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You are either an Aga lover or you are not. And the Duchess of Cambridge, it appears, is surprisingly not. So anyone imagining that the new kitchen at Kate and William’s country bolthole Anmer Hall, in Norfolk, would be a rural range-warmed Sloaney affair, would be wide of the mark.
There will be no wicker baskets, no snug dressers, no moth-eaten woollen rugs, no utilitarian wooden table and none of the comfortable, lived-in feel so beloved of the Home Counties set.
Instead, Kate has decreed her new kitchen will be filled with American and German-built stainless steel units and appliances.
So out with the cosy kitchen, in with the high-tech, space-age affair, which tells the world just how modern and up-to-the minute this young, royal couple are.
It’s why William and Kate have ripped out the entire existing hand-built kitchen — all polished walnut and Aga — because, despite its £38,000 price tag, it didn’t fit with their vision of what they wanted for the Georgian pile on the Sandringham Estate.
Make no mistake, a new kitchen — especially if you have money — is a real litmus test of taste, class and ambition. A summary, all in one room, of a person’s aspirations.
So what does Kate and William’s sleek, modern affair — full of restaurant-standard equipment with the finest furnishings and underfloor heating beneath a reclaimed stone floor, as well as gleaming surfaces of Carrara marble and granite — say about them?
It certainly seems that with their state-of-the-art tastes they are aligning themselves more with the rich brigade than the posh brigade. And, insiders say, they are paying for it all out of their own pocket.
The focal point of the room is said to be a dining table for at least eight people. Kate has taken advice from food writer Tom Parker Bowles (her mother-in-law Camilla’s son) who loves a large dinner party in a kitchen.
Handily enough, he is also a promotional ‘ambassador’ to Sub-Zero & Wolf, the American company that specialises in status-symbol £15,000 fridge freezers the size of double wardrobes.
Kate and William have already kitted out Kensington Palace with these products and are now said to be installing one of the giant fridge-freezers at Anmer Hall.
Also used by Coleen Rooney, Victoria Beckham, Bernie Ecclestone, Sir Paul McCartney, Madonna and Rod Stewart, these monolithic fridges come complete with an air-purification system invented by Nasa that kills bacteria, automatic icemakers which make crescent-shaped cubes (said to melt more slowly) and lights on every shelf so no forgotten food ever goes mouldy at the back.
