Guy Ritchie to build a burial ground at his country estate

HE’S amassed a fortune of well over £100 million, courtesy of a slew of box- office hits in which unsavoury characters invariably meet abrupt and brutal ends, their remains left blood- spattered in back streets or incinerated in caravans. But Guy Ritchie has no intention of going out in a similarly indecorous manner.

Far from it: I can reveal that the film director, 55, who made his name with Lock, Stock And Two Smoking Barrels, has set his heart on being buried on his 1,134-acre Wiltshire estate.

In fact, he’s identified exactly where he intends to be laid to rest, amid the holm oaks on ‘a grassy hillside’ overlooking Ashcombe, pictured, the idyllic Georgian manor house once occupied by society photographer Sir Cecil Beaton, which has been Ritchie’s country retreat since he and his first wife, Madonna, acquired it for £9 million in 2001.

‘The proposal is for a small private burial ground walled in the local greenstone and flint chequer board, set high on the hillside overlooking the house and the estate,’ explains Timothy Reeve, planning agent for Ritchie and his wife, model Jacqui Ainsley.

The couple, right, have taken care to ensure that every detail of the

32 ft- by- 26 ft plot is scrupulously deferential to the landscape, with its gates made by a blacksmith.

Additionally, there will only be ‘ very distant and partial views’ of it from the right of way running through the estate. This is evidence, says Reeve, in an application to the local council, that it’s ‘not intended to make a statement’ but to underscore ‘the family’s tie to the land’.

Might there be space for ‘Madge’, with whom Ritchie shares sons Rocco and David, adopted in 2006? ‘In the summertime,’ she once said of Ashcombe, ‘it’s the most beautiful place in the world.’

It remained with Ritchie after their divorce in 2008.