Two prime English farming estates brought to market
Laverstoke Park Estate © Savills Two significant farming estates in England have recently been launched.
The Laverstoke Park Estate in Hampshire has a guide price of £58m, and the Kirkham Estate in North Yorkshire is on the market for more than £25m.
On the banks of the River Test at Overton, Laverstoke Park Estate spans 1,835 acres, and includes 1,279 acres of Grade 3 certified organic arable and pasture on free draining loam soils.
See also:Large arable launches give buyers rare choice at scale
Owned by former world champion racing driver Jody Scheckter, the estate comes to the market through a combination of retirement and downsizing.
The estate is run from two farmsteads with both modern and traditional buildings, including four cattle cubicle sheds.
It sits within a nitrate vulnerable zone (NVZ) and the Hampshire Downs national character area.
One of the fields is being sold with a 30-year overage clause that requires 100% of any uplift in value on the grant of planning consent for an alternative use to be passed to the vendor.
As well as farmland, there are 182 acres of woodlands.
At the heart of the estate is Laverstoke House, a 4,521sq m mansion built in 1798.
This has 11 bedrooms and four flats. There are also 17 lodges, cottages and farmhouses.
The property is on the market jointly with Savills and Knight Frank, as a whole or in four lots.
North Yorkshire estate
Kirkham Hall © GCS Grays
On the edge of the Howardian Hills, between the North York Moors and York, the Kirkham Estate is being sold by the Brotherton family, who have owned it for more than a century.
John Coleman of GSC Grays – the joint agent with Rounthwaite & Woodhead – is selling the estate as a whole. It has a total of 1,103 acres, and includes a farming enterprise of about 845 acres.
There is a central steading, productive arable and grassland, and more than 215 acres of managed woodland.
John says: “It includes a range of investment properties and development opportunities, comprising three farmhouses and 11 cottages, with genuine potential to enhance existing income streams and create new ones.”
The farmhouses and cottages range from two to six-bedroom properties, with the majority let on assured shorthold tenancies.
The main house, Kirkham Hall, was built in the mid-19th century and has 1,292sq m of floor space including extensive cellars and a self-contained apartment.
Arable acres
Land at Beeford and Foston on the Wolds © Carter Jonas
Two of this week’s other big launches are arable farms. Carter Jonas is bringing 501 acres of land at Beeford and Foston on the Wolds, near Driffield, East Yorkshire, to the market.
The agent also has 293 acres of land near Westbury, Wiltshire.
The land near Driffield is mainly Grade 2 in a combinable cropping rotation under a contract farming agreement, but has also grown root crops.
Vacant possession will be provided when the sale is completed. All the land falls within a surface water NVZ.
A general-purpose building, a lean-to shed currently operating as a pig isolation unit, and a Dutch barn are all let under a farm business tenancy until 15 September 2040.
A 7,500cu m slurry store is under construction.
The owner of the land operates a straw-for-muck-and-slurry agreement with a neighbouring pig unit, which the buyer will be obliged to inherit.
Another stipulation of the sale is that the seller will retain the freehold of the land on which two wind turbines stand, and also access rights to these.
The property has a guide price of £5.5m for the whole and is also available in four lots.
Land at Capps Lane, Wiltshire © Carter Jonas
In Wiltshire, 293 acres of Grade 3 land at Capps Lane, Westbury, is on offer with Carter Jonas.
The land is farmed in a rotation of combinable crops and maize. About 21 acres is herbal leys and grazed by cattle. A Countryside Stewardship agreement on part of the land ends on 31 December 2025.
Infrastructure includes a 30x31m grain store and a yard.
This sale is subject to a 25-year overage clause that requires 25% of any uplift in value on the grant of planning consent for biodiversity net gain to be passed to the vendor.
The Westbury property has a guide price of £3.535m for the whole, and is also available in five lots.