Princess Pushy home for sale at £4.5m

Princess Michael of Kent is selling her beloved Gloucestershire manor house, Nether Lypiatt.

It follows the indignity of the Queen bailing her out when MPs demanded an end to her rent-free housing at Kensington Palace.

The decision to put the Grade I listed building on the market with a price tag of around £4.5 million will once again prompt scrutiny of the Prince and Princess's notorious feather-bedded lifestyle.

As the news emerged some of the couple's old enemies in the Labour Party once more condemned their housing arrangements.

But their move is likely to have been prompted by the fact that soon the Kents will have to pay for the whole cost of their homes for the first time since they married in 1978.

Nether Lypiatt, near Bisley, which the Kents bought in 1981 for ?300,000, was built in 1698 and has eight bedrooms, four reception rooms, staff quarters and 20 acres of land.

It is also said to have a ghost, although that is hardly likely to be a hindrance when Savills comes to market the property in the spring.

In 2002 the Kents faced losing their seven-bedroomed apartment at Kensington Palace when the Commons Public Accounts Committee demanded they pay a market rent instead of just £69 a week. To save them losing their London base the Queen stepped in and subsidised them to the tune of £125,000 a year. But the arrangement will end in two years' time, when the Princess is 65.

Meanwhile they will continue to live at the Palace, paying just £69 a week. Labour MP Ian Davidson said: "I can't understand why they need any form of housing benefit. Multi-millionaires should be able to finance their own housing."

But a London friend told the Daily Mail: "I am astonished. They absolutely love the house. It's true her children are off her hands but I can't imagine she is downsizing. Princess Michael is not a downsizing sort of person."