Marlborough News Online understands that the Crown Estate has sold the great majority of the 8,800 acre Savernake Estate to the privately owned Ramsbury Estates Limited. Tenants of the more than twenty farms included in the sale were notified on Friday evening (March 15.)
The Savernake Estate was bought by the Crown in 1950 and has annual revenues of about one million pounds. The Savernake Estate includes fifty-six houses attached to farms and thirty-one directly let homes. It is not clear whether any of the latter are included in this sale.
The Crown Estate will be retaining about one hundred acres of Savernake lands which include the two fields west of the Salisbury Road at the Business Park roundabout that are earmarked for a major housing development for about 230 homes – and probably a hotel.
It is understood that the rights of existing farm tenants will not change. In the past the Crown Estate has not sold many farms in this area and this sale is being described as being ‘on a whole different scale’ and as ‘pretty surprising.’
Last year Ramsbury Estates bought two Crown Estate farms beside the A4.
Some of the land in the current sale has been farmed by families over three generations. It is being said that some tenants are aggrieved that they were not offered first refusal to buy the land they farm.
Profits from the Crown Estate’s operations now go directly to the Treasury, and it is not clear whether this sale is due to the Crown Estate re-balancing its portfolio away from agricultural properties or to pressure from the Treasury to release cash to help with the government’s finances.
Ramsbury Estates Limited is one of the business enterprises of Stefan Persson, the Swedish billionaire who founded the H&M fashion chain. Ramsbury Estates already include about 9,000 acres ‘straddling the Kennet valley’. The company also owns the Ramsbury Brewery and Ramsbury’s Bell Inn.
Marlborough News Online is seeking further details of the sale – watch this space.
Additional reporting:
Companies House documents show that as at 29 April 2012 Mr Persson was the sole shareholder in Ramsbury Estates Limited – with 3,369,366 Preference Shares and two Ordinary Shares. And documents show that from 1 January 2010 Mr Persson is ‘usually resident’ in Sweden.
Forbes’ ‘The World’s Billionaires’ list puts Mr Persson at number twelve with a net worth of $28 billion.
Earlier this month, Malmesbury-based Sir James Dyson, the vacuum cleaner inventor and billionaire, bought 17,000 acres of farmland in Lincolnshire. It is believed he paid some £150 million for the land.
According to Farmers’ Weekly, quoting the land agents Smiths Gore, the average value of farmland in England reached £9,100 per acre in the final three months of 2012.
It’s official: Savernake Hospital to be owned by Great Western Hospital
