Buckhurst Park (E.Sussex)

Owned by the 11th Earl De La Warr since 2018, “Buckhurst Estate has been owned by the Sackville family for some 900 years and the house, Buckhurst Park, is still a much loved family home…Your wedding should be the most memorable day of your life – and Buckhurst Park is designed to make it unforgettable.” For anyone marrying in the autumn and winter, Buckhurst can make the day memorable for us wildlife-friendly folk by providing a background of guns going off and birds falling out of the sky. Like far too many estates, Buckhurst pretties itself up for the summer but in the ‘shooting season’ it’s a different matter: “The Estate offers good topography and picturesque scenery presenting a range of challenging drives, shooting mixed pheasant and partridge and also the occasional duck, geese, woodcock [a bird of conservatrion concern in the UK], etc.” What the ‘etc’ would be we can only guess, because that little list covers almost every bird that shooters like to put holes in – at least everything that can be shot legally…