Norfolk estate offers attractive retreat

Strutt & Parker is about to launch a very private Breckland estate in Norfolk, with 1225 acres of ring-fenced land uncrossed by any rights of way.

Rushford Estate, near Thetford, features an attractive 18th century manor house with two miles of river frontage, an established shoot, nine cottages, farm buildings and 936 acres of productive farmland.

The attractive Rushford Estate in Norfolk is well suited to high value crops.

“The farm is well suited to producing high-value root crops, thanks to an excellent irrigation system with underground ring main, two abstraction licenses and light soils,” said Charlie Evans at Strutt & Parker. “It is capable of growing a wide range of crops including asparagus, carrots, onions, parsnips, potatoes, wheat, barley and sugar beet.”

The property was once owned by Edmond Gonville, founder of the Gonville and Caius College at Cambridge University, and remains a beautifully unspoilt sporting andagricultural estate. Rushford Hall is set in formal gardens, with 11 bedrooms, a swimming pool and a courtyard of flint and brick stables and outbuildings.

Ringers Barn Farm sits centrally within the farmland, with generally level fields surrounded by shelter belts and woodland. With 280 acres of woodland, the well-known pheasant and partridge shoot lets 12 days with an average bag of 200 birds. There is also a commercial livery yard with 12 stables and an outdoor school. The total let property on the estate brings in an annual rent of more than £90,000, with environmental scheme payments totalling almost £29,000 a year.

“It is an incredibly pretty estate,” said Mr Evans. “I think it will attract somebody who wants a very private, very good looking country house with an estate around it, either to live in permanently, or possibly someone who lives and works in London and wants it for the weekends.”

Rushford Estate is for sale by private treaty as a whole or in three lots, with a total guide of more than £10m.