Once part of a large estate, The Old Rectory in Nether Compton was built in the early 1820s, with Victorian additions added in the later part of the century and a garden room installed by the current owners during their tenure of over thirty years.
The area of north-west Dorset between Sherborne and the county boundary with Somerset is a timeless, wooded landscape of ancient villages linked by narrow, winding lanes enclosed by high grassy banks or walls of local stone.
Historically, Nether Compton and its neighbour, Over Compton, were part of a large estate owned, from 1736 until 2003, by the Goodden family, whose seat was Compton House at Over Compton.
In 1883, Col John Goodden inherited the estate and, throughout the 1880s and 1890s, carried out a number of improvements in Nether Compton, restoring and extending the church and adding new buildings, many of which were designed by the architect Evelyn Hellicar.
Distinguished 20th-century residents include the test pilot, aviation historian and naval architect Harald Penrose, who lived at Nether Compton for 50 years in a house that he designed himself. Actresses Kristin and Serena Scott Thomas also spent their childhoods in the village.
Built of the warm local Ham stone under a slate roof, The Old Rectory, listed Grade II, dates from about 1820, with a substantial Victorian extension added in 1860/1870 and a garden room created by the current owners during their 35-year tenure. The house stands in more than three acres of wooded, park-like gardens, well stocked with shrub beds and borders.
It offers 6,135sq ft of light and airy living space, including reception and inner halls, three fine reception rooms, a well-designed kitchen/breakfast room, a garden room, master and guest bedrooms with en-suite bathrooms, three further bedrooms and a family bathroom, plus extensive cellars.
The vendors hold an assignable lease on surrounding glebe land of some 10.8 acres; this expires in 2022, but could be extended by agreement with the Diocese of Salisbury. There is also planning and listed-building consent to convert the stables to additional annexe accommodation.
Our property correspondent Penny Churchill comes across a lot of properties, yet she's still clearly entranced by this beautiful family home in Frampton.
If ever a house and garden encapsulated the Georgian rectory dream, it’s Grade II-listed The Old Rectory at Frampton, six miles north of Dorchester, for which Knight Frank quote a guide price of £1.25m.
Built in 1726, in the classic, square-cut Georgian style, the gracious former rectory stands next to the church in a quintessential Dorset village setting.
Unusually, it’s been little altered since it was built – apart from a discreet Victorian extension at its northern end – until a decade ago, when the present owners bought it and had the entire property restored and refurbished throughout.
Inside there is some 3,500sq ft of accommodation, including three reception rooms, five bedrooms and four bathrooms.
The vendors have been careful to retain the charm of the many original features, with tall bay windows, wooden floors and fireplaces in the reception rooms.
The drawing room – pictured at the top of this page – exemplifies many of these charms, with elegant cornicing and sash windows which can be covered by original working shutters.
The setting is idyllic. The house is set in just over an acre of formal and wild gardens on three sides, with a kitchen garden at the rear.
Beyond the main home there is stabling and garaging in the coachhouse that comes as part of the property, and which is Grade II-listed in its own right.
This home, built in the 17th century history, has history which stretches back even further in this quaint village in Somerset, yet the latest owners have brought it up to date with everything from a dining kitchen to a heated swimming pool.
The Old Rectory, listed Grade II, probably dates from about 1680 and was altered and extended in both the Georgian and Victorian periods.
Built of Ham stone on two storeys with slate and Roman clay-tile roofs, it has been the family home of the current owners for the past 15 years, during which time they have restored and updated the house.
Among the additions are a a smart conservatory to create an inviting new kitchen, an excellent family space for eating and entertaining.
The house, clad in mature wisteria, stands in just under an acre of well-laid-out gardens, where a high stone wall conceals a heated swimming pool and a small orchard.
The main building provides more than 4,700sq ft of surprisingly spacious accommodation, including four/five reception rooms, six/seven bedrooms and three bathrooms; three of the bedrooms, including the master, have lovely views over the village and the surrounding countryside.
The present owners have also converted the former coach house to a self-contained, two-bedroom guest cottage with obvious letting potential.
This is a property with fascinating history. The manor and church of East Chinnock were endowed to the 12th-century Cluniac Priory founded at Montacute by William, Earl of Mortaine, and held by the priory until its dissolution in 1538–39.
In 1561, the manor was bought by Henry Portman, in whose family it remained until 1924, when lands and property belonging to the estate were sold.
A beautifully-preserved Georgian home in one of Bath's most unspoilt residential squares has come to the market. Penny Churchill reports.
In the course of their married life, computer expert Ken Barnes and his wife, Vera, had migrated westward via country houses in Surrey and Hampshire before deciding, in 1987, to settle on Bath, which they had already identified as a possible retirement destination.
Its 4,143sq ft of living space is spread over five floors, while the east–west orientation allows brilliant light to stream in through the typically Georgian sash windows. It is, in short, the very archetype of the Georgian home in Bath.
Even the location is exactly what you’d imagine of a fine home in Bath. Designed by John Palmer in about 1790 and completed by 1794, St James’s Square is a delightful backwater close to the famous Royal Crescent, yet undisturbed by the tourist buses that throng the thoroughfares at the height of the season. It is also the only fully residential square in Bath, reveals Andrew Cronan of Strutt & Parker.
This time round the sale will surely be entirely straightforward – unlike the process which the Barneses had to go through.
‘It took us a year to buy 29, St James’s Square from Mr Willats’ Charity, which supports churches around the country and owns a number of commercial and residential properties in Bath,’ adds Mrs Barnes.
‘Luckily for us, the house had never been on the market, having been let mainly as individual rooms, and was totally unaltered; we even received the original Georgian keys.’
As they awaited receipt of those precious keys, Mr and Mrs Barnes based themselves in a flat, before embarking on a reconfiguration and renovation of the Grade I-listed house.
At this point, Mr Barnes was commuting regularly to work in London, and it fell to his wife to oversee the restoration on a daily basis. Fortunately, Mrs Barnes had the foresight to attend a conservation and restoration course and was well equipped to hold her own with the expert builders, craftsmen and interior decorators involved.
The lower ground floor – the former kitchen – which has its own private access and could easily be used as a separate apartment, has been transformed into a large sitting room with its original Bath-stone fireplace surrounds and period dresser, plus a separate bathroom.
The ground floor houses a fully-fitted Smallbone kitchen, with a charming Colefax & Fowler dining room to the front.
On the first floor, linked drawing and withdrawing rooms have natural wood floors and wonderful views over the beautifully maintained private gardens, which are jointly owned by the residents.
The second floor houses a splendid principal bedroom with a dressing room and an en-suite shower room, with a walk-in shower and a fireplace flanked by original cupboards. The third floor offers three bedrooms and a separate bathroom.
Cavendish Crescent was one of the last to be built in Bath's golden age of Georgian architecture, and a rare opportunity has arisen to buy a complete house in this grand location.
The Grade II-listed Cavendish Crescent, facing south-west with utterly splendid views, is one of Bath’s best-kept secrets.
Finding a complete house for sale in this terrace is a real rarity since the majority of the residences were divided into flats in the 20th century. But this is the real deal, spread over five floors and with 4,621sq ft of internal space.
Acquired by its London-based owners some 15 years ago and now ‘surplus to requirements’, the house has recently been refurbished and is in ‘excellent decorative order’, according to the agents – and as the pictures on this page demonstrate, the whole place has been gently modernised to give a clean, comfortable feel while making the most of the architecture.
The large sash windows, high ceilings, fine chimney pieces and ornate ceiling mouldings are all exactly as you’d hope to find in this sort of property, while the stone staircase with mahogany handrail adds a real touch of splendour.
The lower ground floor has all sorts of interesting spaces: a pair of small courtyards, a study, a vault and even a bedroom. Above on the ground floor is a dining room, kitchen and utility room.
There are drawing and withdrawing rooms located on the first floor in order to make the most of the inspiring views across the city and the pitch-and-putt golf course within Victoria Park.
The second floor houses an impressive master suite with bathroom and dressing room, plus a smaller bedroom and a plant room, while on the top floor there are two further bedrooms, both en-suite.
The configuration of the house means that the lower ground floor could easily be set up as a self-contained flat for a granny, nanny or even an Air BnB rental, while there’s also a lovely private garden at the rear of the property.
A huge investment of time and money is needed to restore this pair of houses on Lansdown Crescent to their former glory – but the rewards for the buyer could be enormous, as Penny Churchill explains.
It’s a rare opportunity for a knowledgeable buyer to restore and refurbish this double-house near the centre of this famous Bath crescent – one of the most sought-after in the city – which comprises 20 Grade I-listed houses.
Designed by John Palmer and built between 1789 and 1793, Lansdown Crescent is sandwiched between the smaller crescents of Lansdown Place East and Lansdown Place West and offers extraordinary views over Bath from its elevated site high on a hillside.
Numbers 7 and 8 are presently configured as one main dwelling with secondary flats and a separate mews house. One main staircase serves both No. 7 and No. 8, with the Mews House at the rear of Number 7.
As the images on this page show, the property is – at present – decorated in a very different manner to the normal Georgian property you’ll find in Bath yet for the buyer not afraid to make changes that will scarcely be a problem.
The whole place could become a single dwelling – which, at 13,353sq ft, would make it one of the largest in Bath. It could also split into two fine townhouses plus the mews house, a plan for which planning consent has already been granted.
There are all sorts of added bonuses for someone willing to put in the effort: there is a lovely garden, a balcony, a yard and ample off-street parking.
When all this is factored in, Charlie Taylor of Knight Frank suggests that this is a huge investment opportunity: refurbishment costs are estimated at about £1 million per house, but upon completion the final value should be in excess of £4m each.
Bernithan Court estate boasts a 17th century Grade II-listed manor house, rich pastureland and a lake famous for breeding monster carp.
Last week saw the launch in Country Life of one of south Herefordshire’s most enchanting small country estates: the wonderfully unspoilt, 120-acre Bernithan Court at Llangarron, near Ross-on-Wye, which boasts a Grade II*-listed house built in 1692 on the site of an earlier house owned by the Hoskyns family since 1616.
Strutt & Parker quote a guide price of £3.25 million for the estate, which stands on the edge of picturesque Llangarron village, at the heart of a landscape described as ‘a Country of Gardens and Orchards’ by the 17th-century traveller Celia Fiennes, who rode side-saddle through every county in England between 1685 and 1702.
Miss Fiennes was evidently unimpressed by the state of the roads in what was then a remote part of the country, although, according to the late John Cornforth (Country Life, November 9, 1967), ‘the roads have improved since she jogged along them…yet the parish of Llangarron is still fairly out of the way, six miles to the west of Ross beyond the Wye and the motorway. Once off the main road, one plunges into a network of lanes that seem to meander vaguely westwards, and if one happens to have chosen the right one, one passes Bernithan’. Miss Fiennes, apparently, never did.
For centuries, the lands in these parts were owned by a handful of families, notably the Gwillyms of Langstone Court, the Hoskyns of Bernithan, the Kyrles of Walford Court and the Clarkes of Hill Court, all of whom lived within a few miles of each other and were inter-connected in some way.
One of the most prominent was William Gwillym the younger, whose mother was a Hoskyns of Bernithan and whose wife, Elizabeth, was a co-heiress and younger daughter of Robert Kyrle of Walford Court. William served as High Sheriff of the county in 1693 and inherited Langstone Court in about 1698.
In the 18th and 19th centuries, Bernithan passed through several hands. In 1926, an advertisement in Country Life announced the sale of the ‘important and valuable freehold Agricultural and Sporting Estate known as Bernithan Court, containing in all about 308 acres of rich pasture, pasture orcharding and productive arable land…
‘The Residence, which is approached by a carriage drive, is exceptionally well built of the Tudor period, formerly the seat of the Hoskyns family, and said to have been visited by James the First, and contains panelled entrance hall, exceedingly fine old oak staircase, three reception rooms (two of which are oak panelled), nine bedrooms (one panelled), bathroom, dressing room and the usual domestic offices. The farm is well watered, with a lake of almost three acres suitable for stocking with trout, and three other pools.’
The following year, the estate was bought by Lt-Col E. Barnardiston, who restored the house and garden, modernised the farm and stocked the lake with trout. However, the fish failed to thrive in the weed-infested water and, in a bid to clean up the lake, a batch of rare carp was introduced.
Undisturbed by fishing throughout the Colonel’s lifetime, the Redmire lake became a breeding ground for monster carp, the most famous being a 44-pounder caught by a Hertfordshire engineer in 1951. The fish, named Clarissa, was presented to London Zoo and lived in its aquarium for a further 20 years.
On February 8, 1952, a Country Life advertisement again announced the sale of Bernithan Court, described as a ‘Genuine William and Mary Residence’ with ‘3 reception rooms, 4 principal and 3 secondary bedrooms, 2 bathrooms’ plus ‘a sporting covert of 9 acres containing valuable mixed timber, a lake, a fish pond – 15 acres in all’ – together with ‘the prize-winning, 295-acre Bernithan Farm, let on a yearly tenancy at a rent of £600 per annum’.
The house and farm were bought by the formidable Mrs Amy Simmons, a well-known local character and master of the South Herefordshire hunt, and the great-aunt of the current vendors.
During this family’s tenure, a major restoration was carried out between 1972 and 1974 and again in 1985. The walled garden was restored in 2002. Throughout this time, the Redmire carp fishery has gone from strength to strength, generating an annual income of some £40,000, which covers the upkeep of the house and grounds.
Although the magical gardens and idyllic setting of Lower Chilland House mark it as something out of a fairytale, the quaint exterior hides a plethora of modern amenities. Penny Churchill reports.
Lower Chilland House at Martyr Worthy, four miles east of Winchester, stands in a peerless riverside location on the banks of the River Itchen, widely ranked among the world’s great fly-fishing chalkstreams.
Currently for sale through Savills at a guide price of £7.5m, the mid-18th-century house, listed Grade II, conceals an ultra-contemporary country retreat behind its traditional Georgian façade, created to international standards by its American owner, who bought it in 2006.
It stands in 51⁄2 acres of landscaped gardens, which provide a magical backdrop, enhanced by the River Itchen flowing along the southern boundary, and the Mill Leet running through the grounds, providing 875 yards of double-bank fishing between them.
Space and light abound throughout the house, from the formal drawing room and dining room on either side of the hall to the inner staircase hall, the kitchen/breakfast room and its adjoining sitting room, with French doors opening to a covered outside dining area.
The first-floor master suite comprises a magnificent master bedroom, a large dressing room, a bathroom and a private terrace. There are two guest bedrooms and a bathroom on this floor, with a wood-panelled cinema room in the attic above.
Serious exercise and total relaxation are everywhere in mind, from the magnificent swimming pool at the back of the house to the separate lap pool equipped with a built-in speaker system for length training. The pool house incredibly opens up along one entire wall, a modern design which somehow manages to remain sympathetic to the original architecture of the house and conjures up pleasant images of long summer days outside.
The Grade II-listed Mill House has been converted to a state-of-the-art gym, with bespoke treatment and steam rooms, but could also be adapted to additional guest accommodation, if required.
Catch up on the best country houses for sale this week that have come to the market via Country Life.
The title of Giles Kime's recent book about the designer of this room says it all: 'Nina Campbell: Elegance and Ease'. What more could anyone wish for their home?
Credit: Paul Raeside/Rizzoli
Dating to the 17th century with possibly earlier origins, sustainable enlargement and careful tending has allowed New Grove to retain the charmingly authentic characteristics granted by its period.
For sale through Savills Country Department at a guide price of £6.5m for the whole, imposing, Grade II*-listed New Grove at Petworth, with its charming five-bedroom Stable House and 10 acres of magnificent gardens and grounds, is the latest star entrant to the West Sussex country-house scene.
The substantial main house was built in the 17th century by the Peachey landowning family and refronted and extended in the 18th century, although none of the original building can be seen from the front, bar the crest of its steeply pitched roof.
Located a stone’s throw from the centre of historic Petworth, in the heart of the South Downs National Park, New Grove sits peacefully within its own secluded grounds right on the edge of town. Previously part of the vast Leconfield estate before passing to the present owners in the 1970s, the house has seen further modernisation and extension in recent years.
Superbly arranged for entertaining on a grand scale, New Grove offers some 12,332sq ft of accommodation on three floors including reception and inner halls, four main reception rooms, nine bedrooms, seven bath/shower rooms and – a recent addition – a light and airy kitchen/breakfast room. Key elements include the spacious and elegant drawing room, with its magnificent moulded ceiling and wall panels, and the grand, double-height, formal dining room.
The Stable House, a stunning home in its own right, boasts a further five bedrooms, a drawing room, a sitting room, a dining room and a large eat in kitchen.
In the heart of sporting country, New Grove is surrounded by opportunities befitting even the most avid enthusiast. With golf courses that include The West Sussex at Pulborough, Chiddingfold and Cowdray Park, polo at Midhurst, horse racing at Goodwood and Fontwell Park, sailing at Chichester and flying and motoring at Goodwood.
The magnificent Athelhampton House in Dorset is a manor with spectacular Tudor interiors, 19th-century formal gardens and a fascinating history.
One of Dorset’s most exquisite Tudor manors, Grade I-listed Athelhampton House near Puddletown, has come to the market . This extraordinary property, which lies six miles from the county town of Dorchester and 11 miles from the coast at Ringstead Bay, is for sale at a guide price of £7.5 million through the country departments of Knight Frank and Savills.
Seeing Athelhampton House in all its early-spring glory, it’s hard to imagine that the historic stone house has risen more than once from the ashes of disaster, thanks to the efforts of an inspired and dedicated few. They include the Martyn family, who built the house in the late 15th and mid 16th centuries; the antiquarian Alfred Cart de Lafontaine, who restored it and created its magnificent formal gardens in the late 1800s; and its present owners, the Cooke family, who, during a 62-year tenure, have built on and enhanced the legacy left by the best of Athelhampton’s many previous owners.
The glories of Athelhampton House and its 29 acres of exquisite formal and informal gardens bounded by the River Piddle, are too numerous to list here. Worthy of special mention, however, are the Great Hall, one of the finest examples of 15th-century domestic architecture in England; the oriel window, which depicts the marriage alliances of the Martyns; and the Great Chamber, with its elaborate plaster ceiling based on a pattern from the Reindeer Inn at Banbury, which was added by Cart de Lafontaine in about 1905.
Also of note are the King’s Room, the original 15th-century solar, so called because the manorial courts held in the name of the king took place here; the dining room or Green Parlour, decorated by Cart de Lafontaine and restored in the 20th century; the State Bedroom, with its 15th-century fireplace; and the main staircase, rebuilt by the Cooke family using Jacobean oak from the demolished priory at Bradford-on-Avon.
The private family rooms are housed in the east wing, the second floor of which has been converted to a conference facility with a large auditorium-cum-cinema.
The pretty thatched coach house, refurbished throughout in 1997, forms the heart of the commercial operation at Athelhampton, with further accommodation available in the three-bedroom River Cottage, another charming thatched house, accessed over a bridge across the River Piddle.
The Great Chamber at Athelhampton House
According to a series of scholarly articles by Clive Aslet, then Architectural Editor of Country Life (May 10, 17 and 24, 1984), Athelhampton came to the Martyns when successive generations, Robert and his son, Sir Richard Martyn, married Athelhampton heiresses. Sir Richard’s grandson, William, was a canny operator who married twice, each time into a rich West Country family, and prospered in business under three monarchs — Edward IV, Richard III and Henry VII — before being elected Mayor of London in 1492 and knighted two years later.
‘Shrewd as ever, Martyn waited a decade before deciding that England after Bosworth was safe to build in. The licence to crenellate Adlampston, as his manor house was called, was given on November 5, 1495… Built of whitish limestone with Ham Hill stone dressings [it] preserved a perfect medieval arrangement of porch, hall, oriel and service wing, which can still be seen,’ noted Mr Aslet.
The oldest part of Athelhampton House and still an impressive focal point is the magnificent Great Hall, built in about 1485, with its timbered roof, linenfold panelling, minstrels’ gallery and heraldic glass windows.
The west wing and a gatehouse were added by Sir William’s descendants in about 1550, although the gatehouse was demolished in the early 1860s in the course of a restoration by a subsequent owner, the self-important George Wood – an intervention that caused outrage in conservation circles at the time.
A series of earlier Country Life articles (June 2, 9 and 23, 1906) recalls the ending of the Martyn male line with the death of Nicholas Martyn in 1595/96; the inscription tombstone in the Athelhampton chapel of St Mary Magdalene at Puddletown salutes him with grim humour with the words: ‘Nicholas the First and Martyn the Last,/Good night, Nicholas!’
Nicholas’s three sons had died young, so the Athelhampton estate passed to his four married daughters, none of whom wanted to live there. Eventually, it was sold to Sir Robert Long of Draycot Cerne and passed through the Long family to the Duke of Wellington’s spendthrift nephew, William Pole-Tylney-Long-Wellesley. According to Country Life, ‘this worthless person succeeded in 1845 as 4th Earl of Mornington and died in 1857, having wasted his estates’. By 1848, he had already sold Athelhampton to his former tenant, George Wood.
The Longs never lived at Athelhampton and the 18th century had seen it let to tenant farmers, so ‘from being a house of knights and squires, the old hall had sunk to the slovenly estate of a farmhouse… like an old charger in the shafts of a haywain’.
Despite Wood’s restoration, Athelhampton was again in a poor state by 1891, when it was bought by Cart de Lafontaine, who set out to restore the house to its former glory, using much of the material recovered from the former gatehouse, chapel and other buildings demolished by Wood.
The great Tudor gatehouse still existed when Athelhampton was first visited by Thomas Hardy, who lived at nearby Bock-hampton and immortalised the romantic old manor house, thinly disguised as Athelhall, in the short story The Waiting Supper and the poems The Dame of Athelhall and The Children and Sir Nameless.
The Great Hall
Cart de Lafontaine commissioned Inigo Thomas to design one of England’s finest gardens as a series of ‘outdoor rooms’ inspired by the Renaissance. The sinking of the entire ground level about the hall, due to poor drainage, was Cart de Lafontaine’s first major project. There followed lawns, terraces and walled gardens, with 40,000 tonnes of Ham Hill stone going to create the picturesque walls and terraces now standing ‘where were cowsheds, and ruinous stables and linhays’.
Having lost his heir and his fortune during the First World War, Cart de Lafontaine sold his beloved Althelhampton in 1916. It was bought by George Cochrane, who built the north wing in 1920–21, before selling in 1930 to the Hon Mrs Esmond Harmsworth, who entertained lavishly there.
The house was sold again in 1933 and reappeared in the advertisement pages of Country Life in 1946, when it was described as a ‘XVth century Mansion of rare architectural charm, and of great historical association, in a remarkable state of preservation, carefully restored and brought thoroughly up-to-date with all modern comforts’.
In 1957, Athelhampton House was bought by the eminent surgeon Robert Victor Cooke, who restored the manor as a home for his retirement and to house his extensive collection of 16th- and 17th-century furniture, paintings, tapestries and carvings. Following his wife’s death in 1964, he gave the house to his son Robert Cooke MP (later Sir Robert) on his marriage to his wife, Jenifer King, in 1966.
After the death of Sir Robert in 1987 and Jenifer in 1995, Patrick Cooke inherited the house. He continued its restoration and extended the gardens, all listed Grade I, with his wife, Andrea.
Having worked tirelessly to build a thriving family enterprise at Athelhampton, which is open to the public all year round, Mr Cooke is looking forward to embarking on the next phase of his life, in which the knowledge and experience gained over 30 years or more at the helm of this remarkable Dorset manor will, no doubt, serve him well.
Sir Edwin Lutyens had a hand in shaping many of the buildings of Surrey but actually conceived fewer than are attributed to him. Now, in the 150th anniversary of his birth, a house in Surrey could be one of the few left unclaimed...
Described by the late architectural historian Gavin Stamp as ‘surely the greatest British architect of the 20th (or of any other) century’, Sir Edwin Lutyens spent his boyhood in the village of Thursley, Surrey, where he later developed his distinctive architectural style, based on the traditional forms of local Surrey buildings.
Strongly promoted in Country Life by the magazine’s founder, Edward Hudson, Lutyens soon established himself as the ‘go-to’ country-house architect of the day; houses designed by him inevitably commanded premium prices, to the extent that an article (January 5, 1978) suggests that ‘many more houses are attributed to Sir Edwin Lutyens than he ever had a hand in designing’.
In this 150th anniversary year of Lutyens’s birth (Country Life, March 20), it’s particularly intriguing to find a house cautiously described as being ‘an impressive and charming Lutyens-style country house surrounded by magnificent Jekyll-style grounds’.
The design of Gooserye at Worplesdon, 41⁄2 miles north-west of Guildford, is so typical of Lutyens that it’s hard to believe that it’s not an original, although that could conceivably be the case, given that the house is unlisted and seemingly little documented.
Set in 16 acres of Jekyll-esque gardens that lead onto parkland, bluebell woods and a paddock, Gooserye (pronounced ‘goose rye’) is said to date from the 1600s, ‘with the majority of the main house built c.1908 in the style of Sir Edwin Lutyens’. Its many original period features include oak beams, oak panelling and working fireplaces, the whole maintained in immaculate order throughout.
The three main reception rooms have lovely views over the formal gardens to the south. The dining room, study and games room have fine wood panelling and large windows. The ground-floor rooms, which flow beautifully, include a formal drawing room, a charming kitchen and a utility/boot room.
The first floor houses a minstrel’s gallery and a vaulted picture gallery, both classic features of Lutyens houses. The master- bedroom suite is located beyond the picture gallery and has high ceilings, with splendid views over the gardens; there are six more bedrooms and four bathrooms on this floor.
The main house, Gooserye, is complemented by an adjoining property called Pond House, which has been converted into two flats, each of which is self-contained with its own entrance.
The first-floor flat has three bedrooms, a sitting/dining room, a bathroom and a kitchen; the ground-floor flat has a bedroom, a reception room, a kitchen and a bathroom. These flats can either be kept separate or linked to the main house by existing access doors.
In the 150th anniversary year of Lutyens’s birth it’s especially intriguing to find a house on the market undoubtedly designed by the great man, with gardens created
by his friend and mentor, Gertrude Jekyll.
Grade II-listed Warren Mere is two miles from Thursley and nine miles south-west of Guildford, in the Surrey Hills AONB. For sale through Knight Frank at a guide price of £4.5 million with 63 acres of woodland, pasture, lakes and gardens, Warren Mere stands in the centre of its land, overlooking one of its three large lakes.
One of Lutyens’s first country houses, originally known as Warren Lodge, the young architect altered and extended the original 16th-century building for his friends Robert and Barbara Webb in 1896–7, with gardens laid out by Jekyll.
Although Warren Mere is one of Lutyens’s least-known houses, it’s a fine example of his early work and worthy of note if only for the fact that it was here, in 1897, that he and his wife, Lady Emily Lytton, are believed to have spent the first few days of their honeymoon, at the Webbs’ invitation.
This wasn’t the young couple’s first visit to the house. That took place the previous September, when, on the day they met while staying at Milford as guests of the Webbs, the young Lutyens persuaded his future wife to cycle with him by moonlight to Thursley, to see the new house he was building for their hosts.
It was love at first sight for both of them and the next day Lutyens introduced Emily to Jekyll, with whom he had already established a professional partnership that would last 44 years.
In 1909, Warren Mere was further extended by Lutyens for Lord Stamfordham and there followed a succession of distinguished owners, including Col and Mrs W. H. Whitbread, who bought Warren Mere in 1939.
The house came back on the market in 1978, when it boasted an estate of 865 acres of woods and heathland comprising Thursley Common and part of Rodborough Common.
Both were eventually sold that year, with the house and 52 acres being secured by a British buyer for about £150,000 and 788 acres of common land bought by the Nature Conservancy Council.
Its present owner, who bought the property in 2002, has had the interior inspirationally redesigned by Enrica Stabile from L’Utile e il Dilettevole in Milan, with colour-washed beams, walls and woodwork throughout.
Warren Mere offers 9,695sq ft of bright and elegant living space, including seven reception rooms, nine bedrooms and nine bathrooms.
It comes with a tennis court, an indoor swimming pool, a three-bedroom cottage and numerous outbuildings. Behind the house, a large terrace runs the full length of the building with direct access from the kitchen – ideal for al fresco dining.
Kentlands is a remarkable Grade II-listed Arts-and-Crafts house in an idyllic location, sitting along a beach in the private Sandwich Bay Estate.
Although accepting that the claim of ‘possibly England’s best beach house’ in relation to Kentlands in Princes Drive, Sandwich Bay, Kent, may be ‘a little over the top’, the many virtues of this remarkable Arts-and-Crafts house are evident.
Kentlands sits right alongside the beach, overlooking Sandwich Bay and adjoining the famous links of the Royal St George’s Golf Club.
For sale through Strutt & Parker at a guide price of £2.9m, the house was built in 1920 by the architect Charles Biddulph Pinchard for Frederick Leverton Harris (an influential Tory MP who was Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Blockade during the First World War), using materials reclaimed from two 17th-century Dutch weavers’ cottages and timbers taken from local Tudor barns – hence its Grade II listing.
It was later owned by the Heinz family and subsequently by its current owners, who have completely renovated the property.
Kentlands sits within the private Sandwich Bay Estate, just south of the medieval Cinque Port of Sandwich, and boasts more than 6,000sq ft of living space, including a reception hall, four reception rooms, a kitchen/breakfast room, eight bedrooms and four bathrooms. It comes with a walled garden, a swimming pool and unhindered access to the beach.
Also included in the sale is The Lodge House, a two-bedroom property, ideal for accommodating all the friends and family who’ll be flocking to the new owners for holidays.
Adjacent to The Lodge House is another building currently in use as a playroom, with the potential of being converted into a games room, an office, a studio or a home gym.
Although seemingly in the middle of nowhere (it certainly feels like a world of its own), Kentlands has surprisingly decent transport links, only 17 miles from Canterbury and all of its charms.
An exception to the law which saw many of Kent's finest estates divided among families and therefore unable to support a traditional country house lifestyle, Pettings Court remains one of the most extensive holdings in the parish.
Before the abolition, in 1925, of the ancient Kentish system of land tenure known as ‘gavelkind’, land in the county was inherited equally by the landowner’s sons or other heirs, even women, unlike elsewhere in England, where the law of primogeniture meant that land automatically descended to the eldest son. This led to family farms in Kent being split up into ever-smaller and less profitable units and few working farms in the county could support a traditional country house and the lifestyle that goes with it.
A local history, compiled in 1957, finds that ‘although Pettings Court cannot boast the age of some of the houses in the Parish, it is a charming house with many interesting features. Well over 50 years ago, Cecil J. G. Hulkes, a member of the first Parish Council (1894) lived here; he owned a pack of hounds. A few years afterwards, Thomas Aveling, head of Aveling & Porter of Rochester (later Aveling Barford), the well-known maker of every type of steam engine, bought the property and lived there’.
A later owner was a Mr Masterson, one of the heads of a Romanian oil company. When the First World War broke out, he was one of the last to leave Romania, having set fire to the oil wells before departing, and was also in Romania in 1939, when he again put the wells out of action before leaving. On his death, the Court and farm were sold to W. C. R. Stoneham.
The sale took place in 1949, although the Stoneham family had already been farming nearby for many years: the Fulljames Survey of 1792 notes the granting of a tenancy of Corner Farm at nearby West Yoke to Thomas Stoneham, described as ‘a new recruit into the ranks of Ash smallholders’. Over the years, the family acquired more land as other farmers came and went and Pettings Court Farm became the epicentre of one of the most extensive holdings in the parish.
The last of the Stonehams to farm Pettings Court was the late Ivor Russell Stoneham, who died unexpectedly in February last year, hence the sale of the house and farm, which had been his home as man and boy. Mr Stoneham was a countryman through and through, a former master of the West Kent foxhounds and a lover of country sports.
The parish of Ash lies on the upper slope of the North Downs, between the valleys of the Darent and the Medway, with Pettings Court farmhouse half-hidden among towering trees in its own secret valley, surrounded by well-maintained gardens and with far-reaching views over its own pasture and parkland. The much-loved country house, which offers three comfortable reception rooms and five bedrooms, comes with a swimming pool and a traditional courtyard of stables and outbuildings.
Substantial estates in the county of Kent are rare, but a fine example in the High Weald AONB has come to market.
In the heavily wooded High Weald AONB farming has always been a marginal activity, with the majority of farms remaining small and rarely profitable. However, significant wealth was introduced by numerous prosperous urban dwellers moving to the Kent countryside, due to its accessibility from London and its unique form of land tenure, which enabled land to be easily negotiable. This migration was accelerated by the arrival of the railways in the Victorian period.
Such is the background of gracious, Grade II-listed Skeynes Park, near Edenbridge, 10 miles south-west of Sevenoaks, which is currently on the market with Savills, at a guide price of £2.975m. Described in its listing as a ‘small Gothic mansion possibly by Decimus Burton’, Skeynes Park was built in about 1840 and, in 1844, was sold to John Fielden, a cotton manufacturer from Todmorden in Lancashire, who, with William Cobbett of Rural Rides fame, was a staunch campaigner for workers’ rights and parliamentary reform.
Cobbett’s son, John, a barrister and a Sussex JP, married Feilden’s daughter, Mary, and lived with his family at Skeynes from 1857 until his death 20 years later. Following Mary’s death in 1896, their children failed to find a buyer for the house and it was leased to a succession of distinguished tenants. Among them, from 1901, was the Hon Patrick Bowes-Lyon JP, the uncle of the Queen Mother, who visited him regularly when attending the races at nearby Lingfield.
In October 1919, trustees sold the estate, with 65 acres, to Alfred Churches, who sold it on a year later to the Warmsley family.
In 1935, Ben Warmsley sold Skeynes farm to a local farmer, followed, in 1939, by the sale of the mansion and entrance lodge to Robert Lawson Johnstone from London for £3,900. From the outbreak of war until D-Day, the new owners lived in a small part of the house as the army occupied the rest of the building.
In 1974, the German-born Baron von Luttitz bought Skeynes Park, by which time the former coach house (now known as Stable Court) and the lodge had been sold off separately. In the course of the following seven years, the Baron and his wife significantly improved Skeynes Park and its gardens, building an indoor swimming pool, creating a small lake in the park, raising an earth bank along the Lingfield road to ensure privacy and reduce traffic noise, planting trees around the park and laying down a tennis court in the walled garden.
They reputedly spent more than £100,000 on renovating the interior of the house to the most exacting of standards.
Sadly, it was all to no avail. In the early 1980s, the von Luttitz marriage collapsed and, in 1982, the Baroness sold Skeynes Park and its 17½ acres of gardens and grounds to a buyer of Middle Eastern extraction. For the next several years, a team of builders worked on the house, gutting the interior, ripping out floorboards and old oak beams and pulling down listed chimneys. Throughout this period, the owner’s family would come down from London at weekends, when loud Arabic music could be heard blaring throughout the park.
The final cost of the renovations was estimated at more than £500,000, but, in the end, the family decided not to move in and Skeynes Park was again put back on the market. Several quick-fire and acrimonious sales later, peace was finally restored when, in 1997, Skeynes Park was bought by Geoffrey and Cynthia Eclair-Heath, the current vendors.
During their tenure, Mr and Mrs Eclair-Heath have restored and upgraded the 8,816sq ft house, which boasts accommodation on three floors, including an impressive entrance hall, four fine reception rooms, an orangery, master and guest suites, six further bedrooms and a family bathroom. The enchanting formal gardens and parkland have also been restored to their former splendour.
The grand, sprawling Otley Hall has fascinating history – including panelling which once adorned Carinal Wolsey's chambers at Hampton Court. Penny Churchill reports.
Otley Hall, one of the grandest Tudor houses in Suffolk.
Historic Otley Hall, near Woodbridge, is described by Pevsner as ‘perhaps the outstanding Tudor House in east Suffolk’ and, grandly, by Simon Jenkins, in his England’s Thousand Best Houses, as ‘an immaculate Tudor house with no edge untrimmed and no dust on any shelf. A cobweb would be an arachnoid impertinence’.
Today a well-organised family home with all the comforts that modern technology allows, the 8,200sq ft brick masterpiece retains the aura of a high-status manor house that has survived largely unchanged for some 550 years. It’s now for sale through Savills and Jackson-Stops at a guide price of £2.25m for a home set in about 10 acres of ‘magical’ gardens, parkland and woodland.
The hall offers four main reception rooms, a minstrels’ gallery, a large kitchen/breakfast room, five principal bedrooms, four attic bedrooms, four bath/shower rooms and a self-contained flat.
Highlights include the impressive Great Hall, with its screens passage, and the parlour, with its exquisite linenfold panelling, believed to have come from Cardinal Wolsey’s chambers at Hampton Court Palace.
A 1,930sq ft traditional timber barn and former stables have been converted to a multi-purpose function room and party barn. Combined with numerous promotional activities, the hosting of dinners, conferences and concerts and the use of the manor as a successful wedding venue.
This helps to generate a sizeable income that contributes towards the maintenance and running costs of the property. Legal opinion suggests that the activities of Otley Hall Events demonstrate a clear commercial use — arguably sufficient to justify a ‘mixed-use’ classification of the property for Stamp Duty purposes.
A delightful timber-frame house offers insights into the realities of luxurious 15th-century living and the brutal complexities of Lancastrian politics,
Its owners first discovered this sailor’s paradise when they first started looking for a house in the area after years renting nearby in a spot that was an hour-and-a-half’s drive of the family home in London — and barely over an hour on the train from Liverpool Street Station.
‘For a blissful nine years from 2000 to 2008, we rented a cottage on Osea Island in the River Blackwater, as a place to get away from it all,’ the owners of Tideways explain.
‘Our children, then very young, loved to watching the island causeway vanish into the sea, leaving them to enjoy the run of what felt like their own private island.
‘When Osea was sold in 2008, we started looking for another special place with a similar island feel, and almost immediately found Tideways, just a few miles due south of Osea’.
Thus began a 10-year love affair with this remarkable house set in 31 acres, 9.31 of which is gardens and meadow, the remainder comprising the intertidal foreshore and part of the bed of the River Crouch. Three generations of the family who built it in 1928 had lived there continuously, haphazardly extending the building over time.
The new owners thought about demolishing the house and replacing it with a ‘Mies-style glass sandwich, to make the Modernist most of this amazing site’, but decided on a full renovation and a gentle upgrade.
Using the original 1920s patterns and inspired by Edward Schroeder Prior’s Arts-and-Crafts Voewood, near Holt, Norfolk, they created the present 5,000sq ft house, a happy mix of old and new, adding a timber- framed extension based on a traditional Essex barn design.
Outside, they replaced old and diseased trees with new ones, renovated and extended the original herringbone brick paths, reinstated the 195ft private jetty and built a new, natural-stone sea wall to preserve the waterside boundary of the property.
They also installed a swimming pool, sited to give swimmers a private view of the river.
For sale in the wonderfully-named village of Ashbocking is a grand former rectory in blissful setting. Penny Churchill reports.
Ashbocking House in Suffolk.
Ashbocking House, in the scattered village of Ashbocking, 8.5 miles from Ipswich and 9.5 miles from Woodbridge, is a traditional Georgian former rectory set in a peaceful, 10-acre wooded setting surrounded by well-maintained farmland.
Ashbocking House’s rendered rear elevation opens onto fine formal gardens.
The home combines light and spacious reception rooms which are accessed from a fine reception hall, floored in York stone and with a fireplace and galleried staircase.
There are seven bedrooms in total: master and guest suites plus five further bedrooms on the first and second floors.
Outbuildings include the guest annexe and there is planning consent for an additional two-bedroom annexe in the woods.
Inside the guest annexe.
The landscaped gardens and grounds provide a tranquil setting for a heated swimming pool and a paddock with timber stables and an all-weather tennis court are located across the lane.
Ashbocking House is for sale via Strutt & Parker at £2.35 million – see more details and pictures.
The Grange in Aylsham is an extraordinarily well-appointed country house, with numerous outbuildings and a charming demeanour, inside and out.
Noël Coward may have described Norfolk as ‘very flat’, but the property market in East Anglia is anything but.
Spring has come early in Norfolk, although I’m told that it may be a month or two before this year’s star country properties find their way into the pages of Country Life. Nevertheless, ‘despite a tendency for vendors to test the water by going for an initial off-market launch, we’ve done half a dozen deals at around the £1.5 million market during the winter months – a time when we often find ourselves twiddling our thumbs in this part of the world,’ says a relaxed Ben Marchbank of Bedfords in Burnham Market.
He’s happy to go public on Grade II-listed The Grange in the historic market town of Aylsham – 11 miles from Cromer and 13 miles from Norwich – adjoining the 4,500-acre Blickling estate, which, since 1940, has been run by the National Trust. Bedfords quote a guide price of £1.45 million for The Grange, a fine, late-Georgian house built on the site of an earlier dwelling in about 1810 and set in 1.69 acres of charming, part-walled gardens and grounds.
It stands well back from the road behind a high red-brick wall and comes with a cottage, stabling and outbuildings. The house has been beautifully renovated by the well-respected craftsmen of A. J. Cooper of Calthorpe for the present owners, who bought the property in 2013.
It now offers 6,623sq ft of ideal family living space, including four reception rooms, a study, a splendid kitchen/breakfast room, master and guest suites, five further bedrooms and two bathrooms.
The cottage is in need of refurbishment and hasn’t been used by the current owners, but once it has been updated, the one-bedroom with kitchen and sitting room will become a perfect guest house. The outbuildings include a garage and a workshop, as well as two stables.
Hampen Lodge offers beautiful vistas and a quiet, idyllic lifestyle, with a range of sporting opportunities and close proximity to the wonders of Cheltenham.
Standing in 4½ acres of gardens and grounds on the edge of a pretty hamlet is Hampen Lodge, a beautiful home for which the Cirencester office of Jackson-Stops quotes £3.5m. The village — Hampen — is near Andoversford, and less than five miles from Cheltenham in a part of the world where both cultural and sporting opportunties abound, with the Cheltenham Festival the highlight of the local sporting calendar since 1860.
Approached through a charming piece of parkland, Hampen Lodge occupies a privileged position in this quiet hamlet, sitting firmly within an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.
Tastefully decorated, the house is perfectly designed for easy living and is waiting for a new family to move in and put their stamp on it.
The office has been described as a ‘gentleman’s haven’ and ‘decadent’, perfect for those who would prefer to work from home in a stunning setting than commute to London – that being said, trips to London would not be impossible, with trains from Cheltenham to Paddington in just over 2 hours.
The dining room comfortably sits 16 and the master suite is something to behold, with an ensuite, dressing area and a balcony which looks out onto swathes of gorgeous Cotswolds countryside.
Hampen Lodge, which is unlisted and thus offers opportunities for significant development, dates in part from the 16th century and has been sympathetically refurbished by the present owners to create a bright and cheerful Cotswold country home.
It offers more than 4,000sq ft of living space, including three reception rooms, a snug, a kitchen/breakfast room, the master suite, four further bedrooms and three bathrooms.
The main house is complemented by a one-bedroom cottage, perfect for visiting relatives or a housekeeper, four secure garages, a heated swimming pool, a pool house and gym, a greenhouse, a summer house, stabling, gardens and fields.
The gardens have been immaculately maintained and are a wonderful mix of lawns, topiaried bushes, beds of roses and mixed borders.
