Spring land market livens up with some quality offerings

A range of interesting farms and rural investment opportunities is on offer as the spring market picks up.

Ruses Farm and Hempstead Hall Farm near Saffron Walden, Essex, is coming to the market with Carter Jonas, as a whole or in up to eight lots with a guide price of £4.45m overall.

The farm comes with a ring-fenced 392-acre block of Grade 2 arable land and mixed woodland plus a 17th century Grade II listed five-bedroom farmhouse and two barn conversion opportunities.

Sporting rights are included and the holding has two pheasant pens in the substantial block of woodland.

See also: Strong 2023 land market points to good demand this year

Also being marketed by Carter Jonas is Frogmary Green Farm, an 85-acre diverse rural investment opportunity at South Petherton, Somerset, developed by Nick and Claire Bragg.

They have made the decision to sell to concentrate on the arable side of their business and have bought another farm, said Jack Mitchell, partner at Carter Jonas.

Frogmary Green Farm © Carter Jonas

“They feel they have developed the business to a good point where someone else can take it on and progress it further,’’ he said.

The business, which comes with a three-bedroom farmhouse subject to an agricultural occupancy condition, features a vast range of diversifications.

These include a café, wedding venue, spa and two shepherd’s huts, let offices, three flats, cold storage facilities and a purpose-built classroom.

There is a broiler shed with capacity for 30,000 birds and the property hosts an anaerobic digestion plant which is principally supplied with feedstock grown by the Braggs. The plant is subject to a lease until 2037.

The business generates an annual rental income of about £400,000 across the diversifications, with further income from the sale of cold storage space for vegetables, renewable heat incentive payments against the biomass boilers, and from the shepherd’s huts.

The free-draining farmland has Grade 1 and 2 soils and there are other farm buildings with potential for commercial use.

Frogmary Green Farm is on the market as a whole at a guide price of £4.85m or is available in two lots.

Irrigated Grade 2 farm

Coming to the market shortly is Manor Farm, a well-equipped 477-acre holding with irrigation, near Spridlington, Lincoln.

The land, predominantly Grade 2 over limestone, grows a range of root crops with irrigation supplied by a 10m-gallon reservoir and an underground main.

There is a range of modern farm buildings and potato storage, while accommodation comes in the form of a pair of cottages and a building plot for a dwelling.

Manor Farm is being marketed by Brown&Co at a guide price of £6.7m.

Manor Farm © Brown and Co

East Sussex grassland holding

Batcheller Monkhouse has launched Thorndean Farm at Cowbeech, East Sussex.

This has been in the ownership of the same family since the late 1930s and has 60 acres of permanent pasture, with nine acres of mature deciduous woodland.

There is an extensive range of farm buildings, the majority of which are subject to an overage clause on their development value.

The four-bedroom farmhouse, built in the 1940s, has an indoor swimming pool.

Thorndean Farm is being sold as a whole at a guide price of £2.25m

Thorndean Farm © Batcheller Monkhouse