Buy our £25 million stately home and we will throw in half the village
With rolling countryside stretching to the sea, a pheasant shoot and ornamental lakes, Kelling Hall is a stunning estate even by the standards of the great stately homes.
But the £25 million price tag for this Norfolk country pile, built by the Shell Oil dynasty, comes with an extra bonus – most of the next door village as well.
The 13-bedroom Arts and Crafts manor house, surrounded by 1600 acres, includes 10 properties from the nearby Kelling village as well as most of the land around the settlement.
Built by Dutch oil industrialist Sir Henri Deterding, who founded Royal Dutch Shell, the Grade II listed manor house was re-built in 1914 in the style of a grand hunting lodge featuring trophy room and banqueting hall.
The estate itself has seven cottages, a seven-bedroom converted barn in 40 acres and a mini-emclave of 11 second homes and holiday cottages set in 14 acres of land.
A portfolio of 10 properties in Kelling village, its playing field and a development plot are also up for sale.
Sir Henri’s grandson James Deterding and his wife Shirley are selling up because the sprawling estate has become too big to look after.
“It is with great sadness that we have found it too much to cope with and we want to retire” Mrs Deterding said.
“It has been a very difficult decision my husband was born in this house – but we want to retire to a smaller property.
“Farming is difficult – we have had a good harvest this year but it goes up and down and it is a huge estate.”
The Kelling estate was designed to be the finest sporting estate in Norfolk with the Grade II listed flint and brick hall built for entertaining shooting parties.
As well as farming, with the land growing oil seed rape, malting barley, sugar beet and potatoes, the Deterding family has diversified the business to cater for hard agricultural times.
Being by the sea, the family saw its potential as a tourist attraction and converted a number of farm buildings into the Lowes holiday cottage development, also up for sale.
James Laing, a partner at Strutt & Parker in London, which is selling both the Kelling and Westacre estates, said yesterday: “It is very unusual for an estate like this to come to the market.
“Not only does it overlook the sea but is a fine example of arts and crafts architecture. Being built in the 20th century it has another great advantage over older houses – plumbing.”
The sale comes as another major estate, High House at Westacre in West Norfolk, has gone on the market with the same estate agent, Strutt & Parker, for offers above £9.5m.
Louis de Soissons, of Savills, said it was “unprecedented” for two massive estates to go on to the market at the same time.
He said: “The sales are perhaps indicative of the fact, which many people believe, that the agricultural market is peaking.”
Owner Shirley Deterding outside the Main Hall Photo: ALBANPIX
Royal Dutch Shell conspired directly with Hitler, financed the Nazi Party, was anti-Semitic and sold out its own Dutch Jewish employees to the Nazis. Shell had a close relationship with the Nazis during and after the reign of Sir Henri Deterding, an ardent Nazi, and the founder and decades long leader of the Royal Dutch Shell Group. His burial ceremony, which had all the trappings of a state funeral, was held at his private estate in Mecklenburg, Germany. The spectacle (photographs below) included a funeral procession led by a horse drawn funeral hearse with senior Nazis officials and senior Royal Dutch Shell directors in attendance, Nazi salutes at the graveside, swastika banners on display and wreaths and personal tributes from Adolf Hitler and Reichsmarschall, Hermann Goring. Deterding was an honored associate and supporter of Hitler and a personal friend of Goring.
Deterding was the guest of Hitler during a four day summit meeting at Berchtesgaden. Sir Henri and Hitler both had ambitions on Russian oil fields. Only an honored personal guest would be rewarded with a private four day meeting at Hitler’s mountain top retreat.
IN JULY 2007, MR BILL CAMPBELL (ABOVE, A RETIRED GROUP AUDITOR OF SHELL INTERNATIONAL SENT AN EMAIL TO EVERY UK MP AND MEMBER OF THE HOUSE OF LORDS: 
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A head-cut image of Alfred Donovan (now deceased) appears courtesy of The Wall Street Journal.
