Were she still in a relationship with the sixth in line to the throne, Chelsy Davy’s first born would have been celebrated around the world and introduced to the Queen within days.
As it was, when Prince Harry’s ex-girlfriend gave birth to her baby, Leo, in January, barely anyone was notified at all. Indeed, so under the radar was Chelsy’s pregnancy that even the name of her partner, Sam Cutmore-Scott, was little known.
Only last Saturday did the Daily Mail break the happy news that Chelsy had become a mother and seemed blissfully settled with Old Etonian Cutmore-Scott, who owns upmarket Norfolk hotel The Harper along with his family.
And it speaks volumes that one of the first people baby Leo was introduced to was not royalty but the chair of Chelsy’s local Norfolk parish council, who had been called to the Cutmore-Scott’s home to address minor complaints about parking issues with Sam and his parents Jo and Mark, the hotel’s managing director.
‘We as a parish council met with the Cutmore-Scotts, with Jo and Mark and Sam in January, and his wife came in with the baby,’ recalls softly-spoken Langham parish councillor Paul Godfrey.
When Prince Harry’s ex-girlfriend Chelsy Davy gave birth to her baby, Leo, in January, barely anyone was notified at all. Indeed, so under the radar was Chelsy’s pregnancy that even the name of her partner, Sam Cutmore-Scott, was little known. Pictured: Chelsy and Sam together
‘We had the meeting in their house, adjacent to the hotel. I did get to meet the baby. We were having a chat so it was not much of an introduction. Chelsy was holding the baby.’
Of course, we don’t know if Chelsy is Sam’s wife, or if that was Mr Godfrey’s misunderstanding, although judging by the sparkling sapphire ring spotted on her finger this week, there is every chance a marriage is on the horizon.
But the idea of a woman once destined to be a princess, whose life was an endless whirl of cocktails and exclusive London clubs, helping to settle a parking dispute in the sticks illustrates just how much life has changed for Chelsy in the decade since she and Harry ended their seven-year relationship.
The Chelsy most of us remember from her time with Harry, of course, is a glamorous Zimbabwean with a privileged background that belied her ability to swill vodka and slum it in student digs while studying law at Leeds University; a woman whose raucous partying and infectious guffaw provided a refreshing antidote to the more naturally reticent Kate Middleton.
Yet after a decade spent largely out of the limelight since her relationship with Harry ended in 2011, Chelsy, now 36, appears barely recognisable.
Were she still in a relationship with the sixth in line to the throne, Chelsy Davy’s first born would have been celebrated around the world and introduced to the Queen within days. The pair were said to have dated for around five years before parting ways in 2009
She’s a successful businesswoman — after ditching a career in law, Chelsy launched her own jewellery company, Aya, which she recently expanded to include a luxury travel service — and, after years of short-lived romances, appears to have finally met Mr Right.
It’s not known how they met, but a photograph from September 2019 shows Chelsy with a man who appears to be Sam walking down a street in London’s Soho together at night.
The first indication she had found love came in 2020, when Chelsy gave a glossy magazine interview in which she revealed ‘there is someone’ she was ‘quite taken by’, but ‘it’s very new and I don’t want to say too much.’
Around the same time, a picture on her Instagram showed Chelsy partying in Mauritius, cuddling a man who looks like Sam, while in another social media picture, taken six months later, the couple appeared to be holidaying in Istanbul together (constant holidays are one aspect of Chelsy’s life that don’t appear to have been erased).
Chelsy is now believed to have left her bachelorette pad in London’s South Kensington to live in Sam’s four-storey Victorian terrace on the banks of the River Thames in Chiswick, West London — baby Leo was born at Chelsea and Westminster hospital — although the couple regularly visit Norfolk.
Chelsy is now believed to have left her bachelorette pad in London’s South Kensington to live in Sam’s four-storey Victorian terrace on the banks of the River Thames in Chiswick, West London. Pictured: Chelsy attending a summer party in 2018
Her influence on Sam’s life is clear — The Harper’s spa is stocked with beauty products by Irene Forte, daughter of hotel magnate Sir Rocco Forte and one of Chelsy’s closest friends.
Last November, Chelsy posted a picture of her beloved cockapoo, Biscuit, posing in one of the hotel’s swanky roll top bathtubs.
In an interview with Irene Forte’s website in 2020, meanwhile, Chelsy revealed she was spending time in Norfolk, running along its coast first thing in the morning.
So, the intimations of a burgeoning relationship were there, although Chelsy’s romance certainly wasn’t the talk of the tiny village of Langham, a mile inland from the north Norfolk coast.
And if her penchant for vodka still exists, she’s hardly propping up the local bar — the Mail was told she didn’t drink in Langham’s local pub, The Blue Bell.
Given its proximity to the Queen’s Sandringham Estate, and Anmer Hall, home to the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, this is an area where residents are used to royal sightings. But even though the Cutmore-Scotts are well known in the village, their link with Chelsy isn’t.
The Chelsy most of us remember from her time with Harry, of course, is a glamorous Zimbabwean with a privileged background that belied her ability to swill vodka and slum it in student digs while studying law at Leeds University; a woman whose raucous partying and infectious guffaw provided a refreshing antidote to the more naturally reticent Kate Middleton
‘I know at the turn of the year (they) said they were expecting a grandchild,’ says villager Alan Smith, 63.
But far from fuelling speculation about a society baby, he says the only ‘village gossip’ was that one of Jo and Mark’s four children had got married in the States.
Sam is the eldest of the four siblings. His younger brother is an actor who lives in America; one of his two younger sisters is believed to work for the Government; and the other is thought to be a video producer.
Their mother, Jo Cutmore, a former head hunter, is clearly a force to be reckoned with.
Having set up her own company when Sam was just a year old so she could be in charge of her career, Jo is reported to have conquered the corporate world by hiding her pregnancies from clients until she was almost due to give birth and taking just days off after.
A champion of flexible working for women long before it became fashionable, she set up a support group for other high-powered working mothers ‘for a recognition of the sheer physical effort it takes’.
When Sam was 11 she took him to Eton’s Open Day, unaware that Prince William would be in the same boarding house — or that Prince Harry would be in the year below.
Chelsy Davy and Prince Harry’s other ex girlfriend Cressida Bonas were among those who attended his wedding to Meghan Markle in May 2018 at St George’s Chapel in Windsor
‘Had no idea we were in Prince William’s house until we were asked if all the publicity would bother us. Should have known it was special from the wonderful upholstery that looked like The Ritz rather than a boys’ school like the other houses,’ Jo wrote in a newspaper diary of her working week in 1995, quipping that her baby daughter had ‘chosen to fill her nappy in the Master’s study’ that day and explaining that ‘to make up for that trip, I worked late into the night’.
Her husband Mark Scott, whom she met when both were tutors at London’s Financial Training College and married in 1983, gave up his career in computer software to become her business partner, their equal footing reflected, perhaps, in the way their children took both their surnames.
Growing up, Sam combined his time between the family’s house in London’s Eaton Square and their weekend cottage in Norfolk.
After training as an accountant, working in the financial sector and studying for an MBA, Sam joined Bijou Weddings Group, the company his parents founded in 2000.
Holding weddings in idyllic venues across the South of England, as well as another property in France, the family is described by one source who knew them as belonging firmly to the same class as their clients — very upmarket.
But Bijou Weddings Group did not come out of the pandemic well — as much for the apparently shoddy way the firm treated its clients as the challenges caused by Government restrictions.
Because as lockdowns hit and weddings were cancelled, the company charged their about-to-be-wed couples an 80 per cent cancellation fee.
Their decision caused an uproar on social media. When Adam Gibbs and Sarah Summerskill, from Woking, Surrey, were informed their big day couldn’t go ahead after 18 months of planning, they were told they still owed £13,600.
‘It’s not the kind of money you find down the back of the sofa,’ Gibbs said in a news story at the time.
On industry review website, Trust Pilot, the company was described as having ‘no remorse, no apologies, no regret, no moral compass’ by one disgruntled client, while another described them as a ‘morally bankrupt, money-grabbing, utterly ruthless business’.
In September, the Competition and Markets Authority launched an investigation into the company, but even then, Claudia Dickson and Jack Trowsdale, from Horsham, West Sussex, who had paid almost £21,000 towards their wedding at Botleys Mansion, Surrey, before it was called off, learned they would only get back £13,554 — two thirds of what they’d paid.
The venue said it was keeping £7,261 after the regulator agreed the firm could hold back money to cover its costs. Claudia said that October: ‘We were gobsmacked. We did not even get a breakdown of what this money would cover.’
Sam responded at the time: ‘We have entered into a refund scheme agreed with the CMA. We are doing our best to ensure all our couples affected by the pandemic are treated fairly.’
The same year, the Cutmore-Scotts had intended to open The Harper, a hotel in a converted glass-blowing factory the family first saw in 2016 and bought from another developer to do up in what Sam describes as the family’s ‘artfully mismatched taste’.
He has said: ‘It was a new business direction for us — a hotel rather than a wedding venue — but it looked exciting and it was in the right place so we decided to go for it.’
The hotel is named after his late grandfather, Stanley Harper Cutmore, who ran a mechanics’ workshop in Norwich and inspired his descendants’ love of the Norfolk coast.
Sam says the ‘silver lining’ to the pandemic was that he got locked down in the hotel for months, giving him an opportunity to finesse the business.
Having spent her early years in Zimbabwe, and with her family still based in southern Africa, it is easy to see how the close-knit Cutmore-Scotts could have provided solace for Chelsy.
As Chelsy suggested herself, in 2020, shortly after she’s believed to have met Sam: ‘Everything is falling into place.’
Additional reporting: Stephanie Condron and Mark Branagan
