The editor-in-chief of the Eurosceptic Daily Mail benefited from at least £88,000 in subsidies from the European Union for his country houses in Sussex and the Scottish highlands in 2014.

Payments from the EU totalling £59,534.85 were made in 2014 for Langwell estate, a 20,000-acre stretch of moorland near Ullapool in the Scottish Highlands owned by Paul Dacre. A further £29,118.76 was paid to a P Dacre in respect of a home in Wadhurst, Sussex during the year.

The payments were made under the common agricultural policy, one of many EU institutions regularly attacked in the pages of the tabloid.

The payments for Langwell, first unearthed by BuzzFeed, come on top of almost half a million euros the estate received between 2011 and 2012 from the funds set up under the CAP.

Governments are only required to list CAP payments covering the most recent financial year, however Farmsubsidy.org, which archives the records, lists payments totalling €179,267 for the property in 2011, rising to €300,408 the following year.

Under today’s exchange rates, Dacre has benefited from at least £460,000 in subsidies since 2011.

Langwell was bought by Dacre and wife Kathleen for £2.45m in 2009, according to documents from the Scottish land registry. It is run as a sporting estate, with accommodation for up to 20 and activities including deer stalking, salmon fishing and grouse shooting. The 2014 payment for the estate include £3,000 for the “encouragement of tourist activities” and £7,000 in “payments to farmers in areas with handicaps”.

Dacre’s house in Wadhurst has been dubbed Dacre Towers and is famed for having a mile-long drive.

Dacre is Fleet Street’s longest serving editor after becoming editor of the Mail in 1992 and also its highest paid, having taken home £2.4m in 2014. The Mail has intensified its anti-EU coverage in the run-up to the referendum on 23 June. As recently as last month, the paper was criticising David Cameron for failing to secure reform of CAP in his negotiations with leaders from other EU nations.

A spokesperson for the Langwell estate said: “Both Langwell and Wadhurst are working businesses. Langwell is run as a farming, holiday lettings and sporting business which makes a not insignificant contribution to the local economy. Wadhurst is a working cattle and arable farm.

“The agricultural subsidies you refer to were available to every farmer in Britain and, in the case of Scotland, included reimbursements for extensive woodland planting schemes (native – not commercial trees) to improve the ecology of this wildly beautiful and remote area.

“In their determination to make Langwell economically and environmentally sustainable, the owners are spending considerable sums of their own money on developing the farm, estate and its buildings. Despite this, the business runs at a loss.”