Andrew Davis is a British former businessman who founded the von Essen Group, which included Von Essen Hotels, PremiAir and the London Heliport.
Early life and career
Davis went to St Bede's Comprehensive School. Reigate Grammar School and Caterham College in Surrey, near where his father, Brendon, an executive at a subsidiary of Redland Tiles, and his mother still live. During the early 1990s he was involved in small-scale property development, founding and operating a small helicopter charter business. It has been reported that Davis's first moneymaking business was selling jewellery and silver spoons door-to-door in the West Country.
Von Essen Hotels
By 2000, Von Essen had three properties: Mount Somerset hotel in Taunton, Congham Hall hotel in Norfolk and New Park Manor in Hampshire. In 2000, it bought Ston Easton Park in Bath and Thornbury Castle in Gloucestershire for around £5m each. Bishopstrow House hotel in Wiltshire was bought in 2001. In 2002 Davis leased Cliveden in Buckinghamshire, and the Royal Crescent hotel in Bath, for £50m. In 2003, Von Essen bought Lewtrenchard Manor in Devon, Dalhousie Castle near Edinburgh, and, for £16m, three Cotswolds properties and The Elms in the Teme Valley. The icing on the cake was the acquisition of the Sharrow Bay Country House hotel in Cumbria which was the UK's first country house hotel when it opened in the 1950s. According to the Good Food Guide's editor Desmond Balmer, Cliveden, the infamous backdrop to the 1960s Profumo Scandal, "has not shone as a hotel for the past five years". Of Sharrow Bay, Balmer said "We have dropped it". In 2007, after claims of Fawlty Towers-style bungling and poor service, seven of Davis's hotels were axed from The Good Hotel Guide, the leading arbiter of independent hotels in Britain and Ireland. The holding company, Von Essen Hotels, went into administration in April 2011 after defaulting on debt interest repayments. The administrators, Ernst & Young, appointed a new chairman to replace Davis. The portfolio was broken up, and most hotels had buyers by September 2011. The 33 hotels, freehold unless stated otherwise, were:
16 The Royal Crescent, Bath – guide price £22.5m; negotiations with the Livingstone brothers did not lead to a sale
Amberley Castle, West Sussex – purchased by Von Essen in August 2007 for £12m from Martin and Joy Cummings, guide price £13.5m, acquired by Andrew Brownsword's Bath Priory Limited by 20 October 2011
Bishopstrow House, Wiltshire – guide price £6m, acquired by Longleat Enterprises Limited by 26 October 2011
Buckland Manor, Gloucestershire – guide price £6m, acquired by Andrew Brownsword's Bath Priory Limited by 20 October 2011
Callow Hall, Derbyshire – guide price £2.25m
Château de Bagnols, France – guide price €12.5m
Cliveden, Buckinghamshire – leasehold guide price £35m, reportedly sold for £30m in February 2012 to London & Regional Properties
Congham Hall, Norfolk – von Essen's third hotel, purchased in 1999, guide price £3m
Homewood Park, Bath – guide price £3.5m, acquired by Longleat Enterprises Limited by 7 November 2011
Hotel Verta, London
Hunstrete House, near Bath – Hunstrete House Limited, which operated the hotel under a licensing agreement with Von Essen Investments, went into voluntary liquidation and closed in May 2011
The Mount Somerset, Somerset – Von Essen's first hotel, purchased in 1994, acquired by The Eden Hotel Collection by 25 November 2011 with a guide price of £3m
The Samling, Cumbria – guide price £6m, sold to private buyers by 25 October 2011
Thorn Island Fort, Pembrokeshire – purchased by Von Essen in July 1999 for under £275,000 from Peter Williamson, sold to Kent Mushrooms Ltd by 1 November 2011 for significantly less than the guide price of £750,000
Washbourne Court, Gloucestershire – guide price £5m, acquired by Andrew Brownsword's Bath Priory Limited by 20 October 2011
Woolley Grange, Wiltshire – guide price £4m
Ynyshir Hall, Wales – guide price £1.5m
Other businesses
In 2007, Davis bought London Heliport and PremiAir. In February 2012 the heliport site was acquired by Reuben Brothers. In 2011 PremiAir went into liquidation. Von Essen Aviation owned several helicopters and a private jet. In 2010, Davis was ranked on the Sunday Times Rich List at No. 244, with an estimated wealth of £292m. According to the Sunday Times of 26 April 2009, von Essen sponsors the Sunday Times Rich List. Since then the veracity of these estimates, and of Davis's public persona, has been questioned.
Personal life
Davis's partner is Andrew Onraet, they have lived together since 1998. Prior to that, Davis appears to have married once, though he is now divorced. He is the father of a teenage son.
