Secret service swarms the Cotswolds for £5m wedding of Eve Jobs

Times

3 days ago

Americans appear to love the Cotswolds for its quaint country charm, historic honey-coloured stone villages and providing a bucolic window into a largely lost past.However, the wedding of the Apple heiress Eve Jobs to a British Olympic equestrian in the Oxfordshire countryside have lead to her billionaire mother's party planners and high-profile guests turning some of the most exclusive locations in the protected landscape into a land of steel fences, Secret Service SUVs and strict security protocols.
Jobs, 27, the youngest daughter of the late Steve Jobs, is marrying Harry Charles, 26, a showjumping gold medallist at Paris 2024, on Saturday in the small medieval parish church of St Michael and All Angels, on the Great Tew estate.
Afterwards they will be joined by hundreds of guests for a lavish reception at the luxury Estelle Manor country hotel and private members club, which they have taken over for the week.
The usually tranquil country roads around this celebrity-soaked corner of Oxfordshire, where the Beckhams, Simon Cowell and Ellen DeGeneres have their country homes, have been abuzz with delivery vans, lorries, construction workers and security guards.Cowell whizzed past the grade I listed church on his electric bike on Thursday afternoon and gave a peace sign when The Times asked if he was attending the wedding.
Former military personnel set up hazel hurdle screens outside the church gates, to block views down the churchyard footpath, while designers denied entry to the mother of a dead child on Thursday who hoped to visit a memorial bench to her son in the place of worship.
A staff member at Estelle Manor said all of the hotel's 107 rooms had been taken over by guests, while others were staying at Soho Farmhouse, the private members club where Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, held her hen party in 2018.
The celebrations are reported to be costing about £5 million, including a supposed £1 million fee for a performance from Elton John. Guests include the former vice-president Kamala Harris.
The bride's mother, Laurene Powell Jobs, and Harris have been friends for more than 20 years, with the billionaire philanthropist backing her failed run for the US presidency last year.
Harris spent Wednesday night in The Bull pub in Charlbury as part of a private party which included Bruce Springsteen's daughter, Jessica, locals said. The area was swarming with blacked-out SUVs and men in black suits who identified themselves as US secret service.
Glen Russell, 48, from Charlbury, who was outside the 15th-century pub, said: 'Some of the guest list from the wedding had booked out a private room at the back. I saw a lot of security, and they were quite open [that] they were American secret service.
'They were in the pub the day before, checking the place out, they put security in place and brought in new furniture.'
Russell said the pub's car park was 'full of secret service' and he saw a traffic warden arguing with one of the secret service, telling them: 'You need to move your vehicles.''They were being very polite but said they had to stay,' Russell said. 'I suppose they can afford to pay the parking tickets.'
Tony Vetters, who lives in Charlbury, saw six SUVs and 'all the men in black suits, at least three per vehicle'. Staff at the pub, which was named pub of the year at the National Pub and Bar Awards last month, said they had been sworn to secrecy and declined to comment.
Locals said that DeGeneres, the US comedian, went to the pub with Robbie Williams a fortnight ago, and it has become a regular haunt for Lionel Messi, the Argentinian footballer, when he's in the UK, as well as Gary Lineker.
On Friday, there were still three SUVs with blacked-out windows parked in the centre of Charlbury.Another member of the public blocked from entering the St Michael and All Angels church, which can only seat about 100 people, was Libi Sabolova, 46, a former nanny for the Great Tew estate, on a trip back to the Cotswolds from her home in Slovakia.She was told by security that it was closed for a private function until Sunday. Sabolova said she thought the Cotswolds was gaining in popularity with international visitors because it offered a slower pace of life.
'It's fairytale surroundings and very romantic,' she said. 'It's just beautiful. I found out about it after some friends travelled all around Britain and said this was the best, most beautiful and picturesque in the whole of the country.'
The groom is the son of Peter Charles, whose team won Britain's first team showjumping Olympic gold medal for 60 years at the London 2012 games. Jobs, a model, is also an accomplished equestrian, having competed in her youth in the Hamptons Classic.
Springsteen is expected to attend alongside Jennifer Gates, daughter of Bill Gates and another tech scion turned equestrian, who is married to the Egyptian-American showjumper Nayel Nassar.
Steve Jobs died in 2011 from pancreatic cancer and according to his official biographer, Walter Isaacson, described the youngest of his four children, as a 'strong-willed, funny firecracker'.
The celebrations are being planned by Stanlee Gatti, who organised the wedding of Gavin Newsom, the democrat governor of California and former mayor of San Francisco. His client list includes George Lucas and Elton.
A close family friend of the Mason family, who own the 3,000-acre estate in which Estelle Manor sits, said the week-long takeover was the biggest party held there in living memory.
'If they have the money, good luck to them and enjoy it,' they said. 'It's such a big estate, no one will get close to see them. The Cotswolds seem to have become quite a big thing now for the Americans. You see them walking on the estate and you can tell they are just a different kind of people.'