After 400 Years, Viscount Decides To Give Logistics Property A Try

There are some things you put off. Days, weeks, months pass before they reach the top of the to-do list.

But for the Newdegate family, developing logistics floorspace has been a long time coming. About 440 years, in fact.

The delay is perhaps attributable to the family's 1582 decision to turn their back on anything that smacked of urban life, a determination dramatised by selling their London home and moving to the Warwickshire countryside at Arbury.

The Arbury Estate has now swallowed its centuries-old reservations and applied to Nuneaton and Bedworth council for permission to develop a 1M SF logistics scheme on 64 acres at Faultlands Farm, Nuneaton.

The site, part of which is a former quarry, is close to the A444 linking to junction three of the M6 motorway.

An outline planning application will go before Nuneaton and Bedworth councillors on Wednesday 30 July.

Planning officials are recommending approval.

“The site has a critical mass to create a high quality environment, provide flexibility to respond to a range of requirements and be in a position to maintain supply opportunity over a long development period," a planning report said.

James Fitzroy Newdegate, 4th Viscount of Daventry, picked an excellent moment to explore logistics. The planning application comes as developer St. Modwen goes in for planning on a site at nearby Stratford-upon-Avon where Unipart will expand into a 75K SF unit and an unnamed global logistics business will take 183K SF.

The Newdegate family has been through various transformations, glorying at various times in the names Newdigate-Newdegate and Fitzroy-Newdegate. The current occupant of Arbury Hall is the holder of a title minted as recently as 1943.