The 82-acre farm that once belonged to the late carriage enthusiast and insurance executive Dinwiddie Lampton Jr. brought more than $2 million at auction Thursday.
William Bone, president of Gadsden, Ala.-based National Auction Group, said the final sale price for the farm at 2878 Newtown Pike was $2.1 million. The property includes a five-bedroom colonial home, two staff homes, four horse barns with 46 stalls, and a concrete block building that was once a veterinary center.
"It was a great sale," Bone said Friday. "We had six bidders from four states: Minnesota, Illinois, Florida and Kentucky."
The bidding was "very, very competitive," but the auction itself was festive: held beneath a tent, with 75 to 100 people attending, Bone said.
A Louisville man was the winning bidder. Bone would not disclose the buyer's name Friday morning, but he said it was a Louisville man, and Bone might be able to release his name after the buyer gave permission.
Most of Lampton's lavish carriage collection, which was at the farm, had already been sold. The Fayette PVA database shows that the farm itself now belongs to a company headed by one of Lampton's sons.
Dinwiddie Lampton Jr. was an executive at American Life, a company started by his father. When Lampton died in 2008, The New York Times obituary said that he "lived life with a flourish, particularly when driving his own coach, lines of four horses in hand."
Sixty of the carriages from the collection of the late Elizabeth Lampton, who died months before her husband in 2008, were sold at auction in 2011.
The signature item was considered to be a Mills & Sons of London three-quarter-size pony road coach, made in 1910 for Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt.
Elizabeth Lampton owned Elmendorf Farm on Paris Pike with her husband.
Bone enjoys Lexington horse country auctions, he said.
"Lexington is one of the few places you can have an auction and have a national and international market," he said.
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