Estate for sale: Trevalga in Devon

Selling a village lock, stock is a strange and even savage English custom that despite the heartache it can cause, takes place with unfortunate regularity.

Last year it was the Linkenholt estate in Berkshire (sold off for £25m) but this time round it’s Trevalga in North Devon, where a dying man’s wish is about to be broken after the school he gifted the village to in his will has, against his wishes, put it up for sale.

Marlborough College insist their charity status forces them to sell up regardless but this week the Charity Commission weighed in saying this was not true and that, as long as the college re-invests the profits, a sale is not necessary. To add to the political mix, the MP for North Devon is on the hunt for the real reason behind the sale and is taking the campaign to Parliament.

Before his death in 1959 Gerald Curgenven set up a trust for his 1,200 acre North Devon estate of Trevalga in which he willed the profits from the trust to his former school, Marlborough College, with a dying wish that the hamlet not be sold, broken up or the tenants removed.

For 51 years happiness has reigned but the Trust came to an end in June of this year, transferring absolute ownership from the Trustees to the college. Not content with the £170,000-a-year income, the college have put the Trevalga Estate on the market at £10 million.

Marlborough College is a registered charity and says it had been forced to put the estate up for sale rather than break charity laws on owning land as an investment. But it has now emerged that the college may be selling the estate for other reasons.

As registered charities, independent schools save £100 million in tax across the sector but the Charity Commission is clamping down and making them give back more to the community, such as taking in non-fee paying pupils. A plan to raise the finance to cover this lost revenue was hinted at in last year’s Marlborough College accounts: “a possible entitlement to the capital value of the Trevalga Estate has been identified”.

Until the sale is completed the 85 villagers’ future is uncertain. Belief in Gerald Curgenven’s wish to keep the hamlet unspoilt and allow them to remain had led some to spend up to £30,000 in home renovations. But it is now feared that if Trevalga is sold they will be evicted with eight week’s notice. Those on longer term tenancies worry their village community will go the same way as other areas in Cornwall where locals have been priced out of the market by wealthy second home owners.

The villagers do have a white knight in the form of North Cornwall MP Dan Rogerson who has started a campaign to prove that the £28,000-a-year college, with alumni such as Kate Middleton and Princess Eugenie, has an as-yet unidentified ulterior motive for selling Trevalga – and is to highlight the campaign in Parliament when it reconvenes on 6^th September.

You can join the battle to save Trevalga on its facebook page, which already has 1, 240 members.

For sale: one of the pretty stone cottages included in the £10m sell off

devon estate, land for sale, marlborough college, trevalga

This entry was posted on Friday, September 3rd, 2010 at 12:37 pm and is filed under In the News, Market, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.