Pub financier Hugh Osmond’s agricultural holding, Well Barn Farming, has lost a legal dispute over farming rights on land neighbouring its prestigious Oxfordshire pheasant shoot.
The High Court found that Pump House Copse, a 1.1 acre farm adjoining the Well Barn Estate, near Henley, did form part of a parcel of land leased by Well Barn’s predecessor to farmers Peter and Janet Backhouse in 1990.
Paul Morgan QC held that although the farming arrangement agreed between the Backhouses and Well Barn’s predecessor, Thomas Greenham, had been “non-secure”, it had still amounted to a year-to-year tenancy under the Agricultural Holdings Act 1986.
Osmond purchased Pump House Copse and the Well Barn Estate, one of the UK’s most prominent pheasant and partridge shoots, from Slough Estates in 1999.The latter had acquired the land following its 1989 takeover of Bilton Agricultural Investments.
The Backhouses, the freehold owners of a local farm known as Fullers Firs, had allowed Greenham to cut back undergrowth on their property in order to use the land for shooting. The judge held that this had amounted to consideration given for the tenancy arrangement and added that Pump House Court had also been included in a rent memorandum agreed between the couple and Bilton in 1996.
Well Barn Farming Ltd v Backhouse and another Chancery Division (Mr Paul Morgan QC, sitting as a deputy judge of the division) 14 July 2005.
Zia Bhaloo (instructed by Bircham Dyson Bell) appeared for the claimant; GB Purves (instructed by NC Brothers & Co of Reading) appeared for the defendants.
References: EGi Legal News 14/07/2005
