Irrigated farmland offers buyers choice in East
Several large blocks of arable land in eastern England, all with irrigation, offer buyers a choice they have been lacking for a good while.
Clarke & Simpson has a total of 445 acres in Suffolk for sale on behalf of national garden centre business Notcutts, with an overall guide price of £4.35m.
Within this is 325 acres at Church Farm and Rookery Farm, Hacheston, near Woodbridge. Lotted three ways, it has an overall guide price of £3.2m for the Grades 2 and 3 land. One lot includes grain storage for about 600t, while the whole has a summer abstraction licence for 30m gallons supplied through well points and a new pumping station.
See also: More property for sale
A further block of almost 129 acres at Rose Hill Farm and Watering Farm, Snape, also has a summer abstraction licence. The guide price here is £1.15m for Grade 3 light sandy soil suitable for vegetables, specialist salads and cereals.
“Notcutts acquired the farms approximately 30 years ago for investment and operational reasons,” said Clarke & Simpson’s Oliver Holloway. “Now, as part of Notcutts’ expansion strategy, the decision has been taken to sell these non-core farming assets to allow further investment into Notcutts core gardening business.” (Clarke & Simpson 01728 621 200)
Also in Suffolk, Savills has about 300 acres of bare arable land with a guide price in the region of £3m.
Lime Tree Farm to the south-east of Blaxhall has good field sizes and is mainly Grade 2 on Burlington soils. The farm has a water abstraction licence for almost 20m gallons pumped from shallow boreholes into a reservoir built in 2012. Irrigation is available to all areas via an underground ringmain.
Two small parcels of woodland are included in the sale. (Savills 01473 234 810)
In the Cambridgeshire Fens, Brown & Co will launch a Grade 2 commercial arable farm at the end of May. Bank Farm at Thorney near Peterborough has 444 acres of Grade 2 land with two yards including an extensive range of agricultural buildings. There is also a reservoir and centre-pivot irrigation system.
“We are marketing it as a whole and anticipate very strong interest – the opportunity to purchase a significant acreage of Grade 2 commercial farmland does not arise very often,” said the firm’s Charlie Bryant. Bank Farm has a guide price of £4.75m (Brown & Co 01775 717 893)
The same firm is selling Slated House Farm, another fenland holding, also Grade 2, north of Boston in Lincolnshire.
It has more than 526 acres on mainly Downholland/Chatteris series soils and includes land at Eastville and Friskney in five lots, with a guide price in excess of £10,000/acre.
Slated House Farm offers a range of general purpose buildings, a 700t grain store and a detached house. The land is suitable for potatoes and sugar beet as well as combinable crops and has an abstraction licence. (Brown & Co 01775 717 892)