The toxic battle for Ragley Hall: Earl of Yarmouth rages over £1.3m legal bill in bitter fight with his parents over their £85m stately home... sparked by him marrying an 'outsider'

• e-mail

An aristocrat who was left with a £1.3million legal bill after a failed attempt to wrest control of his family's historic £85m estate is furious at the outcome and is considering going back to court.

Lord Yarmouth went to court against his own parents, the Marquess and Marchioness of Hertford, after falling out with them over his wedding to former Goldman Sachs banker Kelsey Wells – now known as Lady Yarmouth.

But after hauling them to court, William Seymour, 32, lost his bid to gain control of the family's 6,000-acre Ragley estate in Warwickshire and lost the case, leaving him with the seven figure costs bill.

Despite having said as the ruling was announced that he remained open to a reconciliation with his parents, today Lord and Lady Yarmouth are considering an appeal.

The couple told the Daily Mail in a statement: 'We are disappointed with the outcome of the recent costs hearing and the decision of the Judge to award costs in the way he has.'

They added that they had sought a reconciliation with Lord Yarmouth's parents and that he was considering an appeal against the judgement.

And privately the Earl is said to be angry at the ruling going against him as he believes his case was fair.

Here the Mail traces the origins of the bitterness and rancour behind the magnificent façade of Ragley Hall, the Palladian stately home that has come to be nick-named 'toxic towers'.

Lord Yarmouth lost a court battle against his parents to control his family estate. Pictured: Lord and Lady Yarmouth on their wedding day in 2018 with his parents, the Marquess and Marchioness of Hertford

The inheritance of the family's 6,000-acre Ragley estate in Warwickshire is behind the toxic dispute

According to the young couple, as their relationship blossomed, so too did the hostility from William's parents Hertford Henry Seymour, 67, and his Marchioness mother, Brazilian-born wife Beatriz, 65, and his aunt, Lady Carolyn Seymour, 65.

This was because, William and his wife claimed, Kelsey, 40, was viewed as an 'outsider' and the Marquess and his wife feared that the Earl was slipping away from their control.

There was certainly no doubting the enmity from his aunt by 2018 when William invited her to his forthcoming wedding.

In an astonishing response, she ridiculed William, whose ancestors include Henry VIII's third wife, Jane Seymour, as 'pompous', dubbing him 'Little Lord Fauntleroy' before turning her sights on his future bride, leaving both of them devastated.

Lady Carolyn's RSVP was dripping with sarcasm, criticising everything about the invitation card itself: '[It's] so embarrassingly awful, it's almost laughable, if it weren't so tragic. Since when do you start with the groom's coronet on top of the page?

'Moreover, you haven't even used the Ragley blue nor the correct font. And since when does your name come before the bride?'

She went on to berate William for suggesting how guests might dress. 'Good God, what are you? Little Lord Fauntleroy?'

She then beseeched him to teach his fiancée the rules of etiquette: 'I am The Lady Carolyn Seymour,' she said, before signing off: 'You pompous ass/t**/p***k - take your pick… Your ever-so loving aunt'.

The first hint of trouble came years before when William announced that he would like to bring Kelsey, whom he met at a wedding in 2016, home for the weekend - only to learn that his Volkswagen Polo had been lent to a member of staff, preventing him from picking her up from a nearby station.

Later, when William again announced he wanted Kelsey to stay at Ragley, he arrived home one evening to be told his parents had given his bed away to the new butler. William was forced to sleep on a blow-up mattress on the floor.

At the time, the Earl accepted all this, but then came to view them as deliberate acts to undermine the relationship. Looking back, he said he was often treated differently from his three siblings because his parents told him that, as heir, he was special.

He said he only found out what a 'normal' family was like when he stayed with Kelsey and her parents.

Lord Yarmouth had been told he would inherit the estate, including the 110-room Palladian stately mansion his parents call home, when he turned 30.

The young couple claimed that hostility from William's parents, Hertford Henry Seymour, and his Marchioness mother, Brazilian-born wife Beatriz, increased as their relationship blossomed

The Earl and Countess of Yarmouth are pictured here outside London's High Court

By the age of just 21 he had already received more than £4.2million in land and property.

However, his father decided to disinherit his son when they catastrophically fell out around the time of his marriage.

Lord Hertford said the decision 'coincided with his marriage, but Kelsey is not the main reason.'

In a witness statement to the court, he said: 'William asked me to confirm that I would hand over Ragley Hall to him on turning 30.

'It was like he had promised Kelsey that they would be moving into Ragley Hall, he was persistent.

Despite the tension, in April 2017 Kelsey and William decided to get married. Then, a month after the 180 invitations were sent out, the Hertfords revealed that another event had been booked at Ragley the day before their son's £80,000 wedding, making it impossible for many preparations to be made.

'It was a corporate fun day that was going to tie up the facilities needed for our wedding all day and until late the evening before,' Kelsey told the Mail in 2019.

'It was one of many unnecessary hurdles that we had to overcome.' In the end, the other event was moved to a different venue on the estate.

But his father had one last drip of poison to dispense, according to William's his court statement in which he claimed his family displayed such 'deep antagonism' towards Lady Yarmouth that on their wedding day Lord Hertford told him that 'you can still call it off and we'll send everyone home, just say no'.

The High Court also heard claims from the other side that Lord Yarmouth had paid 'little interest' to the running of the estate until 2017 but after getting together with Miss Wells had 'began to assert himself.'

The Ragley estate has been the backdrop to many films and TV shows, including 1982's The Scarlet Pimpernel (ironically enough featuring Bond girl Jane Seymour), Doctor Who and Dancing On The Edge.

After their nuptials, William and Kelsey settled in a modest cottage on the estate called The Bothy. But in 2019 - not long after Kelsey announced she was pregnant - an eviction letter arrived on their first wedding anniversary.

Again written by Lady Carolyn, the letter said that The Bothy was needed to accommodate a carer for William's 86-year-old grandmother, Lady Pamela, the Dowager Marchioness of Hertford. 'There are plenty of rooms to let locally and you can become someone's lodger,' his aunt added sniffily.

Lady Carolyn Seymour wrote an astonishing response to her nephew's wedding invitation in which she ridiculed William, Earl of Yarmouth, as ‘pompous’ and ‘Little Lord Fauntleroy’ before turning her sights on his future bride

William and Kelsey were non-plussed and he sent a poignant text to his younger brother Edward, telling him: 'Our family has now made their son/nephew/grandson and his pregnant wife homeless.

'Carolyn was the one who was dispatched to do the job [again]. Whatever happened to our family's motto 'by faith and love'?' 'I was devastated,' Kelsey, a former non-executive director at Goldman Sachs told the Mail in 2019.

'It was our first wedding anniversary and I was four and a half months pregnant. It should have been one of the happiest times in my life. Instead it was the most stressful. I'd tried so hard to be accepted by his relatives, but his parents seemed determined to cast us both adrift.

'They've never taken the time nor had the interest to get to know me, so how can it be personal to me? Perhaps it's what I represent, perhaps they feel threatened. I do have the sense there is a pathological need for control and I have upset the control they have been able to exert over their son. I held down a good job, pursued a career and made my way in the world. You don't have to marry for money and clearly that wasn't the case with me or William.

'I'm not from their world and, to be honest, I'm afraid I haven't found much there to aspire to.'

When he dismissed William's High Court claim in May, the Judge, Master Brightwell was particularly scathing of William's practice of taping his conversations with his parents and the trustees.

In his judgement he said: 'I consider that the claimant, in surreptitiously recording meetings with his parents and others, was likely looking for ammunition for a dispute. He told [estate accountant] Mr Pringle in May 2018 that there would be a battle to come.

'That is likely to have been an indication that he was looking for a casus belli and within three months he had found one at least as far as the family was concerned, in writing to his mother to question his father's mental capacity in the way that he did.

'That is not to suggest that the falling out is all the claimant's fault, or that Lord and Lady Hertford are blameless in that regard. It is obvious that they have displayed deep antagonism to Lady Yarmouth and that they created practical difficulties in the wedding arrangements (for instance, they arranged an event to take place at Ragley the day before).

'I am well aware that I have heard no cross-examination on issues where competing views are strongly held. Nonetheless, the recordings and the contemporaneous communications suggest that Lord Yarmouth was keen to create a dispute about the way Ragley was run at a root and branch level.

'He has all along viewed the trustees as fully aligned with his parents in relation to both the dispute with him and with the operation of the Ragley estate.'

In today's statement to the Mail, the Yarmouths added: 'We would draw attention to the distribution of costs between the parties in the hope that this will correct at least one of the inaccuracies in this case.

'Lord Yarmouth brought an action for the removal of the Trustees of three trusts in which he, his wife, and his children have an interest, and to seek their replacement with fully independent trustees. Only and simply this.

Kelsey Yarmouth pictured outside the house she lives in with husband William and their children

William Seymour, the 32-year-old Earl of Yarmouth, has been involved in a public spat with his parents since 2018, when he married wife Kelsey, now Countess of Yarmouth

'He did so to protect in particular the interests of his children. He did not seek money or compensation for himself. He did not sue his father Lord Hertford nor did he seek control of the Ragley estate as has been stated by court reporting.

'That is a false narrative and factually incorrect. That the Trustees costs in this case far outstrip those of the other parties individually and exceed the costs of all six beneficiaries who took part in this action combined speaks to that point. We hope now we can at the very least put that issue to rest.

'Documents setting out the extent of liquidity and substantial debt which has accumulated at Ragley during the tenure of the current Marquess of Hertford and trustees were disclosed by the family defendants' solicitors during the exchange of evidence in the proceedings.

'That information was tabled and discussed in the latest costs hearing and has thus found its way to the public domain. We are deeply troubled and greatly saddened by the picture that information paints about the future of the estate.'