Apley Estate/Stockwood House (Shrops)

Owned by the current Lord Hamilton, the vast Apley Estate includes 8,500 acres of land and approximately 300 residential, commercial and agricultural properties located close to Bridgnorth in Shropshire. The estate has a Farm Shop and an award-winning wedding business (based around the Estate’s Stockwood House). Almost inevitably, the estate also offers bird shooting although there is almost no mention of that on the estate’s website. Surprising given that Lady Harriet blogged proudly about Apley Smoked Pheasant in 2019, a shooting magazine declared it one of the six best pheasant shoots in the country in 2020, and the blurb on Guns On Pegs (written mostly by the shoots themselves) says “the shoot is organised over two separate beats…it retains the high quality of sport and entertainment that it has been renowned for over a century.” Oddy the same text says “We shoot 10 times on each beat over the season to give the birds time to fully recover between shoots”, which suggests some sort of phoenix-like rising from the ashes of dead birds or even a wildlife hospital, but obviously means nothing of the sort…