Lured to Lincolnshire

Ros Canter has put this county on the map as prime turf for an equestrian set-up, says Madeleine Silver, with Cotswolds allure at a fraction of the price

IF Lincolnshire was seeking a poster girl, the newly crowned European eventing champion Ros Canter fits the bill. Each time the world number one brings back her haul of medals or this year’s Badminton trophy, the spotlight is thrown on this sometimes-forgotten corner of eastern England, a place that can be wrongly shunned as flat, bleak and out on a limb.

Here is the home of a champion, the place where Ros spent her early days in the saddle with the South Wold Hunt North branch of the Pony Club and now exercises her equine stars on the rolling Lincolnshire Wolds, near her family farm outside the Georgian market town of Louth.

But those savvy enough with their purse strings have long known not to overlook this county in their quest to buy an equestrian set-up of their own. As Rosie Chetwynd-Talbot at Louth-based agent Masons & Partners says, you can simply get more for your money here.

“The biggest pull [for buyers] will be the value. We are a lot lower than elsewhere,” says Rosie, who lives in the Lincolnshire Wolds with her husband and daughter, where she enjoys hacking and showing.

The tempting prices – an equestrian smallholding with 13 acres in the middle of the Wolds recently went on the market with Masons for £799,000 – mean that buyers on agents’ books often come from across the UK, with no previous connection to Lincolnshire.