Investment owner puts 2,000 acres of let land on market

An institutional investor is selling 2,044 acres in the south-east of England in the biggest launch to the UK market so far this year.

The Luton and Stansted Portfolio is a collection of farms on the Bedfordshire/Hertfordshire border and in Essex, which selling agent Strutt & Parker says offers the opportunity to acquire land with longer-term strategic potential.

See also: Northumberland mixed farm is a rare offering

Waltham Hall and Woodgates Farm © Strutt & Parker

Waltham Hall Farm and Warish Hall Farm, near Stansted, have a combined 765 acres of Grade 2 land.

The remaining 1,278 acres is Grade 3 land at Copt Hall and Someries Farm, Gibraltar Farm and Porters End Farm, all near Luton.

Three of the farms are let on Agricultural Holdings Act tenancies with the remainder on farm business tenancies.

In all there are seven residential properties, including two five-bedroom farmhouses, and a range of other buildings.

The farms are available as a whole or in up to six lots, with a combined price tag of £20.5m.

Lincolnshire arable farms

Two further farms with high-quality land are also set for launch in Lincolnshire this month.

White House Farm © Brown & Co

White House Farm on Holbeach Marsh comes to the market because the owners are retiring from farming.

This has 420 acres on soil types including Romney and Wisbech silts.

The land grows a range of high-value crops including asparagus, potatoes, daffodils, brassicas and sugar beet.

Rowley Barclay of selling agent Brown & Co says that while the land is farmed in-hand, there are numerous specialist cropping licences in place too.

“There is significant value in the daffodil bulb stock included in the sale,” he says.

White House Farm © Brown & Co

The land comes with modern agricultural buildings covering almost 4,000sq m, including cold stores, a grading and packhouse, grain storage, other stores and a workshop.

Included in the sale is Smith’s Farm, which has extensive equestrian facilities and a four-bedroom house set in four acres, and a five-bedroom Grade II listed farmhouse, Peregrine’s Rest, which dates from 1763.

Brown & Co is marketing the whole at a guide price in the region of £9m. The business is also available as a going concern.

The same firm is also launching Whisby Hall Farm at Whisby, near Lincoln,

This has a Georgian manor house, a four-bedroom farm cottage and two yards set in 393 acres of mostly irrigated arable land.

The main block of arable land is contract farmed, growing cereals, maize, sugar beet and root vegetable crops on an agreement ending on 30 September 2025. 

Irrigation for some of the land is sourced from lakes created from former quarry workings.

The Grade 2 listed manor house, which has been in the ownership of the same family for more than a century, has five bedrooms, six reception rooms and three bathrooms.

A range of brick outbuildings adjoins traditional farm buildings, while a farm cottage undergoing maintenance and repairs is being sold with a tenancy in place.

The yard includes a grain store, an open-sided shed and a range of traditional buildings.

A concrete road providing access to a quarry has been leased to Tarmac until 2048, together with a civic amenity facility, generating an annual index-linked rent income of £34,626.

Rights have been reserved for farm traffic to share use of this road.

The sale of Whisby Hall Farm is subject to a 30-year overage clause that requires 30% of any uplift in value on the grant of planning consent for energy generation, energy storage, minerals or residential and commercial development to be passed to the vendor.

Brown & Co has lotted the farm into five, setting a guide price of £5.375m for the whole.

Whisby Hall Farm © Brown & Co

Sussex land and yard has planning for house

On a smaller scale, Savills has brought Reads Farm, near Uckfield, East Sussex, to the market at a guide price of £1.9m.

This sheep farm in the High Weald national landscape (formerly the High Weald area of outstanding natural beauty) has 132 acres of Grade 3 land.

This is mostly down to permanent pasture, with about 29 acres of broadleaf woodland.

At the heart of the holding lies a newly created yard with a 2017-built steel-framed six-bay open-fronted barn.

There is planning consent to convert a range of brick-built former bull pens into a three-bedroom farmhouse.

Reads Farm © Savills