Evans Estates owns the land, buildings and popular surfing beach of the South Devon village of Bantham.
The thriving community is going up for sale in spring 2014 and is expected to fetch an estimated £35million for the lot, which includes the estate’s holding in Wales and Dorset.
Bantham and the surrounding Devonshire land is expected to go for £10million alone.
Residents of the picturesque, family-owned town are now mulling over the prospects that a large, faceless conglomerate may snap it up.
Having received letters in the post – in houses that are largely rented and leased by the estate – locals found out last week that the village and its surrounding land would be put up for sale.
Speaking to the Western Morning News, Barbara Tucker, a tenant of Evans Estates and manager of Bantham village shop said: ‘Obviously there is huge uncertainty and anxiety in the village, with many of us worrying about whether we will lose our homes.
‘We can only hope and pray that the new owners will be sympathetic to the locals. Many people here have lived in Bantham for 60 years or more, with some tenancies being passed down through several generations of the same family.
‘This is a very close-knit community of about 60 people and we are all extremely worried.’
A statement on the estate’s website says it is ‘opposed to undue commercialism’.
It also says that its ‘ethos has always been to allow Bantham to remain a place of outstanding beauty, with the village’s old thatched cottages portraying an image of unchanging charm and the beach and its surrounds staying as wild and natural as can be’.
However, though the company is unloading the postcard-perfect town on to different hands and its future is uncertain, Mrs Tucker said that if they could choose any buyer it would be Sir Richard Branson who is a regular visitor.
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