HIS desert nation has been built on superlatives. Now Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, the ruler of Dubai, is adding another: he is buying a Suffolk estate for £45m — a record price for a British country home.

Maktoum, 59, has snapped up Dalham Hall, a grade II listed property near Newmarket once owned by Cecil Rhodes, the mining magnate and colonial adventurer. It comes with 3,300 acres of farmland, parkland and woods, as well as 39 houses and cottages.

In an unusual twist, Charles Philipps, one of the trustees of the Dalham Hall estate, and his wife, Fiona, will continue to live in the early 18th-century mansion. Other Philipps family members who live on the land will also remain.

Maktoum already owns the neighbouring Dalham Hall stud, a 3,000-acre site from which he runs his global bloodstock empire and where he spends part of his time.

It is thought that the sheikh’s latest purchase, bought through his Darley Stud Management company, is mainly an investment, although he and his friends may well choose to make use of the estate’s shooting facilities.

“Newmarket is a unique area because of the racing industry and the fact that it attracts investors from across the world,” said Ian Monks, head of the land and business division of Bidwells, the agent which acted for the sellers.

Maktoum, who effectively ran Dubai for more than a decade before formally becoming its ruler in 2006, has been the driving force behind the emirate’s transformation from an impoverished former British protectorate into a dynamic city state. It boasts the world’s tallest building, which is still under construction, and the Burj Al Arab, which promotes itself as the only seven-star hotel on the planet.

However, Dubai has been hit hard by falling oil prices and a collapse in the value of the property market. Forbes magazine estimates that Maktoum’s fortune has been halved to $6 billion over the past 12 months.

The Dalham Hall estate, one of the most impressive in East Anglia, is centred on a mansion built for Simon Patrick, the Bishop of Ely, in 1705. “It’s not really pretty, but a substantial and elegant family home with a very distinctive location,” said one person familiar with the property.

Rhodes, the British-born businessman who founded the De Beers diamond company and gave his name to Rhodesia, bought the estate in 1901 for £100,000, purely on the basis of photographs. He was reportedly persuaded to enter the deal after reading in the game book that 1,700 partridges had been shot there during the first four days of the season.

Rhodes died the following year before moving in. After passing initially to his heirs, Dalham Hall was bought in 1928 by Laurence Philipps, a shipping magnate who established what became known as the Dalham Hall stud nearby.

In 1981 Major Jim Philipps, then head of the family, sold the stud to Maktoum. Philipps died in 1984 and ownership of his estate has since been divided among his heirs, some of whom were keen to sell.

Maktoum was the obvious buyer: the deal was especially attractive because in the intervening years he had been buying up land between the stud and the estate so they are now contiguous.

“For any landowner, it’s rare if an estate on your boundary becomes available and you will be keen to buy it,” said Giles Allen, an associate partner with Strutt & Parker, which acted for the sheikh.

By combining the estate with the stud, Maktoum will become one of Britain’s biggest foreign-born landowners.

However substantial, his holdings are still a fraction of those of aristocratic landowners such as the Dukes of Northumberland and Westminster who both hold more than 100,000 acres, or the Duke of Buccleuth & Queensbury, who has at least 250,000 acres.

The sale of Dalham Hall is being seen as a further sign of revival in the country house market, which has been hit by the recession.

“The market was pretty dreadful up to February, but things have been picking up and deals are being done,” said Rupert Sweeting, head of the country house department at agents Knight Frank.

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