Cheffins celebrates 200 years in business

The company now employs over 180 members of staff and has offices throughout East Anglia, as well as the vast 40-acre sale ground at Sutton, near Ely, but our work has an international reach, with sales worldwide for agricultural machinery and fine art, and property and rural advice offered throughout the UK.

We are now looking to build on this strong foundation to lay the groundwork to support Cheffins over the coming years and are constantly looking for ways in which we can continue to evolve and innovate to maintain our position in the market.

As part of our 200-year celebrations, we have pledged to give £200,000 to charity. The money will be raised by a combination of fundraising events, match-funding and donations.

The majority of the fundraising efforts will go to support the new Cambridgeshire Children’s Hospital, a project which is being spearheaded by The Addenbrooke’s Charitable Trust.

With a minimum of £100,000 being raised for the hospital, Cheffins’ efforts will provide a dedicated playroom for children in treatment, in line with the company’s goal to support mental health services for future generations in the region.

Cheffins has a rich history of mergers, acquisitions and amalgamations. It was founded by Henry Joshua Cheffins and under his leadership the company set about acquiring a series of auctioneers and valuers throughout Saffron Walden, Cambridge and further afield.

As the company grew, in 1885 the new Cambridge cattle market was opened on the present site of Cheffins head office on Clifton Road and would go on to be absorbed into the company in 1967.

Machinery sales were started at the Cambridge market in 1941. This department has now grown to be the largest machinery auction in Europe, selling over 25,000 lots per year from the dedicated sale ground at Sutton. These sales are made up of a mix of the monthly machinery auction, on-farm sales hosted on behalf of farmers and farming businesses and also four vintage sales per year.

Success stories from the machinery sale are vast and wide-ranging, but a couple of memorable moments were the sale of Winston Churchill’s Series 1 Land Rover, which made £129,000 in 2012, while Cheffins also still holds the UK record for the most expensive vintage tractor ever sold, when £310,000 was paid for a 1903 Ivel Agricultural motor in 2019.

Cheffins residential arm has extensively evolved since the early days of Mr Cheffins auctioning property from the Saffron Walden office in the 1800s. Now with five offices located in Cambridge, Ely, Saffron Walden, Haverhill and Newmarket as well as a London base, the team offer sales and lettings services across a broad spectrum of properties, from one bedroom city flats to large village homes. This is supported by the dedicated new homes department which was created in 2019.

In the mid-2000s, Cheffins established a planning department. This was merged with PlanSurv in 2021, enabling Cheffins to grow and enhance its planning expertise.

The team offers professional advice across residential and commercial property, helping clients to navigate the system and provide pre-planning advice.

The team has had a series of significant successes throughout the region, in Newmarket, Ely, Cambridge and everywhere in between, with projects ranging from one-off self-build properties to vast commercial and residential developments.

Cheffins’ commercial division was established in 1998 from the firm’s then offices on Regent Street, Cambridge. The commercial team is now one of the leading property advisors in the market and acquired Derek Catlin Property Management and Dodson Jones commercial property consultancy in 2008 and 2017 respectively.

The team now has over 200 commercial properties under management and is the retained letting agent on the biggest science and business parks in the region, including Granta Park, Chesterford Research Park and Babraham Research Park.

Also on the property side, Cheffins hosts quarterly property auctions, with an array of residential, commercial and land opportunities. As a firm, Cheffins has sold property and land by auction since it’s conception in 1825, and this has now evolved to include online as well as in-person bidding.

Today, the department continues to evolve – most recently collaborating with The Commercial Property Network (CPN), a network of privately-owned commercial property advisory companies spanning the UK, with Cheffins hosting online national auctions on behalf of the member firms.

With its roots truly in the land and rural business areas, the Cheffins rural team provides bespoke advice to farmers and landowners with services including business planning, strategic reviews, buying, selling and managing land, while also advising on environmental schemes and development opportunities.

Cheffins works with some of the most significant landowners in the region, including providing advice on the Ely North development since 2011 and the Thomas Parsons Charity to name just a couple.

The Fine Art department was launched in 1982 from the old Cattle Market site on Clifton Road. It now hosts over 25 regular sales throughout the year, offering antiques, paintings, jewellery, silver and collectibles.

Significant successes over the years have included the sale of an Italian Renaissance painting by Giovanni Francesco Barbieri il Guercino which achieved £570,000 in 2018, the sale of the personal effects from the home of The Prodigy’s late frontman, Keith Flint, which would go on to total over £340,000 and the house record of £1.41 million for a late 16th or early 17th century Florentine bronze model of a strutting ostrich from the workshop of Giambologna.

Cheffins’ Fine Art department now consigns art and antiques from the world over and has a global audience of dedicated buyers, making it one of the leading auction houses in the country.

Cheffins has adapted and innovated to fit with the times and is now preparing for the company’s future. The firm is making significant steps to reduce its carbon footprint and as a part of this is planting a brand-new woodland in Fulbourn, with over 2,500 trees of 12 different native varieties, as well as creating an established native grass and wildflower habitat.

This has given the firm the scope to ‘grow our own’ carbon units and has given us a moment to pause and consider our evolution as a firm. The woodland legacy will flourish for generations to come, as we hope Cheffins will do as it continually adapts and innovates to fit with the ever-changing markets in which we operate.

• For more information, contact Cheffins on 01223 213343, or visit https://www.cheffins.co.uk/

ABOUT CHEFFINS

Cheffins is Cambridgeshire’s leading firm of residential, commercial and rural land and property advisers and auctioneers. Established in 1825, the firm has 6 offices in Cambridge: Ely; Haverhill; Newmarket, Saffron Walden and Sutton. Cheffins’ professional services include residential sales; residential lettings; fine art auctions; commercial property; agriculture and rural business services; vintage and classic auctions; planning and development; property auctions and tractor and plant machinery.