Our major sponsor is Yattendon Estate and we are very grateful to Lord Illiffe who kindly gives us the use of his fields and his team of Estate staff on the day and throughout the year so we thought it would be nice to give a quick overview of this very local yet global company.
The Yattendon Estate is the amalgamation of several smaller estates acquired by the first Lord Iliffe between 1925 and 1940. Following his death in 1960, he was succeeded by his son, the second Lord Iliffe, who handed over the Chairmanship of Yattendon Estates Ltd to his nephew, the present Lord Iliffe in 1987.
The parent company has many interests outside of the Estate including marine leisure, property and local media. It has operations in the UK, Europe, Canada and North America.
The Estate’s portfolio comprises let residential, commercial, and agricultural tenancies. The majority of the agricultural land is farmed in hand, growing milling wheat, malting barley, feed barley, oil seed rape, maize, beans, peas, oats and temporary grass . They run a commercial timber enterprise and are one of the UK’s largest producers of Christmas trees. The Estate also runs various businesses including the Village Stores and Post Office, Vicars Game Ltd, Renegade Brewery and now, excitingly enough for us locals, the famous Pot Kiln pub in Frilsham has been bought by the Estate to be run by local landlord Rob McGill.
The estate used to have several dairy herds, pedigree Hereford cows and sheep but due to falling prices over the decades, it is now purely arable. Some of the buildings still remain, converted for other uses such as the Renegade Brewery & Taproom. There is a small herd of British White cattle which which graze the parkland around the village.
The Forestry Manager is responsible for the management of the 907 ha of commercial woodland and between 10 – 15,000 new trees are planted each year.
There are currently 1.2 million Christmas trees growing on the Estate and between 40,000 and 75,000 Christmas trees are sold every year, both for the wholesale and retail markets.
Vicars Game provide high quality meat and game to wholesale and retail markets, anything from Michelin starred restaurants to local pubs and from their farm shop in Ashampstead, members of the public.
Renegade Brewery, originally West Berkshire Brewery, began in a small unit on the estate and when the business started to grow the estate found the then tenants more suitable premises. In December 2021 the Yattendon Group took the opportunity to acquire the brewery’s business when it came to market and has developed into its current form.
There are over 50 commercial properties across the estate from small lock-up and workshop type units, through to modern distribution and logistics space and office space including a hairdresser, a florist, an airfield hangar, 2 pubs and nursery.
Cottages and houses make up a large proportion of the let portfolio and with over 170 residential properties spread across the local area, with maintenance and improvements along with the maintenance of the public spaces on the estate is very important there is a dedicated in-house maintenance team who ensure the village and surrounding areas are kept looking clean and tidy.