A NORTHERN grouse moor, which pop diva Madonna was reported to be interested in buying for her film director husband, Guy Ritchie, has been sold to a secret buyer.

Agents acting for Lord Lambton, who put the 12,000-acre Muggleswick estate on the market, with a £6m price tag, confirmed yesterday it had been sold.

But a spokesman for Smiths Gore, at York, said the name of the buyer was "confidential".

However, he said the buyer was not Madonna, who has already bought a 1,200-acre pheasant-shooting estate in Dorset for her husband, a keen sportsman.

The Muggleswick estate, which straddles the Northumberland-Durham border, near Edmundbyers, was described by Smiths Gore in its sale literature as "one of the most-prized grouse moors in Britain. It includes three farms and a lunch hut, where sportsmen can be entertained for meals during grouse shoots.