Prince Harry’s ex-girlfriend Chelsy Davy marries hotelier Sam Cutmore-Scott, 37

Prince Harry’s former long-term love Chelsy Davy has secretly married a millionaire hotelier whose brother is a Hollywood star, it was revealed today.

Ms Davy, 36, who split up with Harry after a seven-year relationship because she didn’t want to be a royal bride, has wed Sam Cutmore-Scott, 37, who was in the year above the prince at Eton College.

The couple had their first baby in January, a boy named Leo, whose birth was kept so private that his arrival only emerged three months later after he was introduced to their local parish council in Norfolk. Many of Chelsy’s friends didn’t even know she had become pregnant in lockdown.

Sam is the brother of Jack Cutmore-Scott, 35, the dashing Hollywood actor best known for his role in Christopher Nolan’s Oscar-winning film Tenet and the drama series Deception. The siblings are close, and Chelsy is believed to have spent time with him in LA since she met her now-husband around three years ago.

Oxford graduate Cutmore-Scott is managing director at The Harper Hotel in Holt, the family business, and the couple are believed to split their time between a townhouse in Chiswick and the Norfolk coast.

‘They are married,’ a friend told the Daily Mail’s Richard Eden, adding: ‘Very few people knew about the wedding.’ 

Chelsy has found her man after an ‘on-again, off-again’, relationship with Harry, who had told friends before they split in 2011 that she was ‘the best thing that’s ever happened to me’.  They had met in London when they were both at school but got together in 2004, during Harry’s gap year travels in Zimbabwe, where Chelsy’s millionaire father owns and runs a game reserve.

It became so serious palace officials remarked that he had started calling her ‘wifey’ and she in turn called him ‘hubby’. It was clearly serious when Chelsy would not only attend Harry’s cousin Peter Phillips’ wedding to Autumn Kelly – where she was introduced to the Queen – but she would also be invited to Prince Charles’s 60th birthday celebrations.

But the pressures of their conflicting careers and long periods apart as Harry served in Afghanistan took their toll yet again. It was also rumoured that party-loving TV presenter Caroline Flack and other beautiful young women had caught Harry’s eye. ‘He was fascinated by her wild, carefree attitude and rock-chick lifestyle,’ a confidante of the late Miss Flack had said at the time. 

Chelsy Davy (left with her new wedding ring) split up with Prince Harry (right yesterday) after a seven-year relationship

Happily-ever after: Davy finally finds her prince as she shows off her Sapphire and diamond engagement ring last year

Chelsy has recently married the brother of Hollywood actor Jack Cutmore-Scott, who starred in Christopher Nolan’s Tenet (pictured far left) with stars John David Washington and Robert Pattinson

The pair were reunited again in 2010 before splitting for good later that year, with Chelsy declaring that the life of a royal girlfriend is ‘not for me’. She would, however, go on to appear as his ‘plus one’ at Prince William and Kate Middleton’s wedding in 2011.

But it was clear that she and Harry remained friends afterwards, because she was invited to his wedding to Meghan Markle in 2018 – when royal watchers pondered whether it could have been her walking down the aisle with the royal had things been different. 

Sam Cutmore-Scott is a director of his parents’ hospitality company, the Bijou Collection, which owns four exclusive wedding venues: a mansion, a manor and an abbey in the Home Counties and a chateau in the South of France. He and Chelsy live together in Chiswick, West London.

Party-loving Chelsy, who was born in Zimbabwe and now runs a jewellery and luxury travel business, revealed in 2020 that she had a serious boyfriend, but did not give his name, explaining: ‘There is someone, and I am quite taken by this one, but it’s very new and I don’t want to say too much.’

Chelsy began dating Harry while she was a pupil at Cheltenham Ladies’ College and the pair split in 2011.

Since then Ms Davy has gone completely under the radar.  She gave birth to her baby, Leo, in January, and barely anyone was notified at all. Indeed, so under the radar was Chelsy’s pregnancy that at the time even the name of her partner, Sam Cutmore-Scott, was little known.

Very few people were aware Chelsy had become a mother and was now blissfully settled with Old Etonian mr  Cutmore-Scott, who owns upmarket Norfolk hotel The Harper along with his family.

In fact 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 said in March.

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 seven years before parting ways in 2009

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

Ms Davy’s settled and life came after the heartbreak of her relationship with Harry, who she decided she couldn’t marry due to royal life. They were exceptionally well suited, gregarious and party loving, with a huge group of friends.

Chelsy 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.

She was viewed as 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.

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, finally met Mr Right.

It’s not known how they met, but a photograph from September 2019 showed Chelsy with a man who appeared 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. While her love of partying may have mellowed, her love of travel has not.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

Their Harper Hotel in Holt 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.’