Fyning Hill is a large estate near the village of

Rogate Rogate is a village and civil parish in the Chichester district of West Sussex, England, in the Western Rother valley. The village is on the A272 road west of Midhurst and east of Petersfield, Hampshire. The civil parish includes the villages o ...

in West Sussex. It has been owned by several prominent people including

Kerry Packer Kerry Francis Bullmore Packer (17 December 1937 – 26 December 2005) was an Australian media tycoon, and was considered one of Australia's most powerful media proprietors of the twentieth century. The Packer family company owned a controlling ...

and

Roman Abramovich Roman Arkadyevich Abramovich (, ; he, רומן ארקדיביץ' אברמוביץ'; born 24 October 1966) is a Russian Russian oligarchs, oligarch and politician. He is the former owner of Chelsea F.C., Chelsea, a Premier League football club ...

History

The main house contains 8 bedrooms with 5 reception rooms. It was owned by Sir

Albert Braithwaite Sir Albert Newby Braithwaite (2 September 1893 – 20 October 1959) was a British Conservative Party politician. He was the son of Albert Braithwaite, one time Lord Mayor of Leeds, and Patti Braithwaite. He was born in Horsforth, Yorkshire,'' ...

until his death in 1959. The estate was owned in the 1970s and 1980s by the Jordanian businessman Taj Hajjar, who was a friend of

King Hussein of Jordan Hussein bin Talal ( ar, الحسين بن طلال, ''Al-Ḥusayn ibn Ṭalāl''; 14 November 1935 – 7 February 1999) was King of Jordan from 11 August 1952 until his death in 1999. As a member of the Hashemite dynasty, the royal family of ...

. The biggest ever robbery in Sussex occurred on the property in May 1983 when £800,000 of jewellery was stolen. Hajjar put up an £80,000 reward, but no thief was ever apprehended. Hajjar sold the estate to the Australian publisher and broadcaster

for $5 million in May 1989. Packer built the headquarters for his

polo Polo is a ball game played on horseback, a traditional field sport and one of the world's oldest known team sports. The game is played by two opposing teams with the objective of scoring using a long-handled wooden mallet to hit a small hard ...

team at Fyning Hill, and would arrive at the estate in May for the three-month English polo season. Packer subsequently bought the nearby Great House Farm for £580,000 in June 1989, and had acquired 600 acres of nearby countryside by June 1990. Packer's daughter, Gretel, was married on the estate in 1991. The estate totalled 424 acres with five houses and nine cottages by September 1999 when Packer put the estate up for sale. The estate was bought by the Russian businessman

in 1999 for £12 million. Fyning Hill was included as part of the divorce settlement between Abramovich and his second wife, Irina Malandina, in 2007.. The estate was valued at £18 million at the time. The size of the estate was listed as 420 acres in 2017.

References

{{coord, 51.01927, -0.84270, region:GB, display=title Houses in West Sussex Chichester District