The BBC is selling Caversham Park, near Reading in Berkshire, opening up a major development opportunity for the area.
The BBC has appointed Lambert Smith Hampton to market the asset as part of its ongoing savings plans and modernisation of its property portfolio.
Philip Hunter, director at Lambert Smith Hampton, said: “It is 93 acres in the most affluent part of Reading, just two miles from the train station. It is suitable for a wide variety of uses, subject to planning consent, such as residential, retirement, assisted-care, hotel, leisure, education or healthcare.”
The park’s history dates back to 1066 and is recorded in the Domesday Book with a value of £20.
Following fire damage, financial difficulties and the Second World War, it was bought by the BBC in the 1940s and became the headquarters of BBC Monitoring.
Staff would transcribe and summarise 240 broadcasts per day into a daily digest, then delivered to London by war despatch drivers.
BBC Monitoring also played a key role in tapping communications by Nazi Germany’s propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, to newspaper and radio networks.
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