The attractive market town of Tetbury, Gloucestershire, is famous for its Woolsack Races (where competitors race up and down the steepest street carrying a full sack of wool on their backs), its antique shops — and its royal links. Its high street is home to King Charles’s Highgrove Shop which opened in 2008.
The monarch has long had a connection with the area, having purchased his private residence, Highgrove House, in 1980, which is just a five-minute drive from Tetbury, the Cotswolds’ second largest town.
Prince William and his younger brother Prince Harry spent a great deal of time in the nine-bedroom mansion and its local haunts, whether that be hanging out with their close circle of friends or heading to local pubs.
After the Prince of Wales met Kate, Princess of Wales, at the University of St Andrews, in Scotland, wooing her with “amazing fancy dinners”, she would come to visit Highgrove and was often spotted in Tetbury.
However, as knowledge of the pair’s relationship became more widespread, Kate could not fly under the radar and once had to be locked into a shop until the crowds wanting to catch a glimpse of her died down.
Tetbury’s shops, some of which have the prestigious Royal Warrant, have served the Royal Family for many years.
In the early 2000s, Kate would occasionally pop into the town when staying with her then-boyfriend at Highgrove. She once stepped into a luxury women’s clothing shop which specialises in tweed coasts and jackets — some of which fetch several hundred pounds — when crowds began to gather.
Staff were forced to shut the boutique with Kate still inside as the situation got out of hand.
Creative director Butts told GloucestershireLive: “We had to close the shop because everybody was coming in and it got really silly. I was away that day but the person who was here said she was lovely and it wasn’t nice to see what she had to put up with.”
The couple were seen at equestrian events where William would often play polo. For several years, Kate accompanied William to nearby Gatcombe Park, home to Princess Anne, and the Chakravarty Cup polo match at Beaufort Polo Club. She was also spotted at the latter with Harry’s former girlfriend, Chelsy Davy.
For William’s 26th birthday, he celebrated at the Beaufort Polo Club watching England beat New Zealand in the Williams De Broe Polo Test Match.
The pair — who at that time had been dating for six years — let their hair down that night, appearing to be like any “normal 20-somethings”, as they danced together in the sports club’s Boujis tent.
The Duke and Duchess of Cornwall, who survived a break-up in 2007, could be seen laughing and throwing their arms into the air as they danced the night away.
William had long been letting his hair down in Gloucestershire. At Highgrove, the boys had their own private social club, known as Club H, where they would party with their friends from the Cotswolds.
The two princes have been spotted visiting The Snooty Fox, in Tetbury, and The Rattlebone Inn, a few miles away, with the Duke of Sussex recalling how he would “sneak out” for a drink with friends in his hit memoir Spare.
Harry, referring to William by his nickname, wrote: “Willy and I would start a typical weekend evening by sneaking into a nearby pub where we’d have a few drinks, a few pints of snakebite, then round up a group of mates and bring them back to Club H. There was plenty of innocent snogging, which went hand in hand with the not-so-innocent drinking.”
