The 2016 wedding of Lady Catherine to the Brudenell/Bruce family was a touching moment in a difficult few decades.
Guests at the charming woodland wedding held in the family’s own Savernake Forest recall that there was barely a dry eye among them when the bride, better known to the world as singer-songwriter Bo Bruce, emerged along an aisle of trees, wearing the vintage lace gown worn by her beloved late mother at her own wedding in 1980.
The thing that moved everyone was Bo, The Voice’s star, walking alongside her brother Tom Savernake through Wiltshire Forest, 4,500 acres, to find her groom.
Given the pair’s estrangement from their 68-year-old father, the Earl of Cardigan, it was a touching moment of sibling unity but, alas, one which was to be painfully short-lived.
Five years on, the pair are now at war over their mother’s will; not to mention the future of the £2 million home, Leigh Hill House, which she left to them both when she died aged 63 of pancreatic cancer in 2012.
The ugly spat spilled out into the open last month as the pair’s legal battle over their inheritance was played out in the High Court in London.
Bo walks with Tom (Viscount Savernake), her elder brother, and he led her through Wiltshire Forest, 4,500 acres, where they used to play as children, in order for her to meet her handsome husband.
‘It’s a sad state of affairs,’ a family friend told the Mail this week. ‘Rosamond doted on her two children and it would have broken her heart to see them rowing like this.
They should all be equally benefited from her wealth, and she made this clear in her will. I don’t think she could have imagined that there would have been these kind of arguments. It’s just terrible that it’s come to this.’
At the heart of this sorry saga is the question of whether or not to sell six-bedroom Leigh Hill House, which was handed to the siblings’ mother, Rosamond, Countess of Cardigan, as part of her 2009 divorce settlement from Lord Cardigan.
Bo, 36, who is living with her husband, Henry — a musician and producer who performs with the group Zero 7 — and their two young children near Glastonbury in Somerset, wants the house sold so that she can receive her half-share in the property.
Viscount Savernake who lives alone in the home claims they should stop the sale until they resolve a dispute regarding money that was loaned his sister.
The 39-year-old heir to the Savernake estate says that Bo owes £457,536.50. His sister claims the amount she borrowed is ‘significantly less’ (according to the family friend, around an eighth of that sum) and that she will settle the amount from the proceeds of the house sale.
According to The Mail, the dispute between siblings became more complicated when Viscount Savernake claimed that his sister must pay back the thousands her father spent on her education and other medical costs.
According to the family friend: ‘The fees were paid by her father out of a 1987 trust fund to which Tom is now a beneficiary.’
Bo, 36 years old, is looking to sell her house so she can get her half-share of the property. She lives with Henry, her husband and two children in Somerset near Glastonbury.
There was an old-fashioned legal merry-go round, one that has led to siblings arguing in recent times.
A family friend said that the dire circumstances have left both sister and brother isolated from their blood relatives. Both of them have been estranged from their father since their parents’ divorce.
‘After their mother’s death, they only really had each other left,’ says the family friend. ‘Now they’ve lost that as well.’
The siblings’ father has also spoken to the Mail of their falling-out, saying: ‘I am naturally absolutely appalled at the prospect of my two children squaring up to each other in an eye-wateringly expensive High Court case. My late wife would be viewing this with utter disbelief.’
This is how this terrible situation happened. Because when their mother died in July 2012, says the family friend, the pair grieved together at the 19th-century ivy-clad home where the three of them had lived since 2009 following their parents’ divorce.
But the Countess of Cardigan’s death came just months after Bo Bruce had become an overnight star as runner-up in The Voice.
Her mother had made her two children co-executors in her will. Bo, however, was just signed to Mercury Records. She also committed herself to a long recording schedule in London so she could complete her album.
She agreed to step aside as co-executor and allow her brother to administer their mother’s estate.
Pictured are the Earl and Countess Cardigan (centre), with Thomas, Viscount Savernake, and Miss Bruce. Previously, Lady Catherine Brudenell Bruce was their daughter.
According to the family friend: ‘She was probably a bit naive doing that but the will was straightforward and she and Tom had always got on and she thought it would all be sorted out smoothly. Sadly, that wasn’t to be the case.’
To complicate matters further, the transfer of Leigh Hill House to their mother as part of her divorce settlement was made subject to a right of pre-emption in the event of a future sale, giving the house’s former owner, the Savernake Estate, first refusal on any sale.
The siblings initially agreed to not sell the house and for Viscount Savernake to remain there. He said later he would buy out his sister’s half-share in the property — minus the debt she owes him. They are currently in court because they cannot agree on the exact amount.
‘Bo has said several times that she is more than happy to pay back what she owes him but she doesn’t recognise at all the amount he says she must now pay,’ says the family friend.
A highly regrettable situation, then, and one which many will find hard to fathom given the warring pair’s hugely privileged upbringing.
Their father, 31st Hereditary Warden of Savernake Forest is their grandfather. This forest, which is only in England privately owned, was established in honor of Richard Estormit, who received the title in 1083 for his services at the Battle of Hastings. Rosamond Winkley was their mother.
Tom and Bo received their private educations at Cothill House, Radley College in Oxfordshire, Tom at Port Regis prep in Dorset and Marlborough College Wiltshire. Bo was two years younger than Pippa and the Duchess.
Florence Brudenell Bruce, Florence’s cousin, is an actress/lingerie model and was previously a friend of Prince Harry.
Pictured: Leigh Hill House, the £2m home on the Savernake Estate. Rosamond Winkley left her estate equally to her two children. This was the result of her divorce from her husband.
But in the past, Bo has dismissed the idea that she grew up with a silver spoon in her mouth or that, if she did, it was ‘rusty’.
Her emotional turmoil as a child led her to drug abuse, which almost caused her death from an overdose.
Growing up on the Savernake estate, which has been in the hands of trustees since 1951, she and Tom didn’t live in the vast Grade I-listed Palladian Tottenham House but spent their early childhood in a more ramshackle property on the edge of the forest with no hot water or central heating, later moving to Leigh Hill House with their mother.
During her time on The Voice, Bo said: ‘I don’t live in Downton Abbey. This is the 21st-century. I work in a pub and struggle to pay my electricity bills just like everyone else.’
After the Countess of Cardigan’s death in 2012, Viscount Savernake remained living in Leigh Hill House and Bo, who was pursuing her music career in London, used to visit.
‘That was probably when Tom and Bo were at their closest,’ says the family friend. But by 2015 she decided it was time to settle their mother’s affairs once and for all.
‘I think she felt that it was time for them to separate everything and get on with their lives,’ says the family friend.
‘At the time she was still sleeping on friends’ sofas in London and it was clearly time for her to get a place of her own, given that her mother had left her half of her wealth.
Tom was keen to keep the house, and offered to lend him some money for her to rent an apartment. He was talking a lot about buying the house back into the estate.’
Pictured is their father, Lord Cardigan
Lord Cardigan told the Mail this week: ‘My son is the sole executor of my late wife’s will and its absolutely key provision, rightly or wrongly, was that her house be shared equally between them.
‘My daughter Catherine is married and lives down in Somerset, so naturally a half-share in a Wiltshire house is of no great use to her, and so of course, she wants her share in cash.
‘And my son is refusing to let her have that because of a number of sums of money he says she owes him, some claims stretching back to the last century.’
In April this year, Bo issued a claim in the High Court for her brother to be removed as executor of their mother’s estate and replaced with three of her friends.
Her lawyers stated at the time: ‘There is and has been delay in the administration of the estate, the vast majority of which remains unadministered.
‘The delay is due to the defendant’s having promoted and allowed his personal interests to prevail over and in conflict with the interest of the estate as a whole.
‘The future administration of the estate is unlikely to be carried out in any proper or timely manner unless the defendant is removed and replaced by a competent neutral executor.’
The High Court documents show that Viscount Savernake wants to stay in the house, and not sell it.
Since 2015, he has been paying his sister £20,000 a year in rent for occupying her share of the house.
The documents also reveal that the initial amount being claimed by Viscount Savernake was in excess of £600,000; according to the family friend, that sum originally included the cost of Bo’s school fees and private medical care stretching back into her childhood, which was paid out of a 1987 trust now controlled by Viscount Savernake, as Lord Cardigan’s first-born son.
Although he may have dropped his claim for school fees, he continues to file a claim for medical costs.
In a statement issued via his lawyers, Viscount Savernake said that he ‘very much regrets that his sister has chosen to issue proceedings against him in what is a private family matter over their mother’s estate and in relation to repayment of monies owed to him from his sister.
‘He will not therefore be adding any further comment particularly as the proceedings are ongoing.’ Ms Bruce also declined to comment on the case.
Lord Cardigan said that their father hoped the couple would solve the problem through mediation. He added: ‘Even now, I hope that Thomas sees sense.’
The latest drama in a long list of financial, legal and domestic problems that has plagued this family is only the most recent. Lord Cardigan is the son of the 8th Marquess, of Ailesbury. He has had a series of battles against the trustees over his estate.
He launched a High Court lawsuit against them in 2012 to stop the sale of dozens of portraits from his ancestors.
The judge found in favour of the trustees who told the court that the estate was in ‘severe financial difficulties’.
The following year, he revealed he was claiming Jobseeker’s Allowance, living in an unheated house and travelling to Marlborough Leisure Centre to use the showers and blamed the estate trustees for cutting off his income.
In 2012, when she was appearing on The Voice, Bo was granted a non-molestation order against her father after he threatened to speak to a newspaper about her, telling her: ‘Should I invent some tasty dirt about you?’
Eton-educated Lord Cardigan said this week that their relationship has improved and that they have been in ‘frequent touch’ since Bo began researching the family history.
He lives today in Savernake Lodge, Wiltshire, with Joanne, his American second wife and their 7-year-old girl Lady Sophie.
With all the family acrimony and Bo having their first fight in 2015 Viscount Savernake, there is no wonder that he offered to help his sister walk down the aisle.
According to the family friend: ‘Bo asked him to do it. She’d lost her mother and, given their estrangement from her father and the fact that he wasn’t going to be at the wedding, she really wanted her older brother there at her side. But, sadly, it was a short-lived rapprochement.’
Both the sister and brother have agreed to mediator to try to resolve their differences. Their lawyers will be returning to court in the spring if they are unable to resolve their differences.
But those who watched the brother and sister arm in arm at Bo’s wedding five years ago, hope that the temporary truce and brief reconciliation that day offer a glimmer of hope for the future and a sign that, if they put their minds to it, there is still a way back from the brink.