Upton Estate (Oxon)

“A family-owned estate in an area of outstanding natural beauty, straddling the Oxfordshire/Warwickshire boundary…comprising c. 2000 acres, the Estate is involved in a diverse range of rural activities from farming, wildlife conservation and woodland management.” Upton talks a very good game, referring to its Conservation and its Woodland (“carefully managed to help benefit wildlife”), but doesn’t seem to mention that it also hosts a hunt with very different ideas about wildlife: the Warwickshire, who West Mids Hunt Sabs said held their opening meet on the estate (at the Upton Viva National Hunt Stud and racing yard run by Robert Waley-Cohen) and whose fundraising Hunt Ball was held there in March 2022. The Warwickshire was back at Upton for an ‘Arabian Nights Ball’ in November 2024, again at the invitation of the Waley-Cohens. It’s impossible to believe that the Waley-Cohens don’t know about the Community Protection Notice the Warwickshire was issued with, the fact they were charged under the Hunting Act in March 2024, or that they have been the subject of damning Channel 4 news reports…which suggests a serious lack of giving a ****.