Penny Churchill looks at Boldridge Farm, a small estate with a charming farmhouse at its centre.
Down in south-west Gloucestershire, the launch onto the market of picturesque, 95-acre Boldridge Farm brings to an end more than 100 years of farming by the Witchell family in the parish of Long Newnton, near Tetbury. It’s for sale through Savills Cotswold Farms at a guide price of £2.6m.
The farm was once part of a larger holding, Newnton Farm, on the Estcourt estate, the core of which is now Prince Khalid Abdullah’s Juddmonte Farms Thoroughbred breeding operation, best known for the peerless Frankel and Enable, among others.
The provenance of Boldridge Farm is well documented. On November 6, 1907, Arthur Witchell, the son of Henry Witchell of Street Farm, Nympsfield, took on the tenancy of Newnton Farm from the then Lord Estcourt, and after the Earl’s death, bought the freehold from Capt T. E. Southern Estcourt for £6,000 on December 9, 1924.
Henry Gough Witchell succeeded his father and after he died in August 1965, two-thirds of Newnton Farm was sold by public auction in 1970. The remaining one-third was farmed by his wife, Noel, and their three sons, until Noel’s death in 2018 at the age of 101.
Today, the farm is an organic producer of cereals and venison from a red-deer herd established in 1989 with foundation stock from Badminton, where Boldridge’s joint owner, Arthur Witchell, was formerly land agent.
Estcourt estate farms can often be identified from the scalloped red tiles on the roofs of their farm buildings and Boldridge Farm is no exception, focal points being the scalloped tiled roofs of the Victorian main farmhouse and its long stone barn.
A range of modern farm buildings has been added by the present owners. The traditional Cotswold-stone farmhouse, which is unlisted, is currently arranged as a three-bedroom house with a separate one-bedroom annexe, but could easily be reconfigured as a comfortable four-bedroom family home.
Further accommodation is provided by a four-bedroom stone cottage and a three-bedroom farm bungalow, the latter subject to an agricultural occupancy restriction.
Boldridge Farm is for sale via Savills at £2.6m — see more details and pictures.
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