The country sale of the year so far is undoubtedly that of the 2,499-acre Tetworth Hall estate with its delightful Grade II*-listed Queen Anne house at Tetworth, on the Bedfordshire/Cambridge borders, which launches today through Strutt & Parker (020–7629 7282) and Robinson & Hall (01234 351000) at a guide price of ‘excess £20m’ for the estate as a whole. Alternatively, invest-ors may be tempted by up to 22 individual lots, headed by Tetworth Hall itself (see box).
The sale follows the death earlier this year of Lady Cross-man, a bastion and former master of the Cambridgeshire with Enfield Chace Hunt. Tetworth Hall was one of a number of important country houses built in the early 18th century along the top of the Greensand Ridge, which runs through Cambridgeshire and Bedfordshire among them Everton Hall, Woodbury Hall and Hazells Hall close by, and further to the west, Ickwell Bury, Ampthill Park and Woburn Abbey. Tetworth Hall was built of local sandstone in about 1710 for John Pedley, a local landowner and MP for Huntingdon, since when the house, which has three charming reception rooms, six bedrooms and four bathrooms, has remained virtually unaltered.
In the early 19th century, the estate was bought by Charles Duncombe, the 1st Lord Feversham, whose descendants rented it to the Orlebar family of Hinwick Hall in Bedford-shire, one of whom, Augustus Orlebar, led the RAF team that won the Schneider air trophy for Britain in 1929. Requisitioned during the Second World War, possibly as a camp for German and Italian prisoners of war, the Tet-worth Hall estate reverted to its sporting ways in 1947, when Sir Peter Crossman of the Crossman brewing family (later part of Watney Mann) rented the estate, before eventually buying it in 1962. For Sir Peter, the estate’s shooting potential and proximity to London were the main attractions, although, following his death in 1989, the emphasis switched to hunting under the direction of the formidable Lady Crossman, whose other lifelong passion was the enchanting woodland gardens she created at Tetworth Hall.
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‘Investment and indulgence’ are the twin attributes of the 995-acre Marrington estate, near Church Stoke in Shropshire, say selling agents Knight Frank (020–7629 8171) and Balfours (01743 353511), who quote a guide price of £5.5m for the thriving mixed farming and sporting estate set in glorious rolling countryside in the lee of Corndon Hill in the Welsh Marches.
The investment angle is covered by the asset value and earnings track record of the estate’s four farmsthree of which have large farmhouses and yards with traditional and modern farm buildings and 230 acres of commercial forestry and woodland. The indulgence comes with the sport provided by a superb high-bird shoot centred on the Marrington Dingle, a deep wooded ravine at the bottom of which the River Camlad offers total solitude and excellent double-bank fishing.
At the moment, the estate has no large principal house, although the 143-acre Marring-ton Hall Farm includes a substantial five-bedroom brick farmhouse built in 1962 within the kitchen garden of the old Marrington Hall. Nordoes does the Kitson family’s spectacular, 1,135-acre Morval estate near Looe in south-east Cornwall, currently boast a grand estate mansion, the original main house having been sold off in 1973, but there are several outstanding sites within its boundaries on which a splendiferous new one could be built subject to the usual planning procedures.
Meanwhile, the estate’s impressive portfolio of property and sporting assets probably more than justifies the £10m-plus guide price quoted by Savills (020–7409 8882). These include 641 acres of farmland let on AHA agricultural tenancies, 199 acres of farmland let on Farm Business Tenancies, 297 acres of in-hand woodland, 12 let cottages with a further nine available in addition, and an ‘exceptional’ in-hand shoot, which together produce an annual estate income of £148,800 with substantial room for improvement, the agents suggest.
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