WEALTHY buyers from London are starting to push up the prices of the poshest properties in the area around Malvern.

That's the conclusion of upmarket estate agents Knight Frank, who say that prices of prime country houses rose in the first quarter of 2011 by 0.5 per cent.

Will Kerton, of Knight Frank’s Worcester office, said: “During the last 18 months there have been a high number of London buyers looking in the county”.

He said all the sales over £2 million that the Worcester office dealt with last year were all to London buyers; this year in the £1m to £2m bracket, about 70 per cent of buyers were from London and the South East.

One example is Hopton Court in Alfrick, a nine-bedroom house with a separate cottage in over 17 acres, which sold to a London buyer for £2.3m. Another London customer bought Halesend House, Storridge, for over £2.25m.

Mainstone Court at Trumpet, near Ledbury, went for £2.25m, Highlands Farm, Whitbourne, near Bromyard for £1.3m and Whitewells Farm at Cradley for £1.25 million.

Properties currently on the market include Hooze Farm in Eldersfield at £1.6m, Alfrick Court in Alfrick at £2.25m, and Park Farm in Colwall at £2.5.m Mr Kerton said: “As national buyers have recently struggled to find decent country property in the Cotswolds and Oxfordshire areas due to lack of supply, we have seen them spreading their search further west. One buyer recently said they would not look west of Oxford but eventually bought through us in west Worcestershire, right on the Herefordshire borders."