The final hotel in the Von Essen’s portfolio, the upmarket Ston Easton Park near Shepton Mallet, has been sold to former Dragon’s Den investor James Caan, pictured.
The 22-bedroom hotel, a Palladian mansion turned four-star hotel in the Mendip Hills, was sold by Christie & Co to Mr Caan’s private equity firm Hamilton Bradshaw for a reported £3m on behalf of administrators Ernst & Young.
Christie & Co director and location manager Martin Davis said: "That we were able to sell this entire group of hotels in little more than a year, and when the market conditions – including the lack of available debt finance – could at best be described as difficult, is symptomatic of the fact that there will always be a market for high quality assets like those on the von Essen Hotels estate.
"We've thoroughly enjoyed working with the administrators Ernst & Young on this process and wish all the new owners well with their new business acquisitions."
Bath-based Von Essen went into administration in April 2011 with debts of nearly £300m.
At the time it owned 28 prestige hotels in the UK and France, including Bishopstrow, near Warminster, and Woolley Grange, near Bradford-on-Avon, as well as Bath's iconic Royal Crescent Hotel. It also owned Cliveden in Buckinghamshire, the former country house famous for its role in the Profumo scandal of the 1960s.
