TV presenter Sarah Beeny appears to be letting the grass go dry at her ‘mini-Downton Abbey’ estate despite the local area not being under a hosepipe ban.
Aerial photographs of the Property Ladder star’s £3million mansion in Somerset show only very small patches of green across the grounds of her 220-acre farm.
The home, which featured in the Channel 4 series Sarah Beeny’s New Life in the Country, includes a private boating lake, including a custom thatched boathouse.
But Beeny appears not to be watering her garden with a hosepipe or drawing water from the lake, which would still be allowed even in the event of a hosepipe ban.
Grassland on her estate, as across much of the country, has turned brown after an extraordinarily dry few weeks.
Her rural property is supplied by Wessex Water, which does not have a hopepipe ban in place despite the Environment Agency declaring a drought in Somerset on July 29.
The utility firm has a 50-year record without a ban but has urged customers to reduce their water usage given local reservoirs are now at about 58 per cent of capacity.
Some 45million people across England are now in drought-stricken areas, and 27million customers are under hosepipe bans as rivers and reservoirs run low.
Reading-born Beeny, 54, lives on the huge estate with her artist husband Graham Swift, 53, and their four sons Billy, 21, Charlie, 19, Laurie, 17, and Rafferty, 16.
Dry grass around Sarah Beeny’s £3million mansion in Somerset, pictured this week
Sarah Beeny, 54, at the home with her husband Graham Swift, 53, and their four sons Billy, 21, Charlie, 19, Laurie, 17, and Rafferty, 16
The home featured in the Channel 4 series Sarah Beeny’s New Life in the Country
Beeny does not appear to have been watering her garden with a hosepipe or drawing water from the lake
She has previously worked with utility firms to offer advice on saving water, and once said she uses the same bath water as her husband and children to avoid waste.
The home has been at the centre of an eight-year planning row over an ‘illegal’ farmhouse, with Beeny initially being told to tear down the outbuilding she had built.
But last month it was revealed the presenter might now get to keep it after the Somerset Council planning chair gave her the green light in a dramatic U-turn.
The row began soon after Beeny purchased the home for £3million in 2018 and began a huge overhaul – much to the anger of local residents and the council.
In 2020, the couple agreed to knock down the original 1970s farmhouse – but four years later the building was instead extended without planning permission.
They were refused retrospective approval in September 2024, and lost a Planning Inspectorate appeal in February last year, being told to tear the building down.
But Beeny’s planning team Avalon Planning & Heritage found a loophole after winning approval to build five new dwellings converted from agricultural buildings.
They then submitted a new planning application in April suggesting that if they only converted four – not five – barns, then they could keep the original farmhouse.
Last month, it was revealed the chair of Somerset Council’s Planning Committee South, Jason Baker, had written to the planning team urging the application to be given the green light through ‘delegated powers’ – meaning a planning officer could decide its fate.
Mr Baker said the ‘retention of the farmhouse provides ecological and sustainability benefits when considering embodied carbon and biodiversity matters’.
But neighbour Kevin Flint previously said the application had ‘created a lot of bad feeling in the village’, adding: ‘She thinks she can move down here and ride roughshod over everybody but it’s not going to happen.’
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The property is supplied by Wessex Water, which does not have a hosepipe ban in place
Beeny appears to be letting the grass go dry at her ‘mini-Downton Abbey’ estate
A Wessex Water spokesman told the Daily Mail today: ‘If all customers can make small changes to their daily water use habits, this will make a big impact and help keep water flowing for each other, businesses and the environment.
‘Throughout the summer our teams have been working around the clock to find and fix more leaks on our network, prioritising those that are wasting the most water and increasing the number of repairs we complete.
‘We’re also contacting larger business customers who are high water users to encourage them to avoid non-essential water use, but we need everyone to work together.
‘If demand doesn’t reduce, we will need to introduce more formal restrictions to protect water supplies, which is why we’re asking customers to work with us now to help avoid this.’
Beeny’s representative was also contacted for comment.
Fire chiefs said 1,017 wildfires have been recorded in England and Wales so far in 2026, the same as the record-breaking total for the whole of last year.
The National Fire Chiefs Council said this included 185 in the first ten days of August alone, while July was the busiest month on record for wildfires with 458 incidents.
The Met Office has issued a rare 15-hour amber ‘extreme heat’ warning for southern and central England from 9am tomorrow – only its second such alert in four years.
Dried fields across Weymouth in Dorset today as the drought conditions continue
Stoke Park in Bristol is pictured today after being left with parched grass by the dry weather
Firefighters try to deal with a big blaze in Eton near Windsor in Berkshire this morning
Cows feed in a parched field near the village of East Meon in Hampshire this morning
The whole of England has also been put under an amber heat health alert by the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) until Friday night, which warns of a ‘rise in deaths’.
Record-breaking heatwaves in May and June led to the deaths of more than 2,800 people, while parts of the country were hit with further heatwaves last month as England and Wales endured their driest July since records began in 1836.
A 38C high tomorrow would make it Britain’s joint fifth hottest day on record – tying with that same temperature in Norfolk on June 26, which is the current 2026 high.
It comes as a firefighter union chief warned Britain faces a ‘national emergency’ amid ongoing wildfires, with the country on course for its hottest summer on record.
Some 45million people across England are now in drought-stricken areas, and 27million customers are under hosepipe bans as rivers and reservoirs run low.
| 1 | 40.3C | July 19, 2022 | Coningsby, Lincolnshire |
| 2 | 38.7C | July 25, 2019 | Cambridge |
| 3 | 38.5C | August 10, 2003 | Faversham, Kent |
| 4 | 38.2C | July 18, 2022 | Pitsford, Northamptonshire |
| 5 | 38.0C | June 26, 2026 | Lingwood, Norfolk |
| 6 | 37.8C | July 31, 2020 | London Heathrow |
| 7 | 37.1C | August 3, 1990 | Cheltenham, Gloucestershire |
| 8= | 36.7C | August 9, 1911 | Raunds, Northamptonshire |
| 8= | 36.7C | July 1, 2015 | London Heathrow |
| 8= | 36.7C | June 25, 2026 | Merryfield, Somerset |
Parts of southern England including Hampshire and West Sussex have now gone 60 days without rainfall, and there are no downpours in the immediate forecast.
Meanwhile, rail passengers could face travel chaos tomorrow, with three operators urging them to avoid non-essential travel ahead of one of Britain’s hottest days on record.
Chiltern Railways, East Midlands Railway and Northern all issued alerts to ‘only travel if essential’ with the UK’s sixth heatwave of the year expected to cause delays.
Reduced services were also confirmed by c2c, CrossCountry, Great Western Railway, Transport for Wales and West Midlands Railway as temperatures soar to 38C.
Heat-related issues affecting the railway can include buckled rails, sagging overhead electric wires and lineside fires. Steel rails can hit 50C in an air temperature of 30C.
Andy Burnham is also considering imposing a ban on disposable barbecues because of the risk of further wildfires.
The Prime Minister will meet with ministers, officials and agencies during a COBRA meeting this afternoon after revealing during a trip to Stevenage that single-use grills could be banned to help prevent fires. It comes just eight days after the Government said it was not planning to introduce such a ban.
Earlier this week, the Daily Mail revealed chef Jamie Oliver was keeping the lawns of his Essex mansion green by taking water from his own lake, which is permitted under hosepipe restrictions.
Other photographs showed Sir Rod Stewart was keeping the gardens of his 18th-century Grade II-listed property in the same county gloriously green.
Sir Rod’s property is within the Affinity Water hosepipe ban area, but there is no evidence he has breached a ban, given there are many workarounds and he may have an exemption.
