Three Appeal Court judges have ruled against the Earl of Cardigan and allowed the Savernake Estate’s two trustees to sell Tottenham House – the Earl’s Grade One listed, 100-room house just south east of Savernake Forest – under a conditional contract for sale drawn up in August 2013 for £11.25 million. The Court agreed with the Trustees request that the buyer’s name remain confidential, but there is press speculation that the buyer is the well-known property developer Jamie Ritblat.
In the Appeal Court ruling, Lord Justice Vos said: “For the reasons I have sought to give, I have formed the clear view that both Mr Lavender and Rose J were right to approve the trustees’ decision to sell Tottenham House under the intended sale arrangements. I would endorse their decisions and dismiss both appeals.“
Speaking exclusively to Marlborough News Online, after the judgement was published, Lord Cardigan said: “I am utterly gutted by the decision. I had a hotelier all lined up to lease the property, preserving the family’s links with the house they built, but now we have lost the freehold of a block of land that has been ours for nearly 1000 years.”
“My father will be equally appalled – the trustees have even included his brother’s grave in the sale.”
Before the Appeal Court ruling, Lord Cardigan had found a hotel developer to take a 999 year lease on Tottenham House and turn it into a five star hotel – and provide a host of jobs for the Marlborough area. Unlike previous plans for the House, it would not have included a golf course.
The two trustees – Wilson Cotton (a private client tax services partner with the City accountants Smith and Williamson) and John Moore (a legal clerk and former friend of the Earl who lives on the edge of the estate) – had agreed to sell Tottenham House in face of the Earl’s opposition.
During the two-day Appeal Court hearing (September 23 & 24), the barrister appearing for Lord Cardigan, Gilead Cooper QC, made what the Court described as ‘powerful submissions’ in relation to the sale process and the absence of an open marketing exercise. The Court ofAppeal was particularly critical of the fact that one of the Trustees – Mr Moore – had paid himself £118,000 to which he was not entitled. Lord Justice Vos said: “His (Earl of Cardigan)’s first and most important contention is that Mr Moore failed frankly to inform the court that he had been paid some £118,000 by way of remuneration, which was not permitted under the terms of the Trust since he was not and is not a professional trustee.” He goes on to add: “There is no doubt in my judgement that the fact that Mr Moore had been in unawful receipt of trust assets was relevant to the determination that both judges had to make.”
Support for the Earl’s attempts to block the sale of Tottenham House came from his father, the Marquess of Ailesbury, who is 89 and lives in London.
The Wiltshire Earl, 61-year-old David Brudenell-Bruce, has been in lengthy court struggles with the two trustees. Matters appear to have come to a head when the trustees told the Appeal Court that if they were successful in selling Tottenham House, they would then dissolve the trust and break-up the rest of the Savernake Estate.
The break-up could involve the sale of all the estate’s other properties and also the 4,500 acre Savernake Forest, which is the only privately owned forest in Britain. First designated as a Royal forest shortly after the Norman Conquest, it has never before been bought or sold.
The Earl of Cardigan is the thirty-first hereditary Warden of the forest – a line that goes back to 1067. The main thoroughfare through the forest, the 4.2 mile beech-lined Grand Avenue is the longest avenue in Britain. Since 1939 the forest’s management and timber rights have been leased to the Forestry Commission – it has a 999 year lease.
There have been four Tottenham Houses on the site. All of the house you can see today dates from the 1820s. Capability Brown was engaged to redesign the parkland and gardens. Later enlargements and improvements came when the Earl of Ailesbury was elevated to the title of 1st Marquess of Ailesbury and needed a grander home in which to entertain his guests.
The current Earl of Cardigan’s legal struggles against the trustees began in 2011 when paintings of all his ancestors were taken from Lord Cardigan’s home on the estate (he was not living in Tottenham House) and sold by the trustees while he was abroad.
These portraits included one of Henry VIII’s third Queen, Jane Seymour. It was her nephew who, in about 1570, built the family’s first house on the site of Tottenham House.
In a separate case, Lord Cardigan is asking the High Court to have the trustees removed for what the Court of Appeal described as follows: “On 5th October 2012, Lord Cardigan began the removal action against the trustees. He alleged breaches of confidentiality, financial mismanagement of the trust’s assets, a want of honesty, or at any rate candour, endangerment to trust property, a refusal to make disclosures, hostility, breach of privacy, criminal conduct and unlawful payment of remuneration to Mr Moore.
Allegations include Mr Moore pretending to be a barrister. Mr Moore had told Lord Cardigan and the family that he was a barrister, and had for decades provided legal advice to the Estate. It is now admitted that he is not a barrister, and has never passed the bar exams.
The High Court judge had reserved judgment on this action until the higher court – the Court of Appeal – made its judgment on the sale of Tottenham House.
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