When Longparish House, a Grade II*-listed nine-bed house in Hampshire with
extensive chalk-stream fishing, went on sale in April with a guide price of
£9m, the owners and agents waited to see if anyone would take the bait.
They were not disappointed. Three bidders fought over the property, set in 173
acres in the Test Valley, and it eventually went for almost £13m. This
followed the sale the previous month of Duntisbourne House, in the
Cotswolds, for £3m more than its £5m guide.
Then, in early summer, after Turville Court, Oxfordshire, sold for £22m and
the Blairs splashed out on a £4m mini-stately of their own, it looked as if
the country-house sector might ride out the turbulence afflicting the market
as a whole. It was not to be: after Lehman Brothers failed in September and
the economic downturn worsened, even some of the country’s most glorious
Georgian piles had six-figure sums slashed from their price tags.
“Some properties that came to the market a year or so ago have seen their
asking prices fall by as much as 30%,” says Rupert Sweeting, head of the
country-house department at the estate agent Knight Frank. After “the
mega-boom of the last 18 months”, he adds, he has already come across one
multi-million-pound distress sale.
Marsh Court, a 10-bedroom house in Stockbridge, Hampshire, which came onto the
market in April 2007 for £13m, was relaunched this June for £10m and sold
for £11m in September. Grade I-listed Chicheley Hall, in Buckingham-shire,
which went on sale in July last year for £9m, had its asking price slashed
to £7m in January and went for close to that in June.
Many more sellers are retiring from the fight altogether, including the owners
of Furzehill Place, in Surrey, once home to the Victorian explorer Sir Henry
Morton Stanley. They have taken the property – guide price £7m – off the
market after eight months.
It is clear that the City-boy-fuelled boom years are over – but what does the
next year hold? “There’s still a lot of money out there, and a lot of people
still have an ambition to buy a chunk of England,” says Mark Lawson, a
director of The Buying Solution, an upmarket agency. He warns, however, that
until buyers regain the confidence to spend and sellers are willing to brave
the market, 2009 will be very tough indeed.
1 Sold! March, £8.5m+ Gloucestershire
Seven-bedroom Duntisbourne House, in 70 acres of glorious Cotswold
countryside, was the first real test of the market. The 18th-century
property, which has a lodge, a staff flat, stables, a tennis court and a
pool, went on sale in March with a guide price of £5m. It sold in three
weeks for at least £3.5m more. “It was bound to create a premium, but the
question was, ‘How much?’,” says Henry Holland Hibbert, head of the
country-house department at the selling agent, Strutt & Parker. Cynics
might say the guide price was set low to encourage competitive bidding.
2 Sold! June, £20m Cambridgeshire
Set in 2,500 acres, six-bedroom Tetworth Hall, four miles from Sandy, was the
first big residential estate sale of the year. The 18th-century mansion was
snapped up by a local buyer in June, when land prices were at their peak,
less than three weeks after it came on the market. The estate includes three
farmhouses, 13 cottages and a pheasant shoot. Mark McAndrew, head of farms
and estates, says: “It sold for more than the guide price following stiff
competition.”
3 Sold! September, £15m Channel Islands
The first Channel Island to go on sale for years, Herm, famed for its white
sands speckled with thousands of colourful shells, came on the market in
May. Available on a 40-year lease, the property includes a manor house, a
13th-century chapel, 80 acres of farmland with a dairy herd and what is
thought to be the world’s smallest jail. Its owner also has to run the daily
22-ton ferry, the Herm Seahorse, which links the island with Guernsey, 20
minutes away. It was sold through Knight Frank and Martel Maides to a local
couple who will continue to run it as a holiday business. They will also be
able to take advantage of their own tax haven, paying 20% on income and
avoiding death duties and capital-gains tax.
4 Sold! September, £25m Norfolk
When it went on sale in August, Kelling Hall, near Cromer, was the most
expensive estate to come onto the market this year. The property, which has
13 bedrooms and is set in 1,600 acres, with seven cottages and 20 further
properties, exchanged contracts at the guide price. It was bought by Gary
Widdowson, 50, a former showjumper and the owner of Metal & Waste
Recycling. Estimated to be worth £160m, he also owns a private dock on the
River Thames. A friend said: “He and his wife had fallen in love with the
estate and were keen to be part of the community.” Tom Goodley, a partner in
the Norwich office of the selling agent, Strutt & Parker, says: “It sold
within eight weeks. We are extremely pleased, considering what has happened
in the financial world.”
5 Stuck! £25m Dorset
A rich man’s toy, rather than a working estate, Encombe House, set in 2,000
acres, was described by Mark McAndrew, head of farms and estates at the
joint selling agent, Strutt & Parker, as “an exceptional and entrancing
place” when it launched in September. Three months on, it is still for sale
after the collapse of two deals. The Grade II*-listed, 13-bedroom Georgian
house is surrounded by 60 acres of formal gardens and parkland, and has a
pool and a Grecian-style temple. Had it come onto the market a year earlier,
it would probably have fetched more than £25m, but it is expected to sell
for just below that in the next few months. Savills, 020 7409 8882,
www.savills. co.uk; Strutt & Parker, 020 7629 7282, www.struttandparker.co.uk
6 Stuck! £10m Cornwall
The Morval estate, 2½ miles outside Looe, runs to 1,130 lush acres, and came
to the market in May when the bluebells were still in flower. Now the ground
is blanketed in a white frost, the Kitson family, who are selling the
property, still haven’t found a buyer. The pheasant shoot may be famous
locally, and the views spectacular – morval means “sea view” – but there is
no main manor house to show off. Any new owner will need either to gain
planning permission for a new property or to persuade one of the tenants of
the three let farms and few dozen cottages to move out. The rental income
for the estate is £148,800. It is 20 miles from Plymouth and 35 from Newquay
airport, from which there are daily flights to London. There are also two
Lords of the Manorships of Morval and Penarth, available by separate
negotiation. Savills; 020 7499 8644, www.savills.co.uk
7 Stuck! £13m Hampshire
Lord Irvine Laidlaw, the owner of Moundsmere Manor, may be wishing he had
taken up one of the offers close to the £14m guide price when the property
went on sale in 2006. He is still looking for a buyer for his country pile,
set in 84 acres at Preston Candover, despite having cut the price by £1m in
the spring. Laidlaw, who lives in Monaco, bought it for £9m in 2005, but has
yet to spend a night in any of the 15 bedrooms. Savills, 020 7409 8823,
www.savills.co.uk; Knight Frank, 020 7629 8171, www.knightfrank.co.uk
8 Sold! October, £10m Dorset
Even Thornhill Park, in Blackmoor Vale, couldn’t completely defy the credit
crunch. The eight-bedroom house, part Renaissance villa, part English
stately home, and set in 104 acres of gardens and grounds, came onto the
market in November last year with a guide price of £12m. It finally sold
this October to an unknown British buyer after a £2m reduction.
9 Stuck! £10m North Yorkshire
Sawley Hall, a boxy, ochre-coloured early-Georgian house at the centre of a
950-acre sporting estate near Harrogate, went on sale in May. The
immaculately restored property has 10 bedrooms, four reception rooms, a
trophy room, three cottages, courtyard stables, a trout pond and a deer
park. The estate has a nice round price tag, and has attracted lots of
interest and even one serious offer, but that came to nothing, so it is
still available. Savills; 020 7409 8882, www.savills.co.uk
10 Sold! September, £25m Norfolk
The Easton agricultural estate sold for just below the guide price when it
came onto the market in September. Spanning 2,417 acres, it includes a
restored Georgian principal house with five reception rooms and 12 bedrooms,
surrounded by formal gardens with a swimming pool, as well as a coach house,
three farmhouses, 25 cottages and one staff flat. It went to a British buyer
who had been looking for a suitable estate for five years. Nearby, the
1,098-acre High House estate is still for sale for £9.5m.
CKD Kennedy Macpherson, 020 7409 1944, www.ckd.co.uk;
Strutt & Parker, 020 7629 7282, www.struttandparker.co.uk
