Rumours have been circulating for several weeks that ‘something’ is going on at Leadhills Estate in South Lanarkshire.
This estate, currently serving TWO General Licence restrictions after police found ‘clear evidence’ of wildlife crime (see here and here), has featured on this blog for years.
The rumours suggest that either the estate has been sold or the shooting rights have been sold, very recently. So far I haven’t seen any evidence to substantiate the claims but the rumours are persistent and are coming from multiple sources.
Leadhills Estate is hosting an ‘information day’ today at Leadhills Village Hall between 3pm-8pm, where the estate will ‘showcase ongoing plans‘. If any local blog readers happen to attend I’d be very interested to hear about it.
UPDATE 5th October 2022: Leadhills Estate ‘information day’ – an update (here)
Raptor Persecution UK 
Hi there,
I’m a Leadhills resident and went along to the exhibition. I had heard rumours that the estate was being sold but these are not true. Two small parcels of land have been sold for forestry but there is no other sale planned.
The exhibition consisted of various information boards under different headings, e.g. nature, leisure, renewable energy. It was presented as ‘plans’ but instead they were general notions about what the estate would like to do. I do not really feel better informed.
I took photos of the information boards and could send you these, but as photos the files would be too large for me to attach by email. I could send via WhatsApp if you were willing to supply a mobile number.
Kind regards,
Frances McIlwaine
it would be good if it was going the same way as Langholm.
Information online states that the Leadhills Estate is owned by two trusts, the Leadhills Trust and the Glengeith Trust. It comprises 19500 acres. This would be the usual arrangement when an aristocratic family owns an estate. The present title holder is Adrian Hope who has a Wikipaedia entry here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrian_Hope,_4th_Marquess_of_Linlithgow
There has been controversy over a link between him and the RSPB.
https://www.scotsman.com/news/environment/rspb-criticised-over-link-earl-who-owns-bird-poisoning-hopetoun-estate-1639145
I would doubt they plan to sell off land, or the estate. There are reports online that the shooting rights were sold to some Americans and they operated the shoots. These were dated c2004. There is another more recent report that they were looking to sell of shooting rights:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2008/apr/18/wildlife.conservation
I wonder if they are planning to do something to remove the estate from the shooting side of activities in the hope they can get the licences reinstated?