An aristocrat turned underworld operator may sound like pure fiction, but it is the deliciously unlikely premise driving Guy Ritchie’s action-comedy series The Gentlemen, which returns to Netflix today for its second season.
The Netflix hit follows Edward “Eddie” Horniman, the newly minted Duke of Halstead, played by Theo James, whose inheritance comes with a shocking surprise: a sprawling cannabis operation concealed beneath his family’s financially troubled country estate.
At first, Eddie tries to disentangle himself from the criminal enterprise. But when escape proves impossible, he is pulled deeper into Britain’s organised crime scene — and soon discovers he may have a natural talent for it.
The storyline is knowingly extravagant, as viewers would expect from Ritchie’s slick gangster universe. Yet the idea of drugs hidden behind grand façades is not entirely removed from real life.
Across the UK, police have uncovered drug production sites inside some remarkable properties, including a £2.2 million Georgian mansion and a 102-room Welsh estate that once welcomed King Charles.
One cannabis operation, at a Grade II-listed country house in Cumbria, was valued at £5.2million – around £200,000 more than the annual sum the operators of the fictional farm at Halstead paid their aristocratic landlord.
These shocking discoveries speak to the financial pressures facing Britain’s country houses, many of which struggle to balance eye-watering upkeep costs with dwindling traditional sources of income.
After all, these sprawling estates are notoriously expensive to run, with annual maintenance and staffing bills potentially topping £1million – and that’s before factoring in major restoration work such as replacing a roof.
Moulton Grange in Northamptonshire was raided on May 28 as part of an ongoing investigation into unlicensed medicines
Another stately home, Plas Glynllifon near Caernarfon in North Wales, was targeted by police searching for drugs a month earlier
The Flass in Cumbria was also found to be housing a cannabis growing operation. It is pictured in 2004 before this was discovered
The Gentlemen sees the new Duke of Halstead Edward ‘Eddie’ Horniman, played by Theo James, unwittingly inherit a vast underground cannabis farm
Let’s start at Moulton Grange, a sprawling manor house in Northamptonshire which hosts luxury weddings and corporate events.
Boasting 28 acres of landscaped grounds, it has been praised by guests as ‘the perfect venue’ and ‘simply magical’, while one happy couple said it ‘exceeded all our expectations’.
But it appears to have been hiding a darker secret, with investigators seizing more than 12,000 doses of illegal weight-loss injections from a suspected black-market drugs factory operating inside the house.
During a raid on May 28, officers from the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) arrested two 29-year-old men, who were later released.
The MHRA claimed Moulton Grange was being used as a ‘large-scale facility to manufacture, assemble and distribute unlicensed weight-loss medicines, including retatrutide and tirzepatide, as well as peptide products’.
Tirzepatide is the active ingredient in Mounjaro, while retatrutide is an experimental treatment still undergoing clinical trials.
The MHRA described the raid as the UK’s largest seizure of unlicensed weight-loss injections and said it was targeting an ‘organised criminal group’.
The property is owned by Faiz Hameed, 61, and Rashda Hameed, 59, who are also directors of Moulton Grange Limited, a property management company. It is unclear whether they live at the estate and they made no comment in July when news of the seizure was made public.
Moulton Grange is considered an ‘outstanding’ example of an English country house, featuring a grand Georgian façade and a sumptuous interior complete with chandeliers, period furnishings and ornate carved fireplaces.
An aerial view of Moulton Grange, where around 12,000 doses of suspected weight-loss drugs were seized
Boasting 28 acres of landscaped private grounds, Moulton Grange hosts luxury weddings and corporate events
Pictures from the raid on Moulton Grange showed dozens of cardboard boxes and containers full of jabs scattered across cluttered rooms
The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) discovered an astonishing 12,000 doses of unlicensed weight loss medicines
Constructed mainly in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the stately pile is Grade II-listed and was last sold for £2.2million in 2017, according to Land Registry records.
Another stately home, Plas Glynllifon near Caernarfon in North Wales, was raided by police searching for drugs a month earlier in April.
The historic mansion, once owned by Lord Newborough and host to King Charles’s investiture ball when he was Prince of Wales, was found to contain a major cannabis-growing operation.
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Officers uncovered cannabis plants across 12 rooms on the top floor of the building, North Wales Police said.
The empty mansion, which hosted the investiture ball following Charles’s ceremony at Caernarfon Castle in 1969, was put on the market for £2million in 2024 but is understood to have since been withdrawn from sale.
Superintendent Arwel Hughes said: ‘We uncovered a grow, which was on the top floor of the building.
‘We estimate around 12 rooms with grows in them and they were fairly mature plants.’
Built in 1836, the manor house previously operated as a wedding venue and was later bought with plans to transform it into a luxury hotel.
It was sold in 2020 after entering receivership following a failed attempt to turn it into a high-end hotel.
The mansion was then bought by a Manchester-based developer before being put back on the market in 2024 for £2million. It appears to no longer be for sale.
The Flass in Cumbria was left derelict after falling into the hands of a new owner who acquired it as part of a divorce settlement
David Lawrence and Dean Cameron, two of the crooks who grew cannabis at the property
When police raided the house in the quiet village of Maulds Meaburn, they discovered ducting, cabling and other equipment believed to have been used to cultivate more than 260kg of cannabis
The surrounding park remains open to visitors, with tickets costing £6 for adults and £4 for children.
On Tuesday, officers said they had arrested a 70-year-old man on suspicion of allowing the property to be used for the supply of cannabis before releasing him on bail.
A 38-year-old man, arrested on suspicion of supplying cannabis, was released but remains under investigation.
While Plas Glynllifon limped on as a visitor attraction, 23,000-square-foot The Flass in Cumbria was left derelict after falling into the hands of a new owner who acquired it as part of a divorce settlement.
Originally built by tea and opium traders Lancelot and Wilkinson Dent of Dent & Co in the mid-19th century, the mansion was rented for a bargain £5,000 a month to a London-based drugs gang, who filled its 52 rooms with a cannabis crop worth an estimated £5million.
When police raided the house in the quiet village of Maulds Meaburn, they discovered ducting, cabling and other equipment believed to have been used to cultivate more than 260kg of cannabis.
Gang members Dean Cameron, 53, of London, and David Lawrence, 32, of Ilford, were each jailed for eight years.
Mark Gallagher, 49, of Wolverhampton, and Philip Branigan, 32, of Banstead, Surrey, were jailed for seven years, while Charles Neophytou, 47, of Banstead, was sentenced to five years and six months.
The grand interior of Plas Glynllifon in North Wales, where police found a cannabis factory in April
Officers uncovered cannabis plants on the top floor of the building. Pictured is another image of the building’s interior
The empty mansion hosted a ball held after King Charles’ investiture as Prince of Wales at nearby Caernarfon Castle in 1969 (pictured is Charles and the late Queen Elizabeth II at the ceremony)
Each was either convicted of, or pleaded guilty to, conspiracy offences.
Tim Evans, prosecuting, told the court in 2015: ‘This was cannabis growing on a massive scale. It is not the self-amateurish cultivation of cannabis on a window ledge or in the converted loft of a house. This was growing in a stately home.
‘Flass is a beautiful house, Grade II-listed because of its historical and architectural significance. It is a secluded house, no doubt why it was chosen for this criminal enterprise.’
In 2019, the house was sold for just £500,000, to the delight of local villagers who had watched it fall into disrepair.
By contrast, Badminton House, where The Gentlemen is filmed, is a thriving country estate run by Henry ‘Harry’ Somerset, the 12th Duke of Beaufort, and his wife Georgia.
The couple cover the estate’s costs by hosting a string of prestigious events, including the Badminton Horse Trials and the Royal Horticultural Society Badminton Flower Show, alongside welcoming productions such as Netflix dramas.
If only the fictional Duke of Halstead could follow their example.