With an asking price of £23m it is one of the most expensive Scottish estates to come on the market – but comes with the Queen as a neighbour.
Now a vast Aberdeenshire estate neighbouring Balmoral – which has been listed for sale for the first time in more than 500 years – has attracted a buyer.
Spanning 11,500 acres, in the heart of the Cairngorms National Park, the estate was leased by the Royal Family until the 1960s when the Baron of Abergeldie, John Gordon, and his wife Gillian assumed occupancy — moving into Abergeldie Castle on the River Dee.
The couple managed the entire estate themselves until Mr Gordon’s death late last year and his widow planned to find a new custodian for the lands and 34 buildings which are included in the sale.
Now it is listed on the estate’s own sale website as “under offer” after only being put up for sale in September.
The castle is not included in the sale as Mrs Gordon plans to continue living there, keeping some land around it for privacy.
“I couldn’t run it with 10 staff, but they did it themselves for 50 years,” said Gordon Fraser of selling agents Frasers & Mulligan previously.
“Hopefully it’ll go to somebody interested in looking after the interests of the land. And Gillian will be hands on in choosing the next custodian.”
Shooting and hunting rights over the estate are still let out to Balmoral, so the next owner could be in for a surprise should the neighbours ever come to tea.
The 34 buildings included in the sale are made up of houses, lodges and outhouses, the majority are rented out, around 10 are vacant and three are uninhabitable.
This is the first time the estate has been for sale since it was bestowed to the Gordon family by King James III in 1482. It is bordered to the north by the River Dee, a world-famous salmon fishing river, while low-ground farmland spans over 600 acres.
Abergeldie Castle not included
The A-listed castle lies on the southern banks of the River Dee, just east of Balmoral Castle and Crathie, and narrowly avoided being washed away by rising floodwaters during Storm Frank at the end of 2015.
The estate has some 2,683 acres (1,086 hectares) of woodland and many thousands of acres of land zoned for grant-supported woodland creation schemes to sustain and support the distinctive environment adding to the character of Royal Deeside.
Newly planted woodland and peatland restoration are further possibilities for income-generating carbon capture. The low ground farmland extends to over 600 acres throughout the estate and focuses mainly on livestock which can be developed exponentially to generate a profitable income stream.
The estate also holds salmon fishing rights on the internationally renowned River Dee and shooting rights on the land – rights that are presently leased to the Balmoral estate.
The sales brochure for Abergeldie reveals that the Royal Family have leased the sporting on the estate almost continuously since they bought Birkhall in Glen Muick – now the home of Prince Charles and Camilla – from the Gordon family in 1848:
In 2017 the 21,000-acre Tulchan estate 40 miles north of Abergeldie sold for £25 million to Yuri Shefler, a Russian vodka billionaire best known for the Stolichnaya brand, which he bought from state-owned VVO Soyuzplodoimport for $285,000 in 1997.