Suffolk estate offers many key attractions

West Suffolk will see the launch next week of a truly mixed estate and one of the most interesting to come to the market so far this year.

The Hengrave Estate, just three miles from Bury St Edmunds, offers good-quality commercial arable land with irrigation, pasture, woodland, 16 properties and decent sporting on 541ha (1,337 acres).

A big draw will be the ability to irrigate more than 900 acres of the grade 2 and grade 3 land with more than 70m gallons fed through underground mains from a borehole.

Mainly cropped with wheat, malting barley and sugar beet, the land also produces potatoes and onions and has refrigerated storage for up to 2,000t of potatoes and grain storage for up to 1,600t. The farm currently has 6,000t of sugar beet quota, which may be available to the buyer.

About 200 acres of the land is let on a farm business tenancy for potato and onion growing until October 2013, with the 2,000t of potato storage let until 2014.

The sale also includes new livestock buildings housing 500 head of cattle, a well-established shoot, a trout lake, flight ponds and fishing on the River Lark.

The original Hengrave Hall was separated from the land now for sale when the current owners bought the estate in 1952. Most of the houses, cottages and bungalows are let, two are vacant and the rest are occupied by farm staff.

A range of traditional buildings offers potential for development, while 200 acres of parkland includes the estate’s Tudor deer park. There are also watermeadows and 256 acres of woodland.

Giles Wordsworth, head of national farms and estates for selling agent Smiths Gore, is offering the estate in nine lots or as a whole for offers in excess of £15m.

“Hengrave Estate will certainly wake up the land market in West Suffolk,” said Mr Wordsworth. “It is nicely ring-fenced and the fact that the irrigation is from a borehole supply is a great advantage.” Abstraction for irrigation from other water sources had been restricted elsewhere.

Hengrave is in a Special Landscape Area and is within a Nitrate Vulnerable Zone. The farm is in a five-year ELS scheme until January 2017. (Smiths Gore 01865 733 300)