3 days ago
How I came to spend a day on the farm with Prince William
Nearly six years ago, I spent a day out in the Duchy of Cornwall with Prince William.
Then, he was Duke of Cambridge and in the role of the apprentice: his father was the 24th Duke of Cornwall while Queen Elizabeth II was still alive, and William was learning the ropes before one day taking it over.
Regularly since, I have thought back to that day out in Somerset, and wondered how the new 25th Dukedom was going. So, last summer I asked Kensington Palace if I could make a return visit to see progress in action, and was surprised to learn they would be open to it. As with all things royal, it has taken some time to align diaries.
Before I went, I reminded myself of William the apprentice. He had been endearingly modest about his experience, calling himself a country boy at heart who would take the best of the approaches of his father, the then-Prince Charles, and grandfather, Prince Philip, when it came to farming and rural life, to find his own way. 'I want to learn,' was the mantra back then. 'I'll try my best.'
Now, of course, everything has changed. Prince William is now the 25th Duke, with the Duchy of Cornwall estate funding his household and taking up a largely unseen but important part of his day-to-day working life.
On September 8 2022, when his father became King, William found himself head of a 128,494-acre estate, with net assets of £1.1 billion and a surplus of £23.6 million at his disposal to shape the Duchy in line with his own vision. The Duchy remains poorly understood by the public, and difficult to explain, with its headline figures about money belying the amount of work constantly ticking over on the ground.
My day out with Prince William in early May of this year, a return to Newton St Loe in Somerset, was illuminating – once, that is, the Prince's much-delayed train finally arrived and he'd had a restorative sip of Duchy English sparkling wine.
Instead of a prince following in the footsteps of his father, William was happily installed in the role of Duchy leader, eager to set out the changes he has already made and his vision to do more. While before there was watching and learning, now there is a prince whose watchwords are 'modernising', 'reforming', placing 'people' at the centre of his Duchy's work.
The seeds of his early ideas are starting to come to fruition. In December 2021, we ran a front page story that he wanted to use Duchy land to house the homeless. In February 2024, he confirmed he would, with an innovative pilot scheme in the Newquay suburb of Nansledan.
The Prince sees the Duchy, he says, as a new opportunity to extend his existing philanthropy work into its mostly rural locations.
While his vision is sometimes difficult to translate via press release, and the estate is too vast to capture in an ordinary royal engagement, hearing directly from William is the most convincing sell imaginable. He is, as those around him say, a man on a mission.
Farmers wax lyrical about the support they've received from the Duchy over the years, and senior members of staff seem – in many hours of interviews, only a fraction of which could fit into the article – fired up by William's zeal.
He is passionate about 'turning the tanker', as he put it; relentlessly asking tenants what they needed from him and figuring out how quickly to make it happen.
It was nice, too, to see him relaxed – on duty but not full public duty, joking with his team and chatting to anyone he passed. There has been a lot on his shoulders recently, with major illness in the family, and the Duchy is as pleasant a place as any to clear one's head.
'I've got the interest and the passion,' he said in 2019. 'The countryside is deep in my heart.'
Now, in 2025, he is finally getting the time and space to prove it.
