So how DID the party-loving daughter of a curtain maker bag a £9bn bachelor aristocrat? Story of the new Duke of Westminster's love across the social divide, including intimate boat rides, a very painful split and a romance they hid for 10 years 

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Harriet Tomlinson's boyfriend Hugh Grosvenor collects her from her family's semi-detached house in Chester, takes the helm of a boat and takes her to his mansion Eaton Hall

At the foot of Harriet Tomlinson’s garden in Chester lies the River Dee, and moored there is a small motor launch owned by her family.

On fine days, Harriet’s boyfriend, Hugh Grosvenor, collects her from her family’s semi-detached Victorian property, takes the helm of the boat and heads along the river, meandering east out of the city, then south, down to his place. 

You can’t miss Hugh’s house: Eaton Hall is a mansion built in the style of a French chateau and set in magnificent parkland.

Beyond that there is an estate comprising more than 10,000 acres including three villages — yes, villages — of 435 houses and 15 farms. 

Hugh assumed the title of Duke of Westminster following the death of his father, Gerald Grosvenor, the sixth Duke, last August, aged 64. 

With the title came a fortune of more than £9 billion.

He has vast country estates all over the country — Hugh, 26, owns more land in Britain than the Queen.

Perhaps this is one of the reasons for the fevered speculation in aristocratic circles as to whom the handsome young Duke may choose to become his wife — and the next Duchess of Westminster.

When it emerged last weekend that he was going out with Harriet, who works for a recruitment firm, it was assumed by many that this was a new romance.

But as we reveal here, it turns out that the Duke has been taken for quite some time.

A close friend of the family tells the Mail that Hugh and Harriet, who is also 26, have been dating on and off for nearly ten years.

Their romance dates back to their schooldays together at the exclusive £30,000-a-year Ellesmere College in Shropshire.

Though the couple split up a while ago, they got back together following the death of Hugh’s father.

A close friend of the family tells the Mail that Hugh and Harriet, who is also 26, have been dating on and off for nearly ten years. Their romance dates back to their days at the exclusive Ellesmere College in Shropshire

At the outset, the couple took the decision to keep their relationship private and low key.

Indeed, they successfully managed to keep it a secret from the wider world until last week.

Only close friends and family have been aware of their romantic meanderings on the little boat from Harriet’s house to Eaton Hall.

The pair split up before the Duke's father died and got back together after his death. Pictured Harriet Tomlinson (left)

Their trips into Liverpool to visit nightclubs incognito — where they would always sign in using Harriet’s name — have also been kept under the radar.

‘They made a point of keeping their relationship private,’ says the friend. ‘I’m sure Harriet has visited him there [Eaton Hall] many times and would have met his mum, Natalia, though she has never spoken about it. She must also have met Gerald before he died.’

Some time before Gerald Grosvenor died, Harriet and Hugh broke up. ‘Harriet announced to friends they were splitting up and she seemed really upset,’ says the friend.

‘It was obviously hurting.

But when the Duke died, they got back together. It seems that Harriet supported Hugh through his grief and was a real comfort.

‘Harriet is a down-to-earth girl who drinks beer, smokes and has, in the past, enjoyed hanging out with a crowd called the Port Talbot boys.’

Indeed, as our exclusive new pictures show, Harriet is a bit of a party girl.

One shows her at a nightclub with a group of friends, in another, she is wearing a blue and yellow cheerleaders’ outfit, cigarette in hand.

‘Harriet is a vivacious girl,’ says the friend. ‘She’s like her mother, who is really bubbly. She is a really nice girl, very respectful of others and always dresses smartly.’

‘Harriet is a vivacious girl,’ says the friend. ‘She’s like her mother, who is really bubbly. She is a really nice girl, very respectful of others and always dresses smartly'

Harriet’s father used to run a curtain factory and her mother used to work at Boots in Widnes.

And it seems, much like Prince William, who is said to relish the normal family life of the Middletons, Hugh is equally at home in the Tomlinsons’ house.

‘Hugh regularly visits the family at their home in Chester,’ says the friend. ‘He drives there in a small silver car, not at all grand.’

Despite his stupendous wealth, Hugh seems just as grounded as Harriet and isn’t remotely interested in money.

‘He is down to earth. He serves tea to their gardener when he visits. When he meets people when they are out together, he will shake their hand and say: “Hello, I’m Hugh.” ’

Hugh managed to keep his family connections a secret from many of his friends right up to the age of 21, when his parents insisted on throwing a party for him at Eaton Hall

He is, it would seem, a rather reluctant Duke.

Hugh managed to keep his family connections a secret from many of his friends right up to the age of 21, when his parents insisted on throwing a party for him at Eaton Hall and he was forced to reveal his true identity.

Up until then, if you asked Hugh, then the Earl of Grosvenor, where he lived, you would likely be met with a rather vague response. He would keep it simple: he had a place outside Chester.

As well as not going into the details about the chateau and the villages and land, he would neglect to mention his family’s 96,000-acre Reay Forest Estate in Scotland and their 22,000-acre Abbeystead Estate in Lancashire.

You would not be told, either, of the 37,000-acre La Garganta estate in Cordoba, Spain — one of the most exclusive hunting estates in western Europe, where Princes William and Harry have enjoyed Hugh’s hospitality.

His 21st birthday, then, five years ago, was quite an eye-opener for many of his friends, who were flabbergasted by the scale of Hugh’s family home

He was similarly reticent about the family plot down in London — a giant slice of prime Mayfair and Belgravia, including the prestigious Eaton Square.

As for the myriad commercial property interests spanning 60 countries — including the U.S., Canada, China and Sweden — well, you wouldn’t hear about any of those from Hugh.

His 21st birthday, then, five years ago, was quite an eye-opener for many of his friends, who were flabbergasted by the scale of Hugh’s family home.

Prince Harry was among the 800 guests at the ‘black tie and neon’ party, which reportedly cost an estimated £5 million.

Michael McIntyre told the jokes and the hip-hop duo Rizzle Kicks provided the music.

In an interview last year after the death of the sixth Duke, Jordan Stephens, one half of the music duo, spoke of the astonishment of many of Hugh’s guests when they discovered that their friend’s family was wealthy to the most extraordinary degree.

‘Amid all this money and heritage, he was so not like that,’ said Jordan. ‘A lot of people at the party that I talked to would say: “I used to just sit next to him in science and I had no idea.”

‘Loads of people didn’t know [about his wealth] — people from his university did not know.

‘The party was amazing. It was like the best club I have ever been to. He is just a really nice man, so I hope he does the right thing with the money.’

Hugh Grosvenor grew up at Eaton Hall with his father and mother, Natalia, 57, the Duchess of Westminster, and three sisters.

Lady Tamara, 37, is married to Edward van Cutsem, a close friend of Prince William; Lady Edwina, 35, is a trustee of The Clink Charity, which aims to transform the lives of offenders in prison, and is married to TV presenter Dan Snow; and Lady Viola, 24, works for St Vincent’s Family Project in Westminster and the anti-bullying charity Kidscape.

After leaving school, where Hugh and Harriet were part of the same group of friends, Harriet took a degree in psychology at the University of Wales in Cardiff, while Hugh studied countryside management at Newcastle University. Pictured while they were at school

Harriet, meanwhile, was born and grew up, not far away, in the family home in Chester with her mother, Louise, 55, father Grahame, 80, and sister Grace, 23.

Her father was married previously, and there were three children from that marriage.

After leaving school, where Hugh and Harriet were part of the same group of friends, Harriet took a degree in psychology at the University of Wales in Cardiff, while Hugh studied countryside management at Newcastle University.

But the school gang remained close and often took off on jaunts together. In 2012, they went to Paris and there were also skiing holidays and clubbing in Ibiza.

On one occasion, says the friend, Hugh organised a large bus to take Harriet and his friends to a Robbie Willliams concert.

Harriet’s family went through a testing time in 2013 when her father’s 50-year-old curtains firm, Montgomery Tomlinson, went into administration.

The 146 staff at the company’s warehouse, plus 384 staff working in store concessions including Debenhams and House of Fraser, were told they were out of a job.

Ten days later, a firm of venture capitalists bought the firm and it was hoped it could be salvaged.

However, less than a year later, it went into administration again. Hugh Grosvenor’s family, of course,

face a very different sort of financial challenge: how to manage it all.

The family’s fabulous wealth came about as a result of a marriage between Sir Thomas Grosvenor and the heiress Mary Davies in 1677. She had recently inherited a medieval manor in Middlesex — now part of London — and 500 acres of swamp, pasture and orchards west of the capital.

The Grosvenor family began developing the area in 1720 — into what was to soon become London’s exclusive areas of Belgravia and Mayfair.

After graduating from Newcastle, Hugh worked for a while in estate management for his father’s Grosvenor Group.

He is working as an accounts manager at bio-bean, a recycling firm that collects coffee grounds and converts them into biofuel pellets, which are used to heat buildings.

It is understood, however, that he is closely involved in the family business, too. Under the arcane rules operated by the Westminster clan, His Grace is not the owner, per se, of this impressive empire, but the custodian.

Most of the family assets are tied up in trusts, which cannot be readily accessed.

But this is one of the largest property empires in the world and is a huge responsibility for the Duke.

‘He has so much to attend to,’ says the friend.

The Duke and Harriet recently returned from a luxury break in Big Sur, California, where they were photographed together looking blissfully happy and in love.

So the nine billion pound question is this: Will Hugh make Harriet his Duchess?

‘There’s never been any mention of marriage,’ says the friend, ‘but it must be on the cards.’

If they do marry, finding somewhere to live is unlikely to be an issue.

Additional reporting: Ron Quenby and Dominik Lemanski