The country mansion that inspired Richard Adams’ best-selling novel Watership Down is on the market for offers in excess of £1.5million.

Grade II-listed Longhills Hall in Lincolnshire was home to the writer when he was stationed there with the 1st Airborne Division during the Second World War.

The story about a brave band of rabbits living in Hampshire was inspired by Adams’ real-life experiences and based on the soldiers he fought with during the war.

The Elizabethan manor was previously owned by the Abel Smiths, a family of prominent bankers, before it was seconded by the British Army.

The house later fell into disrepair, before being restored, after the Abel Smith family decided not to return to their Palladian-style manor house at the end of the war.

Longhills Hall (pictured) in Lincolnshire is on the market for offers in excess of £1.5million

The country manor inspired Richard Adams’ best-selling novel Watership Down 

The house was seconded by the 1st Airborne Division during the Second World War

The manor was home to the aristocratic Curtois family for centuries before being bought by the Abel Smith family 

Richard Adams (pictured) lived in Longhills House after it was seconded during WW2

Prior to being bought by the Abel Smith family – whose business Smith’s Bank later became part of NatWest – the Longhills estate was home to the aristocratic Curtois family for more than two centuries before. 

The ten-bedroom home, which dates back to the mid-17th century, is located just half a mile from the nearby village of Branston, 

The manor house is notable for its period charms, including its arched ceilings, ornate plasterwork and 18th century fireplaces, as well as its cellars which date back to an earlier Elizabethan home.

Longhill Hall’s current owners later carried out an extensive and painstaking restoration to restore the manor to its former glory over the previous decade.

There are two plaques at the entrance of the property commemorating the brave soldiers of the 250th Light Company RASC (Airborne) who took part in the Battle of Arnhem.

Adams was stationed there from February to August in 1944 when the division were redeployed.

Watership Down started as tales Adams would tell his daughters on long car journeys and they pestered him to write it down.

Although many children’s books at the time avoided violence and gore, Adams was not afraid to create a dark tale that did not have a happy ending.

The house was restored after it fell into a state of disrepair during second world war

The Abel Smith family who previously owned Longhills House decided not to return to the home following the war

The Abel Smith family’s business, Smith’s Bank, was subsequently merged into NatWest

There are two plaques at the entrance of the property commemorating the brave soldiers of the 250th Light Company RASC (Airborne) who took part in the Battle of Arnhem.

The ten-bedroom mansion is located just half a mile away from the nearby village of Branston

The four story house has ten bedrooms and offers 9,789 sq ft of floorspace

The rabbits’ leader Hazel is inspired by Adams’ commanding officer, the brave and self-effacing Major John Gifford, while Bigwig was inspired by Adams’ friend Captain Desmond ‘Paddy’ Kavanagh, who was killed in action during the Battle of Arnhem age 25.

The book was rejected by seven publishers before one-man operation Rex Collings took it on and published in 1972. The original print run was 2,500 copies, but it went on to sell over 50 million copies and won multiple literary awards.

Longhills Hall has a total of 10-bedrooms, plus an additional bedroom/study and stretches across 9,789 sq ft of floorspace. 

The ground floor of the house a spacious kitchen/breakfast room and three large reception rooms, with an extensive four-room cellar below providing a wood store, wine cellar, workshop and storage room.

The first floor offers a sitting room and four generous bedrooms, including three with en-suite bathrooms, while the second floor has another three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a cinema room, a gym, an office and a kitchenette.

The mid-17th century house is considered to be a pristine example of Palladian architecture

Richard Adams was stationed in Longhills House from February to August in 1944 

The Lincolnshire manor was restored after falling into a state of disrepair following WW2

The house is noted for its period features including its arched ceilings, ornate plasterwork and 18th century fireplaces

The house was originally home to the aristocratic Curtois family 

The manor house is located five miles away from Lincoln and 18-miles away from Newark

Interior decorator Elaine Penhaul, who carried out the renovation of the property, said: ‘I see a lot of beautiful houses in my line of work. Longhills Hall is special; I fell in love with it the very first time I saw it.

‘The space and light in all the rooms are remarkable with spectacular views of the parkland from almost every window. It has been a privilege to oversee its restoration so that it is now ready for its new custodian to move in and enjoy its splendour.

‘The mansion possesses such grandeur with its majestic entrance, sweeping staircase, high ceilings and floor to ceiling windows.

‘We felt it was important to choose a colour palette that would acknowledge this opulence and tie in the glorious parkland setting.

‘We have opted for green and earth tones that perfectly blend the inside with the out and give the rooms a calming warmth that will envelop this family home.’

Adam Lascelles, from By Design, who are selling the property, said: ‘Longhills Hall was already a magnificent property. Now, the restoration work undertaken this year has elevated it to an exceptional and unique home, blending period charm with contemporary considerations.

‘This is an extraordinary opportunity to own more than a sophisticated and stylish home in the heart of rural England, you would be preserving a true slice of literary history.’

One notable development is the acquisition of CoolIT Systems, a long-standing player in the liquid cooling market, by global investment company KKR. The deal, reportedly valued at $270 million, is aimed at enabling CoolIT to expand its operations and serve a wider range of global customers in the datacenter market. This market encompasses enterprise, high-performance computing (HPC), and cloud service provider segments.

KKR’s investment in CoolIT indicates its anticipation of a profitable return. However, their statements regarding the acquisition also reflect a recognition of the challenges facing the datacenter industry in terms of sustainability. Kyle Matter, Managing Director at KKR, emphasized the increasing data and computing needs and their potential environmental impact. He expressed a belief that liquid cooling plays a crucial role in reducing the emissions footprint of the digital economy.

Projections suggest that liquid cooling will witness significant growth, potentially capturing up to 26% of the datacenter thermal management market by 2026. This is driven by the deployment of more high-performance infrastructure. CoolIT, which is soon to be acquired, has already demonstrated its growth potential by securing a spot on the Financial Times’ list of fastest-growing US companies this year, ranking at number 218.

Alan Priestley, a former technical marketing manager at Intel and currently a VP analyst at Gartner, highlighted the necessity for many companies to invest in liquid cooling to address the challenges associated with managing high-performance servers. As processors become more powerful, liquid cooling offers an effective solution to address heat dissipation concerns and optimize server performance in datacenters.

According to Priestley, CPUs currently consume around 250W to 300W of power, while GPUs range from 300W to 500W. For servers handling demanding workloads such as AI training, those equipped with up to eight GPUs can draw as much as 7-10kW per node.

Priestley further explained that datacenters are striving to increase rack densities by incorporating more memory per node and higher-performance networking. Accommodating such heightened performance requirements necessitates increased power consumption.

Andrew Buss, a senior research director at IDC, concurred with this assessment. He emphasized that as chip or package power densities continue to rise, liquid cooling becomes a more efficient and preferred option.

Buss highlighted that support for direct liquid cooling loops is now being integrated into many modern datacenter facilities and colocation providers. He pointed out that companies like Atos/Bull have embraced direct contact liquid cooling loops for their power-dense high-performance computing (HPC) servers. This allows them to fit six AMD Epyc sockets with maximum memory, NVMe storage, and 100Gbps networking into a compact 1U chassis, all cooled by a custom cooling manifold.

The growing demand for higher performance and power-intensive applications is driving the need for efficient cooling solutions like liquid cooling in datacenters. By adopting liquid cooling technologies, datacenters can effectively manage the increasing power requirements of advanced processors and GPUs while maintaining optimal performance and mitigating potential heat-related issues.

According to Moises Levy, an expert in datacenter power and cooling research at Omdia, the global adoption of liquid cooling is expected to continue increasing.

Levy suggests that while liquid cooling has reached or is nearing a tipping point for specific applications with compute-intensive workloads, its widespread adoption in the broader datacenter market is still on the horizon. He highlights that direct-to-chip and immersion cooling technologies are likely to be the primary disruptors, projected to have the highest compound annual growth rate (CAGR) in the coming years.

Direct liquid cooling, supported by CoolIT, involves circulating a coolant, typically water, through cold plates directly attached to components like processors. This type of system is relatively easier to implement within existing rack infrastructure.

On the other hand, immersion cooling submerges the entire server node in a non-conductive dielectric fluid coolant. Specialized racks, some of which position the nodes vertically instead of horizontally, are typically required for this type of system. Immersion cooling tends to be favored for new-build server rooms.

As liquid cooling technologies continue to advance, their increasing adoption is expected to bring significant benefits to datacenters in terms of improved efficiency and enhanced cooling capabilities.

European cloud operator OVHcloud has developed a unique system that combines two cooling approaches for optimal performance. Their innovative solution involves utilizing water blocks attached to the CPU and GPU while employing immersion cooling with a dielectric fluid for the remaining components.

While OVHcloud currently reserves this system for their cloud infrastructure handling intensive workloads like AI, gaming, and high-performance compute (HPC) applications, they have indicated potential future expansion.

In a similar vein, GlobalConnect, a leading data center colocation provider, plans to offer immersion-based cooling as an option to all their customers. Teaming up with immersion cooling specialist GRC, GlobalConnect announced their system deployment in February. They aim to gradually introduce this advanced cooling technology across all 16 of their data centers located in Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Germany, and Finland, based on customer demand.

The question arises: Can liquid cooling help achieve sustainability objectives? OVH shared that its combined system is significantly more efficient than traditional air cooling methods. They claim that in tests, their cooling system achieved a favorable partial power usage effectiveness rating (PUE) of 1.004, which specifically measures the energy consumed by the cooling system.

However, Buss, an industry expert, urged caution in adopting liquid cooling and emphasized the need for careful consideration, particularly in waste heat management. He highlighted that implementing “liquid cooling done right” can certainly contribute to enhanced efficiency and environmental sustainability by reducing reliance on compressor-based cooling and leveraging heat-exchanger technology to maintain optimal cooling loop temperatures.

Nevertheless, Buss emphasized the importance of proper implementation, as simply discharging the heat into the environment, such as a lake or river, can have detrimental effects. Therefore, the design of the ultimate heat path should be carefully planned to maximize reuse opportunities whenever feasible.

The European Union (EU) has recently expressed its desire to see more cities utilizing waste heat from data centers to heat residential homes. However, challenges arise because the heat generated is often not at a sufficiently high temperature, necessitating additional energy consumption to address this limitation. Despite these obstacles, some data center operators, like QTS in the Groningen region of the Netherlands, have ventured into exploring such initiatives.

In the previous year, the United States Department of Energy made investments in projects aimed at reducing energy consumption for cooling purposes in data centers, albeit with a relatively modest funding amount of $42 million. Additionally, we highlighted the swift adoption of liquid cooling by Chinese data centers as a response to new government regulations.

Among the liquid cooling vendors that secured investments was Iceotope, a UK-based company that received £30 million ($35.7 million at the time) in a funding round led by a Singapore-based private equity provider, with a focus on penetrating the Asian market.

Intel also forged a partnership with Green Revolution Cooling to explore liquid immersion technology. However, the chip giant recently decided to halt its plans for a $700 million research and development lab dedicated to cooling technology in Oregon, as part of its cost-cutting measures.

Yes, that’s $2.1 million!!

The signature broad, black hat, one of a handful still in existence that Napoleon wore when he ruled 19th-century France and waged war in Europe, was initially valued at 600,000 to 800,000 euros ($650,000-870,000). It was the centerpiece of Sunday’s auction collected by a French industrialist who died last year.

But the bidding quickly jumped higher and higher until Jean Pierre Osenat, president of the Osenat auction house, designated the winner.

‘’We are at 1.5 million (Euros) for Napoleon’s hat … for this major symbol of the Napoleonic epoch,” he said, as applause rang out in the auction hall. The buyer, whose identity was not released, must pay 28.8% in commissions according to Osenat, bringing the overall cost to 1.9 million euros ($2.1 million).

While other officers customarily wore their bicorne hats with the wings facing front to back, Napoleon wore his with the ends pointing toward his shoulders. The style, known as “en bataille,” or in battle, made it easier for his troops to spot their leader in combat.

The hat on sale was first recovered by Col. Pierre Baillon, a quartermaster under Napoleon, according to the auctioneers. The hat then passed through many hands before industrialist Jean-Louis Noisiez acquired it.

The entrepreneur spent more than a half-century assembling his collection of Napoleonic memorabilia, firearms, swords and coins before his death in 2022.

The sale came days before the release of Ridley Scott’s film Napoleon with Joaquin Phoenix, which is rekindling interest in the controversial French ruler.