Duchy of Cornwall estate worth £1bn passes to Prince William

theguardian.com:

With accession of Prince Charles to the throne, his eldest son has become the heir apparent, and the 25th Duke of Cornwall.

Along with this title, Prince William automatically inherits the Duchy of Cornwall, which has been an income stream for his father for more than half a century. This is thanks to the ownership of a landed estate of more than 52,000 hectares (128,000 acres), which also makes him one of England’s biggest landowners.

The Duchy of Cornwall owns land across 20 counties in England and Wales – the majority of it not in Cornwall – stretching from Devon to Kent, and Carmarthenshire to Nottinghamshire.

Much of the estate comprises farmland, but it also includes homes and commercial properties, forests, rivers, coastline and about – a third of the Dartmoor national park, which was once used for mining minerals such as tin and copper.

Some of the estate’s more unusual holdings include Oval cricket ground in central London – which has been leased by Surrey county cricket club since 1874 – as well as Dartmoor prison, and a plant nursery and garden centre at Lostwithiel in Cornwall. The duchy’s net assets were valued at more than £1bn at the end of March, the bulk of which came from investment property assets.

The duchy can trace its origins back almost 700 years, to 1337, when Edward III established a private estate that could provide independence to his son and heir, Prince Edward. A charter from the time ruled that every future Duke of Cornwall would be the eldest surviving son of the monarch.

King Charles III was not only heir to the throne since the age of three, but was also the longest-serving Duke of Cornwall in history, having marked 50 years running the estate in 2019. He took over the running of the estate