Princess Diana’s brother Charles selling Muskoka cottage amid divorce

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Princess Diana’s younger brother Charles Spencer is selling the Ontario cottage he bought with his Canadian wife Karen now that the couple are in the process of divorcing.

When the 9th Earl Spencer, as he is formally styled through a hereditary peerage, bought an untouched forest and lavish waterfront mansion on Lake Rosseau, he was making one of Canada’s most high profile pandemic property purchases.

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It was that first autumn of COVID in 2020 and the fancies of rich people had turned to new and better leisure properties, somewhere they could escape the locked down city, unmask among family, and ride out the viral apocalypse in the land of the loon.

Prices rose accordingly, but that just helps the truly rich. So when gossip spread that the Spencers — Charles, 60, and Karen, 52 — had their eyes on this large overgrown patch of woodland between Rosseau and the smaller Silver Lake, with shoreline on both, in the heart of Ontario’s Muskoka cottage country, they seemed perfectly on trend.

Now that the cottage and land are for sale again, in a softened market for recreational properties, the trend has come full circle. It might even be starting again, driven by changes to the capital gains tax and lower inflation and interest rates.

As the Financial Post headlined a recent report on real estate prices, “Canada’s cottage boom went bust. Are buyers ready to take the plunge again?”

Spencer must hope so. When he bought it in 2020, the cottage was listed at $8 million and the land went for approximately $1.3 million.

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Today, the asking price is significantly higher, $10,495,000 for the main house, its 2.5 acre plot, and what the listing describes as the “lovely two-slip, two storey boathouse with a guest suite and covered porch.”

Photos of the cottage show a modern home facing the sunrise over Arthurlie Bay, with high-end finishes, a billiards room with bar, private balcony off the principal bedroom, and in the bathroom, a racy full frontal nude painting of a woman’s body, from the chin down to the thighs.

That painting is not explicitly included in the offer, even if it is to a buyer’s taste, and might be a stager’s bold decision, but the listing does note that the property “is for sale with an option to purchase the adjoining 1000 ft of lakefront and 20+ acres of property on Silver Lake.”

That land is thick with brush, with areas of steep rocky terrain and a hemlock swamp. It is accessed by a private road, but is otherwise wild.

“Together, they could be the perfect estate-sized property with two lake fronts, acres and acres for trails, guest cottages, cabins, docks, etc. The opportunities are endless!”

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The listing has been up since May, not long after they announced their separation to their household staff. They made their separation public in June.

A 2023 notice of hearing from the Muskoka Lakes committee of adjustment describes Spencer’s plan to sever a small part of a neighbouring property and add it to his own, and to establish a new right of way onto the Silver Lake land.

The National Post first reported the fact of the Muskoka land and cottage purchase in November 2020, and speculated about which royals might join Earl Spencer’s family for summer weekends on the dock.

Spencer, uncle to Princes William and Harry, would be the “Earl of Port Carling,” as the headline put it, taking his place in the Muskoka Who’s Who among the business titans, pro hockey players, and bold-faced names like Cindy Crawford, Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn, Tom Hanks, and Steven Spielberg.

Spencer’s real estate agent at the time said the family had been holidaying in Muskoka for many years. Spencer’s family seat is at Althorp, a stately home in Northamptonshire, England, where Princess Diana is buried on an island in a lake.

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Charles and Karen were married in 2011 at Althorp. They have a daughter, Lady Charlotte Diana Spencer, 12, and both have older children from previous marriages.

It was Karen’s love for Muskoka that brought them there. In the early summer of 2018, for example, Charles posted on social media: “Today I am lucky enough to be returning to Ontario — whose beauty I learnt about via my beautiful Canadian wife.”

Karen Spencer, Countess Spencer, was born Karen Gordon in Edmonton. Her father worked in Canadian national parks, which saw her family move many times when she was a child. She is a philanthropist who in 2004 founded Whole Child International, a charity for child welfare.

Charles Spencer is an author and journalist. He recently published a memoir, A Very Private School, about the trauma of being sent away to school at age eight. It is part of a wider ongoing reckoning in British society about abuse at exclusive boarding schools, not just by occasional predators, but by many students and staff in a toxic environment.

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