Home > The Magazine > Business

Monday 7 July 2008

Dare to dream and make your ultimate trip a reality

The latest culture as recommended by our staff

Liz Anderson

Liz suggests

Email registration

Free weekly email update

Great products and special offers for Spectator readers

Click here for great value reader offers and events

Click here for the latest Spectator Wine Offers

The ultimate trophy asset for the new-money elite

Dominic Prince

Wednesday, 12th March 2008

Dominic Prince says grouse shooting attracts the super-rich — and demand will keep estate prices rising

Grouse shooting and grouse moors have historically been the preserve of the British aristocracy. For anyone interested in game, shooting grouse is about as good as it gets. If pheasant shooting is a yacht, grouse shooting is a luxury private liner reserved only for the very rich.

Owning a grouse moor is like owning a very expensive, extremely high-maintenance toy — and there are a group of buyers who are making grouse moors one of the most sought-after assets in the land. With only 300 moors in Britain, specialist agents say that there’s a queue of newly wealthy buyers but very few sellers, and consequently prices are heading skyward. The people buying moors are invariably self-made men who are not worried about reaping an income from this most prestigious of sporting trophy assets.

However, according to the Moorland Association, a grouse moor let out on a commercial basis can in fact yield quite significant revenues. Shooting runs from the Glorious 12th of August to 10 December, and the association says letting out 16 shooting days in the season could bring an income of just under £300,000.

Last year one of England’s premier grouse moors, Wemmergill near Barnard Castle, recorded its most successful season ever: more than 16,000 birds were shot. The moor is not owned by a grand landed family but by a former chicken farmer turned pub entrepreneur, Michael Cannon.

Cannon joined the list of the new-moneyed sporting elite when he paid over £5 million for the moor in 2006. He purchased it from the Earl of Strathmore, the late Queen Mother’s great-nephew, and has invested another £3 million in environmental improvement programmes at Wemmergill, planting more than 250,000 trees and increasing the wild bird population sixfold. The moor sustained 48 days of grouse shooting last season, and remains one of the finest of its kind in the world.

In the past five years new money has been the saviour of many moors that had fallen into decline. Last year David Ross, co-founder of Carphone Warehouse with the better-known Charles Dunstone, paid £22 million for a total of 11,000 acres in North Yorkshire — £7 million more than the guide price. The moor came with a grand house plus several let farms and cottages, and Ross is considered to have bagged a bargain. It was one of seven moors that changed hands in the UK last year.

1 | 2 | 3 Next page

More articles from: Dominic Prince | this section

Print this article | Email to a friend | Permalink | Comment

Post this entry to: del.icio.us | Digg | Newsvine | NowPublic | Reddit

The market’s favourite scapegoat

Christopher Fildes

Christopher Fildes on short selling

Fading memories of the Raj in the tea gardens of Assam

Richard Orange

Richard Orange says the Indian tea industry is enjoying a revival — but that the traditional tea-planters’ way of life, established by the British, is passing into history

There is not much to distinguish Dhanesheva Kurmi from the rest of the crowd at the Hautely Tea Estate, a remote garden an hour and a half’s bumpy drive from the Assamese town of Jorhat.

Emperor Soros’s new clothes

Matthew Lynn

Matthew Lynn says hedge-fund pioneer and currency speculator George Soros is still a brilliant player of markets — but as a philosopher, frankly, he’s incomprehensible

Taki is right: we are all still snobs

Vassi Chamberlain

Vassi Chamberlain was taken to task by the poor little Greek boy over her powers of social observation. On reflection, she concedes that snobbery has never truly gone out of fashion