Alastair Deighton

Alastair is an experienced manager of organisations and estates, with a deep understanding of how to get the best from people and places. He specialises in rural estate management, having managed portfolios large and small from the Highlands of Scotland to the southeast and southwest corners of England.

Alastair’s working life started as a warfare officer in the Royal Navy after being sponsored through his Economics and Politics degree at Exeter. He undertook deployments to the Black Sea, Gulf and Mediterranean. On leaving, he became a Reservist and dabbled in City life as a shipbroker. However, a chance encounter led to a conversation with the managing agent of the farm Alastair’s parents rented when he was a child and he headed off to Cirencester to retrain. His first roles with Smiths Gore saw him assist with the management of two large Derbyshire estates and a disparate charitable portfolio in Hereford and Shropshire.

On qualifying, Alastair rediscovered his West Country roots, moving with his family to Taunton and managing two substantial institutional holdings, adding a large private estate near Bristol a few years later. He then moved to head-up an office in Scotland, managing Highland sporting and Lowland mixed estates, before a post-merger reorganisation saw him heading south again, this time to East Sussex as a resident agent of a diverse estate with a substantial stately home. It was here that he built his confidence in leading the strategy and tactics of multi-disciplinary estates with let property, commercial, agricultural and tourism income flows.  He then moved on to very large Estate in West Sussex.

Joining Strutt & Parker’s Lewes office in 2026, Alastair is relishing applying his experience to new challenges and spreading the word of what good management can be.