Hugh van Cutsem, countryman, 1941-2013

Between the Low Countries and the flatlands of East Anglia, links were forged over several centuries as merchants plied their trade across the North Sea. It did not take long before a number from each community had settled on the other side, sharing their skills on how best to keep the tide at bay.

They were connections given further renewal when in 1971 Hugh van Cutsem married Emilie Quarles van Ufford; he a Norfolk descendant of both Flemish and Scottish aristocracy, she the Dutch-born daughter of nobility whose name bore those of villages in both Norfolk and Suffolk.

Van Cutsem, who has died aged 72, soon inherited a 4,400 acre farm near the royal family’s Sandringham residence from his racehorse trainer father Bernard and trod a path between conservationist and old-style countryman. Celebrated as a prime saviour of the endangered stone curlew, he was also ranked among Britain’s handiest guns when it came to bringing birds down from the sky.

Calling him “one of the finest shots of his generation”, Alwyne Compton Farquharson, laird of Invercauld and 94-year-old twin of van Cutsem’s late mother, describes his nephew as having been a “very sporting person in every way”.

One regular shooting companion and longtime friend was the Prince of Wales. Bernard had trained thoroughbreds for the Queen and so Hugh came to know Charles – seven years his junior – from an early age.

Van Cutsem’s four sons, who survive him along with Emilie, in turn became intimates of the young princes William and Harry. Edward, the eldest, is a godson to the heir to the throne and had been a pageboy at Charles’s wedding to Diana Spencer. Grace, daughter of his namesake third son Hugh (the other offspring being Nicholas and William), was flower girl when, 30 years on, the new Duke of Cambridge married Kate Middleton.

But the two sets of royal nuptials bookended a long rift between the families that at one point rivalled the Waleses’ own ructions in its bitterness and very public nature.

It began while van Cutsem was leasing a family home from the Queen on the Sandringham estate; a neo-Palladian country seat was then being built to his specifications on his own land at nearby Hilborough. In the period when Diana was dealing with her difficulties and then following the princess’s death, Emilie had taken on a role akin to surrogate mother to Wills and Harry.

Although devout Roman Catholics, the Norfolk couple also gave houseroom to Camilla Parker Bowles as she and Charles discussed a future together. It was the turn of the millennium and the divorcee Camilla had not yet been accorded an official role in public life.

But when her son Tom, of a similar age to his four boys, was exposed as having used cocaine, a froideur developed in which it soon became clear that Charles was taking the side of the future Duchess of Cornwall against that of his old friend. At a time of general concern for the wellbeing of the bereaved princes, finger-pointing as to who might be a bad influence became mutual. Van Cutsem felt compelled to protest via his solicitors at what he saw as an unjust briefing against his and Emilie’s offspring by the prince’s private office.

Once extracts made their way into the Mail on Sunday from a letter on his behalf that the newspaper said bore the name of David D Lewis & Co, a London law firm, there began nearly a decade of supposedly tit-for-tat snubs. These involved guest lists or seating plans for various weddings and who each time would accept or decline. Reconciliation came slowly.

Hugh Bernard Edward van Cutsem was born on July 21 1941 and schooled at Sunningdale and Ampleforth. Though a member of the Jockey Club like his father, he was more interested in breeding rather than the training side.

His landholdings included a grouse moor in the Yorkshire dales. Their combined size meant he could grow crops on a commercial scale and rear livestock such as Swaledale sheep, in addition to providing an environment where avian species would flourish – however accurate the aim of those who attended his frequent shoots.

In a 2005 letter he told Financial Times readers that his estate drew a “huge array of wild bird life of all types, far greater than in unmanaged reserves”, adding: “Through good keepering I can demonstrate very clearly that the tumbling numbers of many farmland species do not plummet here at Hilborough. Indeed the reverse occurs.”

Before the onset of a long illness of which he preferred not to speak, van Cutsem had served on the council of the National Trust and pursued a range of non-farming business interests. He also acted on a number of occasions as Charles’s representative at official functions. Yet rather than being a creature of the court or the City, he was always primarily a man of the land.