Are you Cliveden or Coworth Park?

Meghan's staying at Cliveden House the night before the wedding. Prince Harry's staying at Coworth Park. Here's how they compare... 

While you’re using your Friday night to strongarm pints in London, Harry and Meghan will be safely tucked up in separate beds, awaiting the big day. In the red-headed corner, Prince Harry will be ensconced within the stately confines of Coworth Park in Ascot, Berkshire.

Meanwhile, Meghan will be 15 miles away at Cliveden House, a National Trust estate. Here’s how the two set-ups compare.

Get a room

At Coworth Park, an 18th-century country house, rooms go for between £1,200 and £1,500 a night. The cosiest ones boast regally decorated four-poster beds fit for a prince, while the crowning glory is the Dower House, a three-bedroom, Grade II-listed Georgian residence with its own kitchen, living rooms, and a daisy- and bluebell-dotted meadow where the estate’s swans hold court.

Cliveden House, a neoclassical building, has rooms named after notaries who have dotted the manor’s history (more of which later). Each has the Markle sparkle. The Henry James suite has a view of rolling countryside from its marble bath, the Sutherland room is decked out in a palette of soft pastels and has an astonishingly ornate chimneypiece, and the Chinese room is light, airy and impeccably styled in light golds.

The squads

Meghan will stay with her mother Doria Ragland, along with a group of girlfriends, her dress designer and her hairdresser.

Prince Harry will be spending the night with his best man, the Duke of Cambridge. Such fun.

Bonus points

Cliveden has a state-of-the-art spa. It offers treatments from Sarah Chapman, London’s most sought after facialist. Meghan is a fan of her signature massage technique.Rumours abound the bride will have one on the morning of the wedding.

Harry’s sporting pursuits are well in hand. The Guards Polo Academy at Coworth Park gives polo lessons — not that he needs any — and tennis, fishing, shooting and croquet can be arranged. Golfers should tee off at Wentworth.

The context

If Meghan is still brushing up on her British history, Cliveden boasts 350 years of “powerful personalities, debaucherous parties and scandalous affairs”. Still, it has transatlantic glamour too — it was while loaded American expats Nancy and Waldorf Astor lived there during the first half of the 20th century that the estate became renowned for its lavish hospitality and glamorous guests.

Later, it was also the five-star setting for the Profumo affair, one of the greatest scandals of the Cold War. At a poolside party in 1961 the married war minister John Profumo was seduced by Christine Keeler — and history was made.

It emerged that Keeler had also enjoyed a relationship with Yevgeny Ivanov, a Russian naval attaché who was actually a Soviet spy.

Coworth Park, meanwhile, first became associated with polo in the mid-1980s when the owner of Selfridges and Fortnum & Mason, Galen Weston, bought the estate and built its first polo ground.

That said, there is a hitch — Meghan has boycotted hotels in the Dorchester Collection, which owns Coworth Park, because she disapproves of the policies of its owner, the Sultan of Brunei. Still, at least that should keep them apart.

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