Richard Hammond Private Life: His Wife, Family, Daughters and Home

Richard Hammond private life: his wife and family

This page is the full Richard Hammond private life record — his Richard Hammond wife, their two daughters, and the Richard Hammond family home.

Richard Hammond married Amanda “Mindy” Etheridge, a writer and newspaper columnist, in May 2002. The couple went on to have two daughters, Isabella — known as Izzy, and the elder of the two — and Willow. Isabella has since built a public profile of her own, co-presenting the podcast Who Are We Now alongside her father.

For much of their marriage, the Hammond family lived at Bollitree Castle in Herefordshire, a property Richard Hammond bought in 2012. The family also kept a London apartment for work in the capital.

The Hammond daughters

Isabella and Willow are Richard Hammond’s two daughters from his marriage to Mindy. Isabella, the elder, has stepped into public life herself in recent years, while Willow has largely stayed out of the public eye.

The 2025 separation

This Christmas we were together as a family and this year we will still be a family but just structured a bit differently.

Richard & Mindy Hammond, joint statement, January 2025 — as reported by RTÉ

In January 2025, Richard Hammond and his wife Mindy announced they had separated after 28 years together. The couple shared a joint statement on social media rather than leaving the news to speculation, saying: “This Christmas we were together as a family and this year we will still be a family but just structured a bit differently.” Both described the split as amicable, framing it as a change in family structure rather than any public falling-out.

Hammond has since spoken publicly about the period around the separation as a difficult stretch, without going into the private detail of it — consistent with how the couple handled the initial announcement.

Home and everyday life

Away from filming, Hammond’s interests run mechanical and airborne: he has ridden motorcycles for more than three decades and holds a helicopter pilot’s licence, gained in 2012, flying his own Robinson R44. He also plays bass guitar. He has been a long-standing ambassador for The Children’s Trust, a charity supporting children with brain injuries — a cause with an obvious personal resonance given his own 2006 recovery, covered on the biography page.

The Bollitree Castle grounds doubled as a working smallholding for much of the family’s time there, kept alongside the usual pets rather than instead of them. Hammond has spoken publicly, with some humour, about not sharing the rest of the family’s enthusiasm for horses specifically — describing them as an expensive, high-maintenance commitment more likely to come between an owner and their spouse than bring the household together. It’s safe to say he won’t be checking the best horse racing betting sites anytime soon.

Hammond’s nickname “The Hamster” started as a joke referencing his height not long after he joined Top Gear, and stuck as an affectionate running gag among the show’s presenters rather than anything he has pushed back on publicly. Family life is a recurring theme when he does discuss his career outside filming — he has said more than once that time with Mindy and their daughters comes first, ahead of the on-screen work he is best known for.

What stays out of view

Compared with his broadcasting career, which is extensively documented on the biography page, Hammond has kept the day-to-day detail of family life relatively closed off. Public comment tends to come in short, specific bursts — a joint statement, an interview aside, a line about his daughters’ own careers — rather than an ongoing, running commentary. That pattern held through the 2025 separation too: a single joint statement, reported at the time by outlets including RTÉ and LBC, then no further detail volunteered — consistent with how the couple has generally handled their private life throughout his time in the public eye.

This Richard Hammond private life record is checked against public sources and updated as things change.