DIRECT support for English farmers may be on the way out, but there's still a huge appetite for land and estates among investors, lifestyle buyers, farmers and conservationists, as sales achieved in 2023 clearly indicate.
For Alex Lawson, head of rural agency at Savills, the standout estate sale of the year was that of the illustrious Adlington Hall, which lies within Cheshire's golden triangle, five miles east of Wilmslow and seven miles north of Macclesfield. Family seat of the Legh family since 1315, the 1,921-acre estate came to the market in September 2022 for the first time in more than 700 years, at a guide price of $30m through Savills and Mark Wiggin Estate Agency, and was sold as a whole to a long-term investor in autumn 2023.
At its heart stands Grade I-listed Adlington Hall, a handsome, 20,000sq ft quadrangular building, which stands on the site of a Saxon hunting lodge and was rebuilt in two phases in the Tudor and Stuart period, restored after the Civil War and extended in the mid 18th century by Charles Legh, who also built the matching Grade II*-listed stable courtyard and extensively remodelled the park and gardens. The north section of the historic mansion houses the magnificent Tudor Great Hall and its famous organ, forever associated with Legh's friend, composer Frideric Handel. The surrounding estate comprises six let farms and 22 houses and cottages, plus various ancillary buildings and parcels of land.
Will Matthews, head of farms and estates at Knight Frank, oversaw the successful sale of two contrasting Oxfordshire estatesGolder Manor Farm at Pyrton near Watlington, and Woodleys near Woodstock-both launched in the latter half of 2022 at guide prices of £25m and £16m respectively.
Denne historien er fra January 03, 2024-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Denne historien er fra January 03, 2024-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
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We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
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Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
