South African billionaire Koos Bekker is buying up a corner of England

South African billionaire Koos Bekker has bought more than 2,700 acres of the English countryside around his luxury hotel in Somerset, along with pubs, farmhouses and high street businesses, as he turns a corner of southwest England into a sprawling private estate.

Bekker, the chairman of Naspers Ltd. and Prosus NV, holds the land through Emily Estate (UK) Ltd., which trades as The Newt, according to an analysis by The Guardian. The holdings stretch across farmland around the towns of Bruton and Castle Cary and include The George, a pub in Castle Cary, as well as a delicatessen and a beauty salon. Last year the estate bought Yarlington Lodge, a Grade II-listed Georgian house about a mile away, which now sleeps 32 guests and comes with butlers, a private chef, a heated 22-meter pool and a cinema.

Even the railway station has been rebranded. Its sign now reads "Castle Cary for The Newt," and the station building houses the estate's café, farm shop and cheese room.

Neighbors push back

Some residents say the expansion has gone too far. "They are continuing to buy farmland, and I don't know when they will stop," said John Sykes, a neighbor. "I don't want to live somewhere that's just one man's estate."

Others have raised environmental concerns, The Guardian reported. Farmers suspect that new boreholes have dried parts of the River Brue, and some locals blame the estate's road building for making flash floods in 2023 worse. The Newt's farms are not certified organic and use pesticides. A small group of red squirrels kept in a pen drew criticism from rewilding campaigner Derek Gow, who said, "Keeping five squirrels in a cage does nothing for wildlife."

The Newt said in a statement that "fundamental to our philosophy is a love of gardens, respect for the land and a determination to share that passion with a broad audience." It said it employs more than 650 people who come from or live in the area.

A billionaire's garden hotel

Bekker and his wife, Karen Roos, who leads the design of the couple's estates, bought Hadspen House, a 17th-century manor that had belonged to the Hobhouse family for more than two centuries, with 16 acres in 2013. They opened it as The Newt in 2019, modeled on Babylonstoren, the farm and hotel they created near Franschhoek in South Africa's Cape winelands.

The estate now includes gardens, orchards planted with about 70 apple varieties, a cider operation and Villa Ventorum, a reconstruction of a Roman villa with a museum. Rooms start at about £800, or roughly $1,060, a night, and visitors who are not hotel guests pay an £85 annual fee to enter the grounds. The Newt has been the main sponsor of the Chelsea Flower Show since 2022.

The couple's hospitality portfolio also includes Vignamaggio, a wine estate in Tuscany, a farm near Amsterdam and a restored house in Cornwall that was the childhood home of Emily Hobhouse, the British campaigner remembered in South Africa for exposing conditions in British concentration camps during the Anglo-Boer War. A Bekker family trust sold Prosus shares worth 3.4 billion rand, about $206 million, in 2023 and 2.9 billion rand, about $176 million, in 2024, proceeds that helped pay for the hotel projects.

The Tencent fortune

Bekker, 73, is South Africa's third-richest person, with a fortune of about $3.9 billion, according to Forbes. He co-founded the pay-TV company M-Net and became chief executive of Naspers in 1997. Under his leadership the Cape Town-based media group bought into Tencent Holdings Ltd. in 2001, a bet that made it one of the most successful venture investments in history as the Chinese company grew into one of the world's largest technology groups.

He famously took no salary, bonus or perks during his years as chief executive, accepting only share options. Naspers, through Prosus, still owns about 23% of Tencent.