Overview
- Jacqueline and David Wadsley have put the 164-acre Cow Croft Field Farm on the market in two lots with a combined guide price of £1.378m, and they are open to separate offers for the buildings including Bleak House.
- The couple withdrew a proposal to convert five barns into 10 homes after council ecology advice said the application lacked required wildlife surveys and could affect bats, breeding birds, reptiles and nearby badgers.
- Norfolk County Council’s highways officer judged the single-lane access inadequate, estimated about 60 extra vehicle movements a day from the ten-home plan and recommended scaling it back to no more than four homes.
- The shelved application used permitted development rights, which let farmers convert certain buildings without a full planning application but still trigger checks by ecology and highways officers.
- Tony Martin left most of his roughly £2.5m estate to Jacqueline Wadsley, and Bleak House remains notorious from the 1999 shooting of a teenage intruder, a stigma the sellers say still shapes interest in the site.