BIG ENGLISH DEAL

Evening Star, Issue 19783, 6 February 1928, Page 3

BIG ENGLISH DEAL

LORD DERBY SELLS EXTENSIVE GROUND RENTS. The trustees of the Earl of Derby have, it is stated officially, sold, by private treaty, to Mr Philip E. Hill, a portion of Lord Derby's extensive estates consisting of freehold ground rents secured from 22.000 houses situate in the City of Liverpool and Bootle, and the townships of Kirkdale and Walton, states ‘The Times.’ Lord Derby retains the manorial rights and gifts of livings. The purchase price is approximately £1,750,000, and the transaction is probably the largest single estate deal of recent years. Lord Derby owned practically the whole of Bootle, excepting the land occupied by the docks. The manor came into the possession of the family in the eighteenth century. In 1847 the then Earl of Derby sold a large tract of’ the foreshore—some 270,000 square yards—to the Dock Trust for £90,000. Lord Derby, in June, 1925, sold the whole of his Bury and Pilkington estates, with certain small exceptions. The price was reported to be in the neighborhood of £1,000,000, but Lord Derby at the time denied he had received that amount, and said the sum was considerably less. In 1924 Lord Derby sold the whole of his land in Colne to the local Co-operative Society, while still retaining the ancestral seat of the Stanley family at Knowsley. Mr Philip E. Hill is a well-known London financier, and one of the directors of Beecham Estates and Pills, Ltd. He has figured in a number of transactions involving large sums.