TWO North Yorkshire County Council farms have sold at auction for up to £15,000 an acre.

Lingwood Farm, on Selby Common, made £300,000, while Grafton Lodge Lane Farm, at Marton-cum-Grafton, near York, sold in four lots for a total of £1.159m.

Auctioneer Matthew Peters, from Bruton Knowles, handled both sales and said agricultural land values continue to soar, although it remains very much location-specific.

"But the price of land on the right farm in the right place has increased by at least 20 per cent," he said, "The people buying are farmers. It’s a generational business and this is one way of passing land on to the next generation via succession planning.”

Lingwood Farm has a three-bedroom detached farmhouse with a range of traditional and modern farm buildings set in 11.58 acres of productive Grade II grassland.

Grafton Lodge Lane Farm, is on the edge of the village with good access to the A1M. It covered 62.37 acres and was sold in four variously sized lots.

Mr Peters said: “The agricultural market both here and around the country has been seriously under supplied lately and with land values rocketing there is no shortage of people wanting to buy land in order to put estates back together.”