes. Anne continued living on the estate after both her divorce from her first husband and her subsequent remarriage to Timothy Laurence, a naval officer who served as the queen’s equerry before he wed Anne.
Phillips and his first wife, Canadian Autumn Kelly, announced their divorce in 2020. With King Charles serving as the head of the Church of England, his presence at Phillips’s remarriage on Saturday would be a sign of how much attitudes toward divorce among the royal family have changed over the last 50 years. In the 1950s, palace courtiers pressured Elizabeth’s younger sister, Princess Margaret, not to marry a divorcé due to the perception that it was against the church’s teachings. When Charles married Camilla in 2005, the queen was not present.
Despite that, the late queen supported Anne and Charles when their first marriages came to an end in the 1990s. When Anne announced her divorce, the queen reportedly summed up her reaction with a quip to a courtier: “You know, I’ve decided I’m not old-fashioned enough to be queen.”
