In a world exclusive, the Prince says he’s leading the Duchy of Cornwall with a simple goal – improving people’s lives.
When the Prince of Wales comes knocking, there’s no need to stand on ceremony. Having inherited the Duchy of Cornwall upon his father’s accession, William is leading it with a reforming zeal, a refreshing disregard for formality, and a determination to learn the truth about the lives of its tenants. This is what happened when I spent a day with the unorthodox landlord.
In a sunny field on the outskirts of Bath, there is a loud pop of a sparkling-wine cork. “I thought you’d never ask,” says the Prince of Wales, grinning and accepting a glass of fizz from the vineyard stretching out in front of him, on Duchy of Cornwall farmland.
He asks local producers questions about soil type, the weather and the history of the land before taking a sip and proclaiming it “lovely” and “very discreet”, at the start of a day that will go on as pleasantly as it began.
For Prince William, this is not just an outing in the peace and quiet of the countryside – although he clearly appreciates that chance. He is here in his role as Duke of Cornwall, head of the estate he inherited the moment his grandmother died and his father became King in 2022.
Vast, complex, and spanning 128,494 acres of land across 20 counties, the Duchy takes in both rural and urban life, and the priorities under its 25th Duke – William – range from ending homelessness to restoring rivers. He wants to use it as another “branch of his philanthropy”, he tells me: existing for “social impact” rather than as an old-style financial resource to be drawn from.
The Prince tries to visit part of the Duchy once every four to six weeks, working his way through its farms and offices to meet families and staff, shake hands and quiz them on what he can do to help. His visits are usually private, rarely making the Court Circular and kept quiet by loyal locals who are used to royal comings and goings.
Today, in the middle of May, Kensington Palace has granted a rare exception, giving permission for The Telegraph to join the Prince on what has become known as a “Duchy day” for the first time since he took it over.
It is six years since I first spent a day down on the farm with Prince William, and everything has changed. Then, he was in the apprentice role, shadowing his father, who had spent 50 years running the Duchy, and modestly telling farmers, “I’ll try my best.” Now, he is fully in the driving seat, lit up with ideas on how to make his mark and, in his words, change the lives of those who live in his Duchy for the better.
From a vineyard to a farm and community garden, via private offices and a peaceful stroll through a Somerset village, he sets out here, for the first time publicly, his vision for a new generation.
He is, unmistakably, a man on a mission: to reform his Duchy so it is fit for 2025 and beyond; a “positive force for good” that will actively “make people’s lives better”. “We’re not the traditional landowner,” he tells me. “We want to be more than that.”
He has allowed unprecedented access to those closest to the project, who are encouraged to speak freely outside of what can sometimes be strict Palace supervision. Developed over weeks of interviews with tenants and the senior staff tasked with bringing his vision to life, and a day with HRH himself, here is the clearest picture yet of the 42-year-old Prince in a new phase of life. “There is so much good we can do,” he says.
He ends the day with a longer to-do list than when he started, and takes home a bottle of home-grown Duchy apple juice. He will have to drink it, he jokes, before his children can get their hands on it.
What is the Duchy?
For an estate that dates back to 1337, established by Edward III to generate private income for his then seven-year-old heir, the Duchy of Cornwall is surprisingly little known to the public. Fiendishly difficult to explain, it is geographically huge and existentially challenging. Officially it exists to fund the life and work of the Duke of Cornwall and his family – raising £23.6 million ($52.6m) in the year to March 2024, which also goes towards running the Kensington Palace operation and paying staff – and passes to the next generation intact: the Duke’s role is as steward of the land.
As with other landowners, tenants pay rent to the Duchy, and there are commercial leases and market-rate deals with public bodies for properties on estate land. The Prince pays voluntary income tax – though he does not disclose the amount – with annual accounts reported to Parliament and oversight from the Treasury.
The Duchy is written about in the popular press, generally, once a year, when its headline profit figures are announced, and is an easy target for critics of the monarchy, who make hay out of the sums of money available to the Royal family.
As of now, it has a new strap-line: “Positive impact for people, places and planet.” The “people” part is seen as mission-critical, including a heavy focus on solving homelessness, supporting the mental health of farmers, and arranging get-togethers to combat rural loneliness.
More than 150 people work across its eight offices, under the leadership of new secretary Will Bax and, ultimately, Prince William. Despite being called the Duchy of Cornwall, its largest landholdings are in Devon. The estate spans land from Herefordshire and Wales to Kent and inner-city London – it owns the Oval in Kennington – and the Isles of Scilly, as well as water: sections of rivers in Dartmoor, Cornish beaches up to the high-tide line, and Plymouth Harbour (“the wet bits”, one senior member of staff explains).
It remains, arguably, most famous for the Duchy Originals organic food line – particularly known for its biscuits – established by the then Prince Charles in 1990. Though it is now owned by Waitrose (and called Duchy Organic), the estate’s annual report warns it could still be muddled in the public imagination.
Since Prince William stepped into the role of Duke of Cornwall, he has embarked on a careful but wholesale stocktake of what is working and what is not. He wants to “dig deeply” to get a “true feel for what the Duchy is doing”, he tells me now, “trying to just go through with a fine-tooth comb”.
“The Duchy has been a positive force for good, but we can do so much more. I think the key thing is, it’s about not losing the important community and historical links of the Duchy. But it’s also about making sure we’re building on and enhancing, modernising the Duchy.” He adds: “We’re going to modernise it without losing its key spirit of community.”
The Prince concedes that “it’s going to take a bit of time” – likening updating the 700-year-old Duchy to “turning a tanker” – but he is determined to shift the focus away from the revenue-raising of old to put “social impact” at the centre. He chairs a quarterly meeting of The Prince’s Council, attending numerous other committees. He sends questions to staff and chases answers via WhatsApp on any given day.
Oddly, he is now technically his father’s landlord: Highgrove, the King’s pride and joy, is part of the estate, although Charles still has the phone numbers of the right people at the Duchy to call to fix a water leak.
The visit
On that mid-May day, the Prince arrives at Corston Fields Farm full of apologies. He is slightly late, after a train journey to Bath so delayed that the words “rail replacement service” were mentioned.
The farm, run by self-described “farmer and farmer’s husband” Emily and Eddie Addicott-Sauvao, is an exemplar of Duchy life: Emily’s parents have been tenants since 1982 (“the same year I was born”, William notes), and their two daughters now lend a hand with pruning. They have diversified into growing quinoa, with a focus on working with local bakeries and hotels, and a line in high-end events at the vineyard including food, wine and music pairing. Their award-winning Minerva sparkling wine, which the Prince tries, is priced at £120 ($267).
“We’ve chosen the right day for it,” he says, as the sun blazes and swallows fly in blue skies over- head. “Beautiful.”
Prince William, in line with all members of his family, is blissfully unaware of the last-minute fluster that comes ahead of almost all royal visits: Eddie is dispatched to find tea bags at the nearest shop while Emily whistles for their temporarily lost dog.
They balance a vintage teapot that once belonged to Emily’s grandmother in the car for a bumpy journey over the fields to set up in a tent for the Prince’s arrival. But when he steps out of his car, wearing an open-necked shirt with his phone tucked into his back trouser pocket, the Prince notices everything.
“What’s this here?” he wonders, spotting wool from a scratching sheep at the bottom of a couple of the vines, and hears how the Romans used to grow similar grapes 2,000 years ago in the fields nearby. Like all farmers, the Prince is preoccupied by the weather: it has been dry and he wants to know how it will affect their harvest.
He quizzes Rosa, 13, and Charlotte, 10, on what they like about living in the countryside (“you’ve got to get muddy haven’t you, that’s critical”), and tells them about his daughter of the same name.
He is particularly interested in the “community days” the couple host at the farm, where locals come, leave their phones behind, and get their hands dirty helping out and meeting their neighbours, before being rewarded with lunch.
Asked what the Duchy can do to help their day-to-day lives as tenants, patriarch Gerald Addicott – who is now retired but met the then Prince Charles several times during his own tenancy – teases the Prince that he could make it “rent-free”.
“You’re not the first person to say that,” laughs William, adding – apparently semi-seriously – that he questioned whether he could do just that when he took over, and “got a lot of sweaty faces” responsible for balancing the books looking back at him.
Having spent the past few years speaking to farmers, he has concerns about how best to convince the public of the quality and benefits of locally grown, sustainably produced food.
“There is a huge problem here and I haven’t got an answer,” he says of how to recognise the work of British farmers amid cheap supermarket food and the “generalised” approach of the “mass retailers”. “We keep asking more and more of our farmers but you don’t necessarily get any benefits back on top of everything you have to do.”
Figuring out whether the Duchy can help to promote its small producers is on his to-do list. Staff, by now, are used to receiving a follow-up call or message after each of these visits.
When Emily raises her own concerns about the lack of rural skills being taught in schools, the Prince nods. “We keep talking about the importance of being outside in nature but we don’t always give the jobs,” he says. “These jobs where you have that time in nature and think, ‘I enjoy it, I’m loving this.’ The opportunities need to be there in schools.”
By now, Matthew Morris, the rural director of the Duchy of Cornwall, who is tasked with keeping the Prince vaguely to schedule today, is trying to catch William’s attention with an eye on the ticking clock.
He has worked for the Duchy for six years, with both the now King Charles and Prince William. He notes cheerfully that staff no longer feel the need to put on a tie when the Duke of Cornwall is in town.
The boss
It is a cliché to say that the Prince is in his element, but he is. After a period he has described as “probably the hardest year of my life”, in which both his father and his wife were seriously ill, he is as relaxed as I have seen him in a long time.
Without the usual press pack travelling with him, he is freer to speak and laughs easily, standing with hands in his pockets and visibly thrilled when he gets the chance to tease one of his team. He is delighted to hear that the office dog barks at Bax (“perhaps it’s the beard”).
His passion for all he can do at the Duchy is infectious. “He’s easy to follow because he’s got great conviction and personality, and he really wears his heart on his sleeve in terms of social interest and his desire to have a positive impact in the world,” says Bax.
The Prince is “pretty demanding”, he concedes – quickly clarifying “that’s great” – with a “pretty ambitious” outlook. Part of the job is amplifying others: “seeing the spark and getting the bellows out”.
Ben Murphy, estate director, describes the relationship between Duke and Duchy as its leader “laying down the challenge and it’s for us to figure out how to address it”. Prince William has a “healthy impatience, as his father did”, which “puts the wind in our sails; he really cares”, Murphy adds.
Henry Meacock, the chief executive of homelessness charity St Petrocs, is partnering with the estate on its first housing project with wraparound care to break the cycle of homelessness, with the initial phase due to be complete by the end of this year, and a policy of “blind tenure” meaning that private renters in Cornwall will live alongside social and supported housing. Prince William “is personally driving the timetable”, he says. “He would like to deliver more and quicker.”
In other words, he is putting his money where his mouth is. “He’s personally invested in the project and personally investing as well.”
The work, which is largely invisible to the public, is done alongside the day job of public engagements undertaken as Prince of Wales, passion projects such as The Earthshot Prize and Homewards, and responsibilities including investitures and overseas travel representing his father and the Government.
The vision
Since taking over as the Duke of Cornwall, Prince William has incorporated much of the work he has been doing elsewhere in his royal life.
Nansledan, a new community being built as an extension to Newquay, will be the site of the aforementioned 24 homes dedicated to supporting people experiencing homelessness. The build will use low-carbon materials developed by one of his Earthshot Prize finalists.
On family holidays to the Isles of Scilly, where he, Catherine, the Princess of Wales, Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis stay on Tresco, William got into the habit of quizzing residents about what would improve their lives. As a result, a new health and social care facility includes a modern maternity suite, there will be designated key-worker housing to encourage teachers and doctors to stay, and a strategy to make tourism more sustainable. Elsewhere, there are hopes of reviving Cornish high streets and transforming Kennington communities.
On the rural side, the Duchy will create 50 hectares (or 70 football pitches’ worth) of new woodland per year, restore damaged peatland as part of a major “Dartmoor vision” project, and take tenants on the “journey” to net zero by 2032. It has already returned water voles to the rivers in Cornwall.
“I see the Duchy as an extension of the work we do with the Royal Foundation,” says William. While the Foundation, the main charitable vehicle of the Prince and Princess of Wales, has worked traditionally in urban areas, on topics including homelessness, mental health and child development, the Duchy can extend it to the countryside.
“I see it as a branch of my philanthropy,” William says. “There’s so much good we can do in the rural world. I see it [the Duchy] as another arm to the work that I want to do, which is being a positive force for good.” He adds, “I think the Duchy have got way more levels and gears they can go through to be able to be a bigger force in the community.”
The Prince and his staff tend to use the same language when asked about his personal ambitions: impact, vision, scale. “He’s a man on a mission,” confirms Will Bax. “He’s asking us to change and evolve in a way to deliver positive impact at scale and at pace.”
While the Duchy has rural communities and environmental stewardship “in its DNA”, Bax says, the new era will see some “subtle differences” including a focus on people, creating a “really strong safety net for the vulnerable in society”, and “doubling down on the environmental agenda”.
To stewardship – “that idea of leaving something better than you found it” – they hope to add leader-ship: “Not being a benign presence but being a presence that is willing to lead on issues that we care about.” The Duchy will also shout more about its achievements.
“The Duchy has perhaps been a slightly discreet organisation that hasn’t really put its head above the parapet very much, that hasn’t spoken very publicly about what’s important to us and what we’re here to achieve,” says Bax. “And we’re seeking to remove any ambiguity and ensure people understand that our objective is to deliver positive impact for people, for places and the planet.”
While Prince William cannot enter the political arena, with Bax confirming there is a “fine line between politics and policy”, the Duchy is nevertheless “seeking to find our voice where we think we can represent sensible, balanced views on issues that affect our communities”.
“The Duchy in the past I think has been cautious in that space,” Bax continues. “We’ll continue to be cautious but we won’t continue to be voiceless.”
Down to business
At its Bath office, William says with approval that the Duchy serves as a “glue” to bring charities, local authorities and government departments together, to make things happen.
There are a few small tasks to do: signing the certificate for the Prince of Wales Award at the upcoming Devon County Show, and taking a new team photo. “Let’s whizz round and say hello,” he decides, nipping into each of the offices to catch up with the staff he already knows and welcome the new starters.
In each one, he asks for feedback – a quick-fire fact-finding mission from the people who get out and about directly with local farmers.
He tells them it is “crucial” they feel they can always ask him questions too. “In kind of modernising and reforming a bit, there’s always going to be some changes,” he says, in relation to an upcoming office move. “We need to make sure it’s gentle and considerate.”
Of an upcoming Dartmoor meeting, which he will attend, he asks Morris to “please give [everyone] proper authority to say what’s really going on. Not being polite because I’m in the room.”
A cork board in the staff room has the orders of service for several recent Duchy tenant funerals; testament to the local relationships that see land stewards greet farmers with a hug as often as a handshake.
“It’s a family feeling,” says Sarah Bird, a land steward who has worked at the Duchy for 18 years. “The tenants care as much about us as we do about them.”
That mantra is at the centre of William’s approach. “The core part of the Duchy works on its people... what it stands for,” he explains. “The key point of the Duchy for me is about social impact. People, places and planet, those are the key things we’re working on.”
Pies and pints
The Prince of Wales has inherited an estate with a solid track record of helping its farmers in practical ways. In-house experts assist them with paperwork, navigating the ever-changing legislation and reduced funding in the sector. The Duchy puts on free masterclasses from agricultural experts, and supports farms to branch out (“diversify”) into new ways to remain viable – shepherd’s huts for tourists to stay in, say.
“It’s friendly faces coming up the driveway from the Duchy,” says Heather Webb, the head of future farming.
But Prince William is painfully aware, having spent years talking about mental health and hearing some hard truths from farmers, of how isolating, worrying and pressured the lifestyle can be. “In the past, the farmers have been supported in farming ways, but where’s the holistic approach to their life?” he says now. “That’s what we’re trying to patch in. It’s not just, ‘How are your sheep, how is your cattle going?’ It’s not just that. It’s also, ‘How do we look after you as a community?’”
Tenants rhapsodise over “pie and pint” evenings, regular walks and small parties to get neighbours talking.
William recently became patron of the charity We Are Farming Minds, co-founded by Sam Stables, a 45-year-old farmer who once came close to ending his own life and, with his wife, has applied himself to saving others from a similar rock bottom. It now runs a 24/7 support line, and offers funding for counselling, mental health training, social meet-ups and a minibus to get people there.
The Prince “wanted to make sure that his tenants had the support through a service. He’s a family man and loves the country. They [the Duchy] are incredibly caring, they’ve been incredibly kind to us as a family.”
Stuart Rogers, a fifth-generation farmer whose family became Duchy tenants in 2000, called the focus on well-being “pretty unique, it ’s pretty progressive”.
“Farming has been hit by a lot of different things recently. Funding cuts, regulations... There’s a lot of pressure and lone working. Farmers, we carry a lot of weight. It’s funny how it takes the Duchy to get together and meet up.”
Prince William has appointed a new “family farming ambassador”, Sue Padfield, to be a roving “listening ear”.
“An excuse to drag people off the farm and have a pie and a pint together with no agenda,” as Heather Webb puts it. “As a large landowner, we have convening power.”
The Duchy is hosting more events for young farmers, with advice on facilitating tricky questions about succession and taking over the family firm, a topic with which the Prince is presumably familiar.
It is surprising, even to a royal editor, to learn how much William manages to do without the wider world noticing. He films and sends regular video messages for Duchy-related events – a river conservation meeting this month, a charity boxing night. When a tenant suggested he might be interested in the agricultural festival Groundswell, he duly popped up there.
Shortly after Queen Elizabeth II’s death, the King hosted a previously unreported private gathering at St James’s Palace for tenants, appearing tearful as he told them how some of his happiest times had been sitting at their kitchen tables. Prince William, by his side, paid tribute to his father and promised guests he was excited about his future with them.
The Dispatches controversy
It has not always been smooth sailing. At the end of last year, after this day out was first agreed, the Duchy of Cornwall and the Duchy of Lancaster (now the King’s estate) were made the focus of a Channel 4 Dispatches documentary: The King, The Prince & Their Secret Millions.
The joint investigation with The Sunday Times detailed how the Duchies, as landlords, were making “millions of pounds a year by charging the Army, the Navy, the NHS, the prison service and state schools to use their land, rivers and seashores”.
At the time, it was met with some incredulity and criticism from the public, who were largely unaware of the estates at all. Those who defended them pointed out that they were acting like any other landowner in Britain.
Now, there is some defensiveness about it from tenants. “Load of twaddle,” snorts one farmer I ask about it. The suggestion that the Duke or the Duchy don’t care about tenants is “really frustrating, it couldn’t be further from the truth”, says Stuart Rogers. “It’s one of the best things that could have happened to us. Would we still be dairy farming if we hadn’t been bought by the Duchy? Probably not. There’s no better landlord.”
Within the Duchy of Cornwall team, though, there is a willingness to confront it head on. Bax points out some technicalities: the financial status of the Duchy is enshrined in an Act of Parliament; it is obliged to let property at a full and fair annual rent; there are legal safeguards including that the Duke is not about to sell off the capital assets.
That said, there has been some reflection. “The Duchy needs to use that moment as an opportunity to step back and reflect on how we communicate,” says Bax. “I don’t think we’ve communicated our mission and particularly all the brilliant work we do very well, to be honest. And as a result I think we are largely misunderstood – or have been by the public at large – in terms of why we exist and our purpose.
“And as a result there’s this extraordinary disconnect between the Dispatches view of the world and the view of the world of people who do work with the Duchy, who almost uniformly see us as a force for good in the world.”
He concludes, “What do we learn from it? The biggest thing we learn is to talk about the brilliant work we do.”
A plan for the future
Lunch, on Duchy days, is taken on the go – a selection of neat sandwiches and wraps for the team, with a chocolate brownie for the road. As we walk along the quiet winding road through the picturesque Newton St Loe – in the middle of the road, because there is no traffic – Matthew Morris’s wife and mother-in-law pop out of a cottage to say hello to William, who stops to pass the time of day.
The final visit is to Grow for Life, a therapeutic gardening charity that aims to help anyone with low confidence, anxiety, depression or feelings of isolation by getting their hands dirty and developing their green fingers.
Among the catmint, alliums, phacelia and forget-me-nots, as bees buzz around them, volunteers are beavering away and doing a good job of pretending they aren’t sneaking a glance at their royal visitor. “Hard at work!” William calls over, keen – with four decades of royal visits under his belt – not to miss anyone out. “I hope you get a cup of tea too.”
The agenda includes digging a bed for runner beans, planting out sweet peas and admiring the first nectarines of the year. Eleanor Carr, horticultural therapy lead, describes how the site was just brambles not long ago, and tells the Prince about the charity’s sessions bringing secondary school boys in to learn by doing. “Do you see a change in them, a difference?” William wants to know. “Is it confidence and calmness?”
The project’s work, he says, is “very professional”: “Chelsea Flower Show, here we come!”
In the orchard, where he is given a bottle of apple juice to take home, one of the gardeners shows the Prince a picture his young daughter has drawn of him on a postcard. “She’s given me more hair, so I love her for that,” says William. He tends to make at least one self-deprecating joke about his hairline with every public appearance.
As he leaves, he asks Duchy staff whether he can arrange to donate damson trees to add to the orchard. By coincidence, volunteers had been talking about getting some just that morning.
There are thank yous and handshakes all round, a wave out of the Land Rover Defender window, and the Duchy day is over.
The Prince will take the train home with his private secretary and small security detail, ready to catch up with Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis after school.
George will one day inherit the Duchy, with his father acting as guardian if he is under 18, and will have ideas of his own.
For now, the Prince’s message is quite simple really. “I’m trying to make sure I’m prioritising stuff that’s going to make people’s lives, living in those areas, better,” he says. “This is what we’re going to do to make people’s lives in Cornwall better.
“That, I feel as Duke of Cornwall, is something I should be doing. It’s about responsibility, it’s about leadership, and doing what’s right on the social issues of our time.”