Princess Diana’s childhood home, where she lived and played for 14 years, is now abandoned.
On July 1, 1961, the People’s Princess was born in Park House, on the royals Norfolk estate. Her father, John Spencer, rented the property from the late Queen Elizabeth for a year before her birth.
For over a decade, she grew up just 500 metres away from the British royal family’s Sandringham Estate, where they retreated during the Easter and Christmas holidays.
There, Princess Diana remained in the home – constructed in 1862 – until she was a teenager.
It’s believed Diana would have had her first interactions with members of the royal family. In 2021, her former au pair Inge Crane told CNN that Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and Prince Edward often swam in the property’s pool.
Then, the family left the property to return to their ancestral home, Althorp in Northamptonshire, when John was made the first Earl Spencer.
Park House was donated to the charity, Leonard Cheshire Disability in 1987. The 16-bedroom home was transformed into a hotel that catered to people with disabilities and their carers.
The organisation ran the hotel, with plans of refurbishing the property in 2019. However, the COVID-19 pandemic deferred all plans, and eventually, the hotel closed.
The property was returned to the royal estate in 2021, and has remained vacant ever since.
Previously, the Mirror shared photographs of the home deteriorating. The once prestigious home is overrun with unruly grass, peeling paint, smashed windows and a caved-in roof, as per the Mirror in 2025.
