It took two to tango
Penny Churchill reviews the property market of the past year
It’s hardly surprising that the uncertainty surrounding the outcome of the Brexit negotiations should have cast a long shadow over the workings of the country-house market in 2018. More surprising, perhaps, is the fact that the market worked at all—and work it did, in some unexpected ways and places, as Rupert sweeting of Knight Frank explains. ‘Generally speaking, buyers have used Brexit as an excuse to put things on hold, but when a special house or estate came along and they saw others bidding, they were happy to pitch in and pay the price to get it.’
He continues: ‘Buyers were nervous of going it alone, which resulted in more top properties being offered on the open market and fewer being sold privately than in recent years, with some notable cases of competition among bidders resulting in sales achieved for more than the guide price. Another encouraging trend was the level of interest shown by overseas buyers at the top end
of the market, helped no doubt by the weakness of sterling versus the dollar.’
For Mr Sweeting, the ‘standout’ sale of the year was that of the diverse, 2,177-acre Sutton Hall estate near Woodbridge, Suffolk, which sold to a UK buyer for more than its £31.5 million guide, within four months of its launch onto the market in July through Knight Frank and Ipswich-based agents Landbridge. The thriving mixed-farming and sporting estate, which has 3½ miles of frontage to the River Deben and its own private quay, was acquired by Sir Cuthbert Quilter as part of his Bawdsey estate and assembled over a period of some 20 years.
At its heart is a Grade Ii-listed, eightbedroom Georgian manor house set amid formal gardens and parkland, plus 11 farmhouses and cottages, as well as two barns with planning consent for conversion to residential use.
An equally fast-moving scenario played out in June, following the launch onto the market of the idyllic, 278-acre Aylesfield House estate, set in rolling Hampshire countryside near Alton at a guide price of £11m through Knight Frank. Built in 1933 around the core of a 17th-century farmhouse for a member of the Westbury family, Aylesfield House was the home of the late Sir Robin Mcalpine from 1948 until his death in 1993.
Restored and remodelled by the recent vendors, who purchased the estate in 2003, the immaculate Hampshire holding soon found a willing buyer—at comfortably more than the £11m guide.
Strutt & Parker and Knight Frank were joint agents in the successful sale of the spectacular, 257-acre Kingstone Lisle Park estate near Wantage, with its recently refurbished Grade Ii*-listed 13-bedroom mansion, considered by many to be one of Oxfordshire’s most beautiful houses.
Having been on and off the market for the best part of four years, it came to the open market this year at a guide of ‘offers over £20m’, much to the delight of Will Whittaker of Strutt & Parker’s estates and farm agency, for whom ‘this magical Oxfordshire sporting estate was a fun property to sell, precisely because it came to the open market, thereby attracting attention from all round the world, whereas most of the sales we handle in this price bracket tend to take place off-market’.
‘Buyers of country estates of this calibre tend to have exacting requirements,’ continues Mr Whittaker, ‘such as a trout stream running through it, hills for shooting, no public rights of way or road noise and a handsome house at its centre for entertaining. In the end, Kingstone Lisle was bought by a buyer from France who was specifically looking for a property within 30 minutes of his polo team’s base at Cowdray Park, West Sussex. His maximum budget was £8m, but he ended up buying a historic estate in Oxfordshire for £21.6m!’
The same agents were perfectly in step when it came to the sale of another Oxfordshire gem—the 125-acre Coombe Park estate on the banks of the river at Whitchurch-onThames—described by Mark Mcandrew of Strutt & Parker as ‘a faded glory that time forgot’ when it launched in the autumn at a guide price of ‘excess £10m’.
Centred around a derelict 18th-century mansion with numerous outbuildings and vast development potential, this ‘impossibly romantic’, rare Thames-side estate attracted interest from around the globe and sold for about £8m to a buyer who plans to restore and live in the house and convert the former stables into offices.
For Crispin Holborow of Savills’ private office, who oversees major country-house and estates sales worldwide, two notable estate sales that took place in 2017 set up the top end of the market for 2018. They were the picturesque 762-acre Bibury Court estate near Cirencester, Gloucestershire, sold by Knight Frank with a house by Quinlan Terry and a price tag of £17.5m, and the 1,044-acre Stubhampton farming estate at Tarrant Gunville on the Dorset/wiltshire border, sold through Savills with planning consent for a new 15,000sq ft country house, at a guide price of ‘excess £13m’.
For Savills, the sale of the Cooper family’s 1,349-acre Hexton Manor estate at Hexton, in the foothills of the Chilterns AONB, a Hertfordshire rarity, was one of the highlights of 2018.
Another encouraging trend was the level of interest shown by overseas buyers
A model mixed-farming and sporting estate set around an impressive Grade Iilisted manor house, with one of the finest high-bird pheasant shoots in the northern Home Counties, Hexton Manor was launched in May and sold in two lots with minimum fuss—and competitive bidding on both lots—at a guide price of £19m for the whole. ‘If only all sales were as orderly as this one,’ sighs Mr Holborow.
In contrast, it took the best part of five years to find a buyer for historic Woodmancote Place near Henfield, West Sussex, at its original asking price of £7.95m, its owner having steadfastly refused to reduce the price throughout that time.
Set in 149 acres of lakeside gardens and grounds, the romantic Tudor manor, once owned by Sir Edward Seymour, who was executed for treason in 1552, was bought by a local businessman who had been patiently watching from the sidelines, waiting for the right time to make his move, reveals James Mackenzie, head of selling agent Strutt & Parker’s national country department.
You’d be forgiven for thinking that the open-market launch of a 13,958sq ft castle in Cornwall, at a guide price of ‘excess £7m’ in April, would be a lost cause under present trading conditions, but you’d be wrong, says Mr Mackenzie with glee. Having set the ball rolling on elegant, Grade I-listed Ince Castle, which stands on its own 190-acre, private peninsula overlooking the River Lynher, near Saltash, in the Tamar Valley AONB, joint agents Knight Frank and Strutt & Parker were soon reeling in enquiries from around the world.
The agents eventually netted a South Africa-based buyer for the 13-bedroom castle, beautifully restored by its long-term owners, Viscount Lennox-boyd of Merton and his wife, Alice, following a fire that gutted the building in 1988.
Like Ince Castle, another special country house to rise phoenix-like from the ashes of a disastrous fire was Grade Ii-listed
The Old Rectory at West Woodhay, in the North Wessex Downs AONB.
Launched on the market in May, at a guide price of £7.75m through Knight Frank and Savills, the impeccably restored Georgian former rectory, set in 14 acres of wonderful gardens and grounds on the edge of the 2,000-acre West Woodhay estate of which it was once a part, shook the market to its core by finding a buyer—reputedly at well over the guide price—almost before the ink had dried on the sales particulars.
More than ever in 2018, successful sales have depended on the willingness of vendors to set a ‘sensible’ guide price from the outset—whatever ‘sensible’ is, of course.
One example of a swift and successful sale for more than the guide price was that of handsome Bowhill House at West Stoke, which launched on the market with Savills at a guide price of £4.95m in May and sold for £5.15m in July.
For sale for the first time in 30 years, the imposing Edwardian-style house, built in about 1936, stands in splendid gardens and grounds on the edge of West Stoke village, gateway to the Kingley Vale National Nature Reserve, a particularly beautiful area of the South Downs National Park.
Less straightforward was the sale of gorgeous, Grade Ii-listed Martyr Worthy Manor, with 36 acres of gardens, pasture and woodland in the beautiful Itchen Valley, four miles from Winchester, which came to the market through Savills in June 2017, at a guide price of £6.25m, but failed to find a buyer.
Relaunched on the market this year, with a revised guide price of £4.65m, it sold in October for about that figure.
With the central London market supposedly in the doldrums, who’d want to be a London agent, I wonder. Well, Miles Meacock of Strutt & Parker’s Notting Hill office is more than happy, having secured the recent sale—jointly with Knight Frank—
of 91, Clarendon Road, one of Notting Hill’s most sought-after streets (Property Market,
October 10, 2018).
The stylish, semi-detached, five-bedroom family house, set behind a secure, gated driveway, with off-street parking and a large, west-facing garden, went to an overseas buyer, at a guide price of £13m.
‘Nowadays, anyone lucky enough to own a home in Notting Hill rarely wants to leave and families who buy in the best roads are likely to stay for anything from 20 to 40 years,’ Mr Meacock says cheerfully. ‘However, they do tend to migrate to the Cotswolds at weekends, where they will happily buy a weekend retreat within easy reach of Oxfordshire’s Soho House Farmhouse.’