Andrew Samuel could, arguably, have timed it better, but his decision to set up his own rural land agency business in February 2005 has proved to be the
right one.
Twenty years on, now specialising in delivering strategic professional advice to a broad range of farmers, landowners and institutions, alongside the estate agency arm of the business, he looked back fondly at the birth of Samuel & Son.
“I set up the business at the dawn of the basic payments regime, specifically to help farmers complete their applications and maximise their return from what was a complex new payment system,” he recalled.
“I was 32 at the time and my then-wife and I had one son and another baby on the way. Our second son arrived on 16 May, exactly the same date as the first basic payments application deadline.
“I finished the last application as my wife was going into labour, but that wasn’t the end of the story. While I was in the maternity suite, I received a call from an accountant in London who wanted me to help a client submit BPS paperwork by fax ahead of the midnight deadline.
“When I spoke to the client, it turned out to be none other than a legendary guitarist with one of the biggest and most enduring rock bands of all time. He asked where I was speaking from, and when I told him it was the car park at Eastbourne General, he invited me to lunch instead, and sometime later I enjoyed an interesting tour of his smallholding.”
Focusing on basic payments proved to be a smart move for Andrew, who left Newcastle University with a degree in agriculture and followed that up by studying rural estate management at the Royal Agricultural College before gaining valuable and varied experience with Strutt & Parker and Charles Clark & Co.
“I had to sit down once a year with my clients to talk though their BPS applications, and by doing that I learned about all their other initiatives on the farm, and in many cases that highlighted areas like planning applications, valuations, sales, tenancy agreements and other areas where I could offer my services,” he pointed out.
Samuel & Son became a thriving business, and after starting out in an attic room at home, Andrew took on a unit at Broad Farm, Hellingly, before outgrowing that and opening an estate agency in Heathfield in 2007, by this time working with Dan Page, Rhiannon Masters and James Hamilton.
In 2016 Andrew acquired the Hunter Coster estate agency in Horam, East Sussex, running it independently before merging it with Samuel & Son in 2018. By then his team included William Fraser and Sam Dutton, together with “a raft of important support staff”.
The Covid-19 pandemic saw the business refocus, with Heathfield closing and the business moving to the Horam office where the property sales and lettings team had always been based. Andrew also began offering a more specialist overview of his clients’ business affairs while outsourcing other areas of work to fellow professionals.
“I now specialise in offering advice in areas such as succession planning, property and financial issues, working in a team alongside clients’ solicitors, financial advisors and the like,” he said.
“There is no place these days for a ‘Jack of all trades’ when it comes to supporting farmers and landowners in making big decisions about their property, their family and their future. Instead, I aim to provide strategic direction while bringing in the right advisers to help tackle specific issues.”
With the music industry as close-knit as the farming community tends to be, connections prompted by that first ‘rock ‘n’ roll’ meeting meant that Andrew’s customer base grew to include other famous names.
“A lot of celebrities are now landowners, and while they may be asset rich, they still face the same land management, taxation and succession challenges as the rest of us. They need advice and I have 30 years of experience to offer them.
“I feel honoured to have found myself accepted, in many cases, as a valued and trusted member of a team of advisers helping families manage their assets and property. It’s fascinating, complex but ultimately fulfilling work and I feel fortunate to be able to play my part in it.”
One such client is Tony Penrose, whose mother Lee Miller was a 1930s Vanity Fair model who became a war correspondent with the Washington Post and managed to get access to Hitler’s apartment in Berlin and to Buchenwald concentration camp at the end of the war.
“I help Tony manage the estate and farm that surrounds Farley Farmhouse and is home to the archive of war photos, letters and artworks previously owned by his mother and which recently featured in the Hollywood blockbuster film Lee, starring Kate Winslet. It’s challenging at times, but also a great privilege,” he said, adding: “Without clients like Tony, all of my other clients, my colleagues, contacts, family and friends, this 20-year – but continuing – journey would not have been as rewarding as it has proved to be so far and I would like to thank them all for their support over the years.”
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