A landmark Oxfordshire estate where champion racehorses were prepared – or retrained – is an exciting addition to the market.

The launch onto the market of charming, Grade II-listed Lew House and its surrounding 454-acre farming estate at Bampton, near Witney, Oxfordshire, signals the end of three generations of ownership by the Radclyffe family, one of England’s great foxhunting dynasties, who bought the farm in the 1930s.

Knight Frank quote a guide price of £3.25 million for the main house with its wonderful listed stable yard and buildings, set in 91 acres of gardens, park, pasture and woodland. The rest of the estate, including the beautifully renovated, Grade II-listed five-bedroom Morgans Farm on the eastern boundary, together with its period barn (which has planning consent for conversion), two estate cottages, further farm buildings, a barn with conversion potential and the remaining five lots of arable land, grassland and woodland – some 357 acres in all – is available in 10 further lots by separate negotiation.

The sale follows the death in February 2017, at the age of 97, of Capt Charles Radclyffe, who took over the running of the farm in 1946 and made it the centre of a successful horse business. He bought Thoroughbred yearlings, mainly in Ireland, shipped them back to Lew and broke and sold them on as potential racehorses at three or four years old.

He was a brilliant judge of horseflesh and among the champions who passed through his hands were Grand National winner Corbiere, Cheltenham Gold Cup winner The Dikler and dual Champion Hurdle winner Morley Street. A host of others included Mole Board, Baron Blakeney and Tingle Creek.

The Captain, as he was known, also ran what his yard manager describes as ‘a Borstal for horses’, where valuable, but unruly animals were sent for retraining. This often involved using the horses to herd the cattle from one end of Lew Farm to the other – shades of the Wild West that the horses thoroughly enjoyed.

The elite element of the Charles Radclyffe horse-training programme was the breaking and making of young horses for the Queen Mother, which involved an annual inspect-ion and lunch at Lew House. On these occasions, Raymond Blanc would be brought in, together with his team, from Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons to provide a suitably royal gastronomic experience.

Hunting was in Radclyffe’s blood and, during his teens, he spent much of his time at Hyde House in Dorset, where, from the late 1850s, the Radclyffe family kept its own pack of foxhounds. Later, Charles and his wife, Helen, regularly hunted with the Old Berks, the Heythrop and the VWH and kept horses in Leicestershire for hunting with the Quorn and the Belvoir.

Historically, Lew House has always been the most important house in this tight agricultural community. According to its listing, the house dates from the 17th century, with the original part in the north corner, 18^th – and early-19^th – century wings to the south-west and 1909 extensions by the architect John Belcher to the south-east. The 18th- and early-19th-century parts of the house were built by the Arnatts, who formed the chief farming family in the township.

Approached down a wide drive flanked by an avenue of chestnut trees, Lew House is entered through an imposing ashlar porch, which was added in 1909.

Three well-proportioned reception rooms – drawing room, dining room and sitting room – have lovely views across the formal gardens to the parkland beyond. The panelling in the 17th-century sitting room may be original, although, according to the listing, it probably dates from 1909. The first floor houses the master bedroom, with views over the park, and a bathroom next door. There are seven further bedrooms and two more bathrooms, with another bathroom and extensive attics on the second floor. The south-west end of the house is a linked annexe with an office, four bedrooms and a bathroom – a flexible area ideal for family, guests or staff.

Lew House is on the market for £3.25 million. Click here for more information and images. 

Pertwood Manor Farm is currently split into 600 acres of arable farming, 53 acres of permanent pasture and 100 acres of woodland, offering a pastoral challenge and a beautiful home for the next owners.

According to British History Online, ‘the ancient parish of Pertwood 3.5 miles north from East Knoyle and the same distance south from Sutton Veny… since the 16th century consisted of a single farm’.

That is Pertwood Manor Farm, comprising the church of St Peter, the farmhouse called the Manor House, four or five farm cottages and the farm buildings, which still form the only settlement within the area of that ancient parish.

The National Farm and Estates team at Savills is handling the sale of historic 772-acre Pertwood Manor Farm at Hindon, six miles from Warminster and seven miles from Tisbury, at a guide price of £12m for the whole.

Pertwood Manor Farm lies about three miles north of Hindon on the edge of the Blackmore Vale in the Cranborne Chase and West Wiltshire Downs AONB. Its farmhouse is a fine, Grade II-listed house set in the middle of its land, which dates from the mid 18th century, was altered in the mid 19th century and extended in the 1960s to accommodate a large farmhouse kitchen.

It offers 5,757sq ft of living space on three floors, with a cellar below, including three main reception rooms, master and guest suites, plus two further bedrooms and a family bathroom on the first floor. There are three more double bedrooms and a shower room on the floor above.

A courtyard of traditional buildings includes a converted two-bedroom coach house, a three-bedroom coach-house flat and a large traditional stone-and-brick barn, with a five-box stable block close by.

The gently undulating farmland surrounding the house is well suited to growing a range of cereal crops and boasts some exceptional views. Most of the land is classified Grade 3 and is currently split into 600 acres of arable farming, 53 acres of permanent pasture and 100 acres of woodland.

Pertwood Manor Farm is on the market at a guide price of £12 million. For more information and pictures, click here. 

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Lowesmoor Farm, on sale as a whole or in parts, stretches out from the gorgeous farmhouse as far as the eye can see, ripe with new possibilities and waiting for a new owner to take it on.

In Gloucestershire, the pristine, 940-acre Lowesmoor Farm at Cherington, six miles from Tetbury, is a thriving, mainly arable farm. It’s home to the Lowesmoor herd of pedigree Herefords, which is farmed jointly by members of the same family, whose parents bought the original smaller holding, once part of the Chevenage estate, in the 1950s.

Joint agents Strutt & Parker and Savills want ‘offers over £12.5m’ for the estate as a whole or in up to five lots.

Lowesmoor lies a mile or so north of Cherington village in the heart of the Cotswold AONB. A small part of the farm lies on the Aston Down Airfield, used by the RAF during the First and Second World Wars and now home to the Cotswold Gliding Club.

The main Lowesmoor Farm offering comprises the principal seven-bedroom 18th-century Cotswold-stone farmhouse, listed Grade II; Bankside Farmhouse, a five-bedroom secondary Cotswold-stone house, extended in 1993; modern and traditional farm buildings; and two semi-detached cottages; plus 762 acres of arable, 59 acres of pasture and 14.3 acres of woodland: some 843 acres in all.

The remaining four lots include a 64-acre parcel of arable land on the airfield, a large arable field north of the A419 and two further semi-detached cottages.

No doubt, the person who’ll call Lowesmoor home will delight in the 64 acres of permanent pasture, interspersed with woods and copses, perfect for long walks on a sunny day.

They’d also be happy to know that the farm is well-connected for somewhere so wonderfully rural, with Cirencester under ten miles away and country roads which link the property to the outside world on all sides. The nearby town of Kemble provides a direct link to the capital via Paddington in under an hour and a half.

Lowesmoor Farm is on the market with Strutt & Parker for offers over £12.5 million. Click here for more information and images. 

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It's not often that great country houses come to the open market in Cheshire — but two have arrived at once in the form of Cogshall Hall and Cogshall Grange.

Grand Georgian country houses are relatively rare in Cheshire, which makes the presence of not one, but two at the heart of the Cogshall Hall estate near the village of Comberbach, in the west of the county, worthy of special mention. Both the main estate house, Grade II*-listed Cogshall Hall, and its former lodge, Grade II-listed Cogshall Grange (described by Pevsner as ‘ambitious’) were built for wealthy landowner Peter Jackson in about 1830.

Now impeccably restored and updated by the current owners, they form part of an impressive grouping of period buildings at the core of a 99-acre residential-and-farming estate for sale through joint agents Jackson-Stops and Knight Frank at a guide price of £12.5 million.

The north side of a large cobbled courtyard behind the Grange has been converted to a three-bedroom cottage, with an office suite and a large party barn on the west side.

Described in its listing as ‘a good and complete example of a late-Georgian country house’ and in Peter de Figueiredo’s Cheshire Country Houses as ‘a house of note’, Cogshall Hall is built of Flemish-bond brick under a grey-slate roof, with a flat-roofed kitchen wing added to the rear in the early 1900s.

It’s classically symmetrical in style, with exceptional ceiling heights to both the ground and first floors.

The interior combines original features such as stone columns, ornate friezes, intricately moulded ceilings and ceiling roses and large, open fireplaces with carved marble surrounds.

More modern additions include oak panelling in the library and snooker room and bath/shower rooms lined with marble and fitted with copper sinks.

In all, the hall offers some 11,800sq ft of elegant accommodation on two floors, including four main reception rooms, a kitchen/breakfast/morning room, a boot and dog-washing room — plus a wine cellar below.

There’s also a gym, snooker room, master suite, four further bedrooms, four bath/shower rooms and a nursery.

The largest modern addition to the house is the stone-and-glass leisure suite added in 2006.

Cogshall Grange, meanwhile (pictured below), has three reception rooms, a kitchen/breakfast room, three en-suite bedrooms and a garden room built of glass and sheeted bronze, designed by the architect Jamie Fobert.

Ring-fenced by its own extensive wooded grounds and approached off a quiet country lane, Cogshall Hall is a haven of tranquillity, yet is less than 10 minutes from the M56, which links this part of Cheshire with the rest of the North-West and the UK, via the M6.

The gardens have been restored and transformed by master garden designer Tom Stuart-Smith into an inspirational setting for the complex of buildings.

The Cogshall Estate is for sale via Jackson-Stops and Knight Frank at a guide price of £12.5 million — see more details and pictures.

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Wycliffe Hall, the very picture of a grand Georgian country house, and has been treated to money-no-object restoration in the last few years, as Penny Churchill reports.

In the hamlet of Wycliffe, on the Co Durham/North Yorkshire border between Richmond and Barnard Castle, stands Grade II*-listed Wycliffe Hall. It’s in an idyllic woodland setting on the south bank of the River Tees — Wycliffe means ‘the cliff by the water’ — and has pretty much everything you could wish for in a country house.

There’s a rich history, a handsome Georgian profile, gardens designed by an RHS Chelsea gold medallist and has been lavishly refurbished inside and out by one of Britain’s top architects. It’s for sale via Savills at £6.95 million.

There has been a house here since medieval times but the Hall as it currently stands dates to the 1770s; it was acquired by the current owner, along with 49 acres of woods and parkland, in 2000. He immediately embarked on a massive restoration programme, appointing the architect Ptolemy Dean to oversee the refurbishment of the house and other buildings.

The gardens had equally lavish treatment: the person brought in to redesign them was Tom Stuart-Smith, a man who has won eight gold medals and three ‘best in show’ awards at the Chelsea Flower Show.

Wycliffe Hall sits comfortably in its parkland, with the dramatic banks of the River Tees acting as a natural boundary to the north. Approached from the south-west through formal gates, the house remains hidden from view before revealing itself in all its glory on arrival at the west front.

Internally, the building is designed to work on many levels, with the elegant formal entertaining rooms flowing off the central hall and the magnificent library on the mezzanine floor easily accessible from the entrance hall.

More than 19,000sq ft of living space is arranged over four floors, with the principal bedroom suite occupying much of the first floor.

In total, the house offers five reception rooms, eight bedrooms, nine bathrooms, a rod room and a variety of domestic offices, plus basement stores and cellars. Secondary buildings include a gate lodge, two cottages, stabling, barns and outbuildings.

Wycliffe Hall’s listing with Historic England suggests that this impeccably restored Georgian masterpiece was remodelled around a medieval core by the ornithologist and naturalist Marmaduke Tunstall III, who inherited the family estate in 1760.

Tunstall began to rebuild Wycliffe Hall in about 1773 and, by 1780, had added a handsome, large room at the back of the house to which he transferred his extensive private collection of natural-history and ethnographic items from around the world.

When he died in 1790 at the early age of 47, the estate passed to a cousin, Edward Sheldon, who sold the contents of the museum; the collection is now held by the Natural History Society of Northumbria. The Tunstall/Constable family remained at the house until the sale of the estate in 1935.

Wycliffe Hall is for sale via Savills at £6.95m — see more details and pictures.

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A few miles down the road from the beautiful town of Alnwick is Glanton Pyke, a Georgian home remodelled in the 19th century and with truly delightful gardens.

The market for £1m+ properties in Northumberland has been ‘electric’ in recent weeks, according to Sam Gibson of Strutt & Parker’s Morpeth office. And adding a further spring in his step is the arrival on the market of a home that he describes as ‘one of the finest houses in Northumberland’: the Grade II-listed Glanton Pyke.

This house, nine miles from Alnwick, stands in 18 acres of formal gardens, paddocks, parkland and woodland in a secluded yet accessible setting, with breathtaking views to the west over Whittingham Vale and towards Thrunton Woods to the south. It’s for sale at a guide price of £2.5m.

The estate and lands at Glanton Pyke were assembled in the early 1700s by the Mills family, who built the house in the mid 1700s. It was first occupied by Joseph Mills, whose son, also Joseph, married Mary Collingwood of Lilburn in 1780.

Four years later, his sister, Margaret, married Henry Collingwood of Lilburn. In 1782, Glanton Pyke was left to Joseph Mills and, in 1806, passed to his son, John. In 1820, Henry Collingwood bought the house from him after he had fallen into debt.

He commissioned the architect John Dobson to remodel it and a wing was added. In 1825, Collingwood left Glanton Pyke to his son, Frederick, who extended the house, planted the gardens with specimen trees and woodland and added numerous outbuildings, including vine houses, a game larder and a dovecote.

During the Second World War, the house was requisitioned by the army, then it remained in the Collingwood family until 1987, when its present owners bought it.

They have extensively restored and repaired the house, which now boasts four reception rooms, an orangery, four bedrooms, three bathrooms and a two-bedroom guest flat.

The grounds are a delight, especially the walled garden, which the owners have designed, planted and loved since they moved here; at its heart is a romantic Italian garden with a fish pond and fountain, completed in 2007.

Glanton Pyke is for sale via Stutt & Parker at £2.5 million — see more details and pictures.

Glebe House's stunning location and rich history makes it a wonderfully desirable property, and a little tender love and care would turn the house into a beautiful modern family home. Penny Churchill reports.

Glebe House perches on the edge of the village of Holne, which sits high on the edge of Dartmoor, overlooking the spectacular River Dart Valley as it meanders through wooded banks towards the South Hams below.

Richard Addington of Jackson-Stops quotes a guide price of £1m for Glebe House, listed Grade II and described as a ‘distinguished former vicarage that was the birthplace in 1819 of the social reformer, historian and novelist Charles Kingsley’. This fact is confirmed by a plaque on the wall and the listing document itself, which reveals that the event took place on June 12, 1819, when his father was curate-in-charge of Holne for a few months.

Glebe House is thought to date from the late 18th century and was remodelled in the fashionable cottage ornée style by Elliot of Ashlawton in about 1831. It was owned by the Church until the 20th century and has been the home of the current vendors since 1975. It offers the gracious accommodation associated with rectories of its period – all it needs now is some further renovation and modernisation to make the most of its wonderful setting.

The house is supported by the original outbuildings, providing stabling, a coach house with a small groom’s flat above and a detached stone former laundry building. All stand in mature grounds that are well stocked with ornamental shrubs and trees and surrounded by some 14 acres of grazing split into five, well-fenced paddocks bounded by traditional hedges.

A glazed verandah with a cobbled floor leads through a panelled front door to the hallway, where an elegant staircase leads to a large central landing and six first-floor bedrooms. Three ground-floor reception rooms look east over the gardens through intricate leaded-light windows.

To the east of the house, a level lawn set amid ornamental trees and shrubs has wonderful views over the Dart Valley to the tors of Dartmoor and beyond; from here, it’s a short walk or ride to the wide expanses of the open moor.

Glebe House is on the market through Jackson-Stops at a guide price of £1 million. For more images and pictures, click here. 

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In a village synonmous with the works of one this country's most important 20th-century painters, it's a rare treat to see the cottage which he made his own on the market once more.

The pretty Thames-side village of Cookham, Berkshire, is synonymous with the artist Sir Stanley Spencer, one of England’s most important 20th-century painters, who was born here and dubbed it his ‘village in Heaven’.

Directly opposite the Stanley Spencer Gallery in the heart of the old settlement stands pretty, 17th-century Wistaria Cottage, one of Cookham’s oldest houses, thought to have been built after a design by Sir Christopher Wren. Currently for sale through the Gerrards Cross office of Strutt & Parker at a guide price of £925,000, the house has been the family home, since 1993, of Stanley and Margaret Water, who had no idea of the close connection that existed between their house and the artist until after they moved in.

Back in 1912, when Spencer was studying at London’s Slade School of Fine Art, he rented the then seriously dilapidated Wisteria Cottage from the local coalman as the studio where he would paint his early masterpieces, the powerful Apple Gatherers (1912–13) and his compelling Self-portrait (1914).

His friend and fellow artist Henry Lamb bought Apple Gatherers and promptly sold it to the art collector Edward Marsh, who later also bought Self-portrait, which he considered to be ‘masterly… glowing with genius’.

It’s not clear when, exactly, Spencer stopped using Wisteria Cottage as a studio, nor, for that matter, when its name changed to Wistaria Cottage. In any event, the house had clearly been refurbished when it came to the market under the latter name in Sept-ember 1959, described as ‘a pretty Queen Anne cottage in walled gardens’, priced at £4,950 through Messrs Giddy & Giddy.

Its 1955 listing simply describes it as ‘late 17th century, altered in the 20th century’. Sixty years on, house and garden still make a pretty picture, with 1,837sq ft of internal space cleverly arranged to offer a reception/dining hall, sitting room, kitchen and breakfast room, conservatory, four bedrooms and two bath/shower rooms.

Wistaria Cottage is the market through Strutt&Parker at a guide price of £925,000. Click here for more information and images. 

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Penny Churchill takes a look at Sydenhurst, a brand-new Palladian-style country house in a prime location on the Surrey/West Sussex border.

Glimpse Sydenhurst from afar and you’d be forgiven that this Palladian-style mansion was a genuine 18^th century home. It isn’t, but it was built by a British businessman with a passion for all things Georgian — and what a job he did on it.

While the look is Classical, the feel is decidedly modern in a home that uses state-of-the-art intelligent management systems, through which lighting, climate, audio, video and security are all controlled at the touch of a button. This spectacular, almost 27,000sq ft, modern country manor house in Surrey is on the market at £30 million via joint agents Knight Frank and House.

Sydenhurst stands in more than 30 acres of manicured gardens and parkland off a quiet lane less than a mile from Chiddingfold, one of Surrey’s prettiest and most sought-after villages.

It’s an imposing mansion house with adjoining leisure complex, built of buff-coloured sandstone from Derbyshire’s Stoke Hall quarry, located at the head of a long private drive with splendid views over its own lake to the green open spaces and woodland of the surrounding countryside.

The moment you walk through the door, Georgian symmetry prevails — from the vast reception hall with its flooring reminiscent of nearby Petworth House, to the dramatic octagonal staircase, which is almost identical to that of Worlingham Hall, Suffolk, officially attributed to Francis Sandys, who built the hall, but possibly inspired by earlier Sir John Soane drawings.

Such was Sydenhurst’s owner’s meticulous attention to detail that he had every door in the hall realigned to precisely match the pattern of the flooring.

Arranged around the reception hall and scaled in proportion is an impressive dining room, an expansive drawing room, study, library, wine cellar and a 57ft-long Clive Christian-designed family kitchen with sitting area.

Given that the house was primarily built with the owner’s family in mind, the accommodation allows for the separation of formal entertaining from everyday family living.

Thus the five principal bedroom suites, including the near-2,000sq ft master suite, take up the entire first floor, with the second floor housing four more bedroom suites of equal size, thereby avoiding any suggestion of discrimination on the part of the owners’ four children.

Annexed to the house is a bewildering array of leisure facilities, all equally suited both for private use and for entertaining on a grand scale.

The main party room is double-height with a gallery above and, on one side, there is the last word in games rooms, which boasts a dazzling metal-alloy ceiling, an indoor bowling alley and a cinema and, on the other, a family room and sun room with doors leading out to the terrace and gardens.

The indoor swimming pool, which includes a spa bath, steam room, sauna and changing rooms, is another show-stopper.

Above it are located various domestic offices, a gymnasium, treatment rooms, a staff flat, a home office and — an enlightened touch — a teenager sleep-over bedroom.

If these facilities are still not enough, Sydenhurst comes with a large outdoor pool, a hard tennis court and planning consent for the erection of stabling for four horses within an L-shaped range of buildings off the main drive.

The location is a major factor here too. Chiddingfold is situated a few miles south of Guildford and east of Haslemere, both with good train services, while it’s also 20 miles from Farnborough private airfield and within easy reach of both Heathrow and Gatwick.

Ease of access to international airports, train stations and residential, financial and business areas of London are key factors in persuading overseas buyers to invest in a UK country home in the current climate. Indeed, early indications suggest an international buyer as the most likely next owner of Sydenhurst, says James Crawford of Knight Frank.

It’s hard to believe that the whole place is just five years old. For more than 60 years from 1949, Sydenhurst was a home from home for disabled Ukrainians stranded in England after the Second World War.

The original residents, for whom Sydenhurst was ‘an enchanting piece of little England’, were long gone when, in 2014, the present owner bought and demolished the rundown complex of buildings and set about creating his ideal Georgian family seat, but without the problems of maintenance and upkeep generally associated with grand country houses of the period.

Sydenhurst is for sale at £30m via Knight Frank and House — see more pictures and details.

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Barrington Hall has suffered many ups and downs in its three centuries of existence, but an astonishing restoration effort has put it in superb condition. Now it's looking for an owner to kick off its next few centuries; Penny Churchill reports.

Barrington Hall, on the Hertfordshire-Essex border not far from Bishop’s Stortford, has had something of a chequered history. Though work was originally started in 1735 it took many decades for the house to be finished. It wasn’t even fully occupied for over a century, and for 40 years in the late 20th and early 21st centuries it was used as office space.

Yet all that has changed, and a meticulous renovation project lasting over three years has seen those offices stripped out and the place painstakingly restored to its former glory, while adding some nice modern touches. It’s in this condition that it comes to the market via Knight Frank and Savills at £15 million.

The house stands in about 41 acres of formal gardens, paddocks and parkland and offers some 22,000sq ft of impressive living space on three floors, with an indoor swimming pool and leisure complex on the lower-ground floor.

Highlights include the extraordinary double-height grand reception hall, with its huge window, oak-herringbone floor and lovely fireplace; the drawing room, with its exquisite marble fireplace and mullioned windows overlooking the lake; and the mirrored dining room, which can seat 24 guests.

A fine oak staircase leads to a galleried landing and the stately master-bedroom suite, a large guest bedroom with an en-suite bathroom and three further bedrooms.

The second floor is configured as a more relaxed entertainment area and, reflecting Silvertown’s long-standing Clerkenwell connection, the vaulted, loft-style Prospect Rooms on the third floor include two further double bedrooms with exceptional views of the estate.

Additional accommodation is available in the converted six-bedroom former coach house and the single-storey staff house.

Outdoor amenities include a heated pool and pool house, an all-weather tennis court and extensive equestrian facilities, comprising 10 stables, a tack room and manège.

The construction of Barrington Hall was initiated in 1735 by John Shales Barrington, whose family had been prominent in Essex since the Norman Conquest; the new hall was intended to be a glorious, long-term family seat.

Barrington wanted Classical Georgian design with a richly decorated and fashionable interior and chose the architect John Sanderson, who had recently completed Stratton Park for the Duke of Bedford. However, the new house wasn’t completed during his lifetime and wasn’t permanently occupied for more than 120 years, until, in 1863, it passed to a distant relative, the rich and ambitious George Alan Lowndes.

Lowndes had the house extensively remodelled in a neo-Jacobean style to the design of Edward Browning and lived there until his death in 1904, after which it was bought by Alfred Gosling, scion of a prominent Essex banking family. The Goslings lived at Barrington Hall until 1977, when the house was sold to the British Livestock Company.

It was next purchased by Terrence Pickthall as the corporate headquarters of his family perfumery business, CPL Aromas, and finally sold, in 2014, to London-based developer Silvertown Properties who spent three and a half years restoring the place to its former glory.

Barrington Hall is for sale at £15m via Knight Frank and Savills — see more pictures and details.

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Anyone heading for the Game Fair at Hatfield House, Hertfordshire, this week should double-check their satnav before setting out to ensure it doesn’t take them to Haffield House in Herefordshire. Unless, of course, you happen to be in the market for a superbly renovated, classic late-Georgian house, with a cottage, stabling and outbuildings set in 120 acres of pasture, parkland and woodland, in which case Worcester-based agent Andrew Grant may be able to offer you the country estate of your dreams.

Haffield House, listed Grade II and on the market at a guide price of £5.5m through Andrew Grant Country Homes,  comes with impeccable credentials. In the early 18th century, the estate was owned by Jacob Tonson, publisher of Alexander Pope and a keen gardener, whose friend Lord Peter-borough introduced the first tulip tree to England in 1688. It may even have been Tonson who planted the fine tulip tree that still graces the garden at Haffield House.

The present Haffield estate was created in 1813 by John Biddulph and the main house, designed by eminent architect Sir Robert Smirke as an ‘unpretentious Greek Revival house’, was built in 1819.

In 2016, the 18,600sq ft house, by then in need of considerable repair, was bought from the Cadbury family by interior designer Rebecca Coady and her husband, who were looking for a Georgian country house to renovate as their ‘forever’ family home.

Three years later, following a root-and-branch restoration, Haffield House has been transformed into a splendid, easily managed country house that literally exudes new life, its roof having been removed and fitted with a breathable membrane, together with fresh slates, battens and chimneys.

The exterior render was replaced with a natural hydraulic lime coating. A biomass system was installed for heating and new, historically faithful radiators fitted through-out. All 180 windows were repaired, with their handmade glass retained, and 28 original craftsman-made fireplaces were preserved.

Outside, all the outbuildings have been restored and the grounds revived, with driveways and paths transformed with Cotswold stone. Inside, the 14 bedrooms have been converted to seven suites with luxury bathrooms, plus two further bedrooms and a cinema room. The lighting has been ingeniously planned, with three chandeliers making a brilliant centrepiece in the main reception rooms.

What would have been a small, unassuming kitchen now has bespoke oak furniture and marble tops, a separate ‘prep kitchen’, a light-filled breakfast room and a freezer room.

Sadly, the best-laid plans of mice and men can sometimes go horribly wrong and, after Mrs Coady’s husband’s return to work in Dubai, their country idyll remains a dream.

Haffield House is on the market through Andrew Grant Country Homes at a guide price of £5.5 million. Click here for more information and pictures. 

The best country houses for sale this week

Catch up on the best houses that have come up for sale via Country Life in the last few weeks.

Otham Farm in Kent has been rescued, altered and extended again and again. It has now been restored and its gardens salvaged, returning it to a stunning family home. Penny Churchill reports.

Almost exactly 100 years ago, a lengthy article in Country Life by the architect and architectural historian Philip Mainwaring Johnston (August 30, 1919) traced the history of Otham Manor at Otham, near Bearsted, Kent. From origins as a late-14th-century Wealden hall house, the property was enlarged in the 16th century, split into cottages in the 18th century and rescued, altered and further extended in the early 20th century.

Mixed fortunes in the later 20th century saw the house, alternatively known as Wardes and listed Grade I, again reduced to a state of semi-dereliction by the early 1990s. It was then bought by current owners Dominic and Christine Fisher, who have painstaking restored and enhanced the house and gardens. Now, having decided to downsize and move back to London, the Fishers have placed their cherished, 650-year-old masterpiece on the market with Knight Frank at a guide price of £2.15 million.

Wardes, as it was then known, was an L-shaped group of dilapidated, half-timbered cottages, when, in 1912, Sir Louis Mallet, then the British Ambassador in Constantinople, ‘detected amid the ruin and squalor the possibility of restoring an exceptionally fine old timber house to something like its pristine beauty’.

Dating from about 1370–80, it’s the earliest of several ancient houses in the pretty hilltop village of Otham that were saved from dereliction at the 11th hour – among them the 15th-century Synyards and Stoneacre, the latter – now owned by the National Trust.

Otham Manor sits discreetly at the southern end of the village, unseen until one enters the drive. For the purist, the most interesting feature of the house is probably the 14th-century section, which runs from north to south and is ‘a practically perfect example of a timber house of Edward III’s reign – not the largest or the small type of house, but the comparatively rare type of intermediate size, inhabited by the less important gentry, the prosperous merchant or yeoman, who seem to have thriven especially in Kent at this time’.

Architecturally, compared with the south, the north front is perceived to be the more complete, as it retains the central space occupied by the Great Hall and the east and west double-storey wings. The late-16th-century timber-framed rear wing runs west from the end of the north bay, which it slightly overlaps, with the 1912 extension attached to the north side of the 16th-century wing.

Passing out by the south door through the formal garden, today’s visitor can still get a perfect view of the south front of the original hall and its long Elizabethan wing, with the modern (1912) additions in admirable harmony on the left.

The highlight of the Elizabethan wing is the lovely old sitting room, with its heavy timbers, wide open fireplace and cleverly painted frieze by Philip Tilden, whose career as an architect and interior decorator was boosted by a series of well-connected patrons, among them Sir Louis Mallet.

A door to the right of the great fireplace leads to the former dining room, which is now the kitchen – a pleasant room, almost square in shape with a beamed ceiling and mullioned windows.

Sir Louis died in 1936, by which time his beloved Wardes had already had a succession of distinguished owners, until, in the 1950s, the market for large country houses collapsed, and rural seats were being sold for a fraction of their former value.

In May 1957, an advertisement in Country Life offered the charming old half-timbered manor house for sale at a ‘Knock-out’ price of £7,950 through Osborn & Mercer. Described as ‘Easily the Greatest Bargain in the Market’, it boasted a ‘magnificent Great Hall, 4 reception rooms, 5 principal and 4 secondary bedrooms and 3 bathrooms, plus mains electricity and water’.

It’s fair to assume that Sir Louis would still be spinning in his grave had Mr and Mrs Fisher not picked up the pieces at Otham Manor when it came back to the market ‘in a shocking state’ in 1992, having been seriously neglected for many years. They completed the purchase in January 1993 and embarked on the mammoth task of renovating the house and gardens. By then, the latter were non-existent.

‘We set about the work in phases – re-plumbing, rewiring, upgrading bathrooms, installing a new kitchen and a self-contained annexe and, finally, rebuilding the roof – in 2012. The gardens were a complete wilderness, but, gradually, we got things under control and, once again, they form a wonderful backdrop to the house,’ Mrs Fisher says, with justifiable pride.

Otham Manor is on the market with Knight Frank at a guide price of £2.15 million. For more information and images, click here. 

Best country houses for sale this week

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Hunton Court has it all: a beautiful home in wonderful part of the country and full of interesting history, yet within easy reach of London.

The Hunton Court estate near Maidstone, Kent is described with admirable precision by the agents Strutt & Parker, who dubbed it ‘a rare and exquisite estate in a peaceful, rural location, 44 miles from London’ when it came to the market a couple of weeks ago at a price of £12.5 million.

The house is surrounded by some 171 acres of land, including 30 acres of mature woodland and 128 acres of parkland, carefully managed by the owners to encourage wildlife and planted with some mixed woodland with the benefit of a Woodland Grant.

Hunton Court is listed Grade II and, unusually for Kent, is built of a mellow ragstone reminiscent of that found in the Cotswolds.

The impressive main house offers 14,075sq ft of beautifully presented accommodation, including five grand reception rooms and eight bedrooms.

It lies at the end of two long driveways, both of which have lodges where they meet the public highway before meandering through the magnificent parkland.

A large serpentine lake that bends around the western side of the house and garden highlights the tranquillity of the setting and the timeless elegance of the original design.

It hasn’t always been such a calm and pleasant spot, however. There’s more to Hunton Court than meets the eye and, behind its grand Georgian façade, substantial remnants of older buildings, dating from the 13th and 14th centuries and from the Tudor era, hint at times when life at Court Lodge, as it was previously known, was anything but peaceful.

After the Norman Conquest, the monks of Christ Church Priory, Canterbury, were lords of the manor of Hunton. After the Reformation, Hunton Court was granted to Sir Thomas Wyatt, who was knighted and appointed High Sheriff of Kent by Henry VIII.

Fearing for the estates given to them at the Dissolution, Sir Thomas Wyatt’s hot-headed son, also Sir Thomas, led an ill-fated rebellion of his Kentish peers against Queen Mary Tudor, who married the Roman Catholic King Philip of Spain and sought to reverse the English Reformation instituted by her father.

The young Thomas was executed for treason and his estates, including Hunton, were forfeited to the Crown. Elizabeth I later granted Hunton Court to Sir John Baker of Sissinghurst.

The estate subsequently fell on hard times and, according to the historian Edward Hasted, writing in the late 1700s, ‘the whole seat called Court Lodge, near the church, has long been ruinated; but the site of it, as well as the moat which surrounded it, are still visible’.

According to the entry for Hunton in the Topographical Dictionary of 1831, the site was that of an ‘ancient mansion’ of the ‘noble family of Clinton’, who succeeded the de Lenham family in the medieval period.

In 1850, Henry Bannerman — scion of an enterprising Scottish family of farmers and distillers who, by the late 1820s, had created a cotton-trading and manufacturing empire based in Manchester — retired from the business and moved to Kent, where he had invested his profits in the Hunton Court estate, located in a thriving hop-growing area near Maidstone.

By 1848, he had already enlarged and remodelled its 18th-century farmhouse, adding the imposing Georgian façade, with its central pediment, canted bay windows and balustraded parapet. The interior was refitted with delicate plasterwork and painted decorative panels depicting Classical scenes, foliage and flowers.

Mr Bannerman lived at Hunton Court until he died in 1871, leaving the property to his wife for life and then to his nephew, Henry Campbell, on condition that he took the additional name of Bannerman, which he did in 1872. However, the new owner didn’t gain possession of Hunton Court until his aunt’s death in 1894, by which time, he was a Liberal politician, who led the party from 1899 to 1908 and was Prime Minister from 1905 to 1908.

Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman died in April 1908, leaving Hunton Court to a cousin, James Campbell-Bannerman, with whose descendants it remained until 2008, when it was bought ‘in need of renovation’ by the current vendors.

During their tenure, they have carried out a complete refurbishment of the interior, including the restoration and colour-matching of the decorative plasterwork and gilding and the repair and restoration of water-damaged wall murals.

Hunton Court is on the market via Strutt & Parker at a price of £12.5 million — see more pictures and information.

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The Dillay is tucked away from the world in the sort of valley that you can imagine time leaving behind — yet this home has all the modern comforts and high-speed broadband you'd ever need.

Fresh to market, at a guide price of £3.25m through Strutt & Parker, comes a perfect gem in the form of The Dillay, a small sporting estate four miles from Bisley, near Stroud, Gloucestershire . It’s ideal for anyone looking for a hidden oasis in the Cotswolds.

The estate includes some 160 acres of pasture and woodland with exceptional sporting potential, plus another four acres for the house at its centre. It’s a beautifully-positioned Cotswold stone farmhouse with five bedrooms.

The ground floor includes an open-plan kitchen with an oak-framed garden room off to one side, and two main reception rooms.

There is also a gun room and a study, with further accommodation available in two cottages and a recently renovated shooting lodge.

Matthew Sudlow, director of Strutt & Parker’s Oxford office, sets the scene of The Dillay: ‘Once part of a larger estate, it’s now a secluded haven that encapsulates the core of the old estate and arguably the best part of it.

‘Hidden away from the rest of the world in its own valley and bordered by woodland, you can see why Laurie Lee chose the Dillay Brook and Slad Valley as the setting for his “Cider with Rosie” trilogy. Inside the valley, you feel that you’re in a mini nature reserve of your own, protected from the outside world and surrounded by wildlife and beautiful woodland.’

He adds: ‘If you’re a keen shot, then there’s some of the best shooting in the Cotswolds.’

The current owners have undertaken considerable renovation and extension work over the past three years to create ‘a truly special home’, Mr Sudlow says.

‘On the estate itself, the woodland has been re-fenced, new tracks and driveways laid and, although, previously, the estate was serviced by spring water alone, mains water has been introduced. And the recent introduction of Gigaclear in the Cotswolds means that you don’t have to be completely cut off if you choose not to be.’

The Dillay is for sale via Strutt & Parker at £3.25 million — see more details and pictures.

Mini-break: The Painswick, Gloucestershire

The cream of the Cotswolds.

A magnificent lakeside home near Princess Anne's Cotswolds estate

This beautiful 19th century house lies on Gatcombe Water, just around the corner from HRH Princess Anne's Gloucestershire home.

A sprawling house with a pair of gardens designed by some of the most brilliant minds in modern horticulture is at the heart of this huge estate for sale — which just so happens to be rather close to where Country Life is put together.

Staff in the Country Life offices regularly spot dream properties for sale, but there is a particular thrill in seeing one just a few minutes down the A31 from our anonymous business park in Farnborough. The property in question which has ticked that box is the 464-acre Bury Court estate at Bentley, Hampshire, which incorporates a range of farming and non-farming enterprises.

Bury Court is currently for sale through Savills at a guide price of £11 million; we think we’re right in saying that rules out any of the present staff. Certainly if they’re fishing in that sort of pond then they’ve kept it very much to themselves.

The estate is a beautiful spot that stands in rolling countryside on the edge of the South Downs National Park and, in the 17th century, was a demesne farm owned by the Bishops of Winchester.

A productive hop farm until the 1980s, at its heart is a five-bedroom country house (with potential to extend) arranged around a pair of huge rooms on the ground floor, one a dining room-kitchen and the other a sitting room-drawing room. Those rooms are just the start of the property, however, which extends to over 21,000 sq ft.

The main house is surrounded by two famous gardens — one a courtyard garden created in 1996 by Dutch designer Piet Oudolf, the other a ‘meadow garden’ of tall grasses and flowering perennials by Christopher Bradley-Hole.

The central group of buildings includes a magnificent listed barn, operated as an events and wedding venue, and an impressive range of converted brick-and-flint buildings.

Two self-contained flats, six further houses and cottages and four offices also generate a useful income.

The farmland is mainly arable, interspersed with pasture and woodland — a topography that lends itself well to a family shoot that until recently was run in conjunction with neighbouring landowners.

The higher grounds of the estate have beautiful views across the valley of the River Wey and the house and outbuildings on the lower ground enjoy a sense of seclusion.

The Bury Court Estate is for sale through Savills at a guide price of £11 million — see more details and pictures.

Best country houses for sale this week

Catch up on the best country houses for sale this week that have come to the market via Country Life.

Apuldram House sits in a privledged position, looking out onto Chichester Harbour with complete privacy, thanks to its acres and acres of surrounding garden. Penny Churchill takes a look.

The sheltered waters of Chichester Harbour, a West Sussex AONB since 1964 and a Special Protection Area for birdlife, are a Mecca for sailors and wildlife alike. Houses on the water’s edge rarely come to the market, reveals Mark Astley of Jackson-Stops who has launched enchanting Apuldram House at Dell Quay, near Chichester, onto the market for the first time in almost 60 years.

He quotes a guide price of £4.95m for the elegant Edwardian house, which comes with its own slipway and direct frontage to the upper reaches of Chichester Harbour, yet offers complete privacy thanks to its 2½ acres of impeccably maintained gardens and grounds.

The house has effectively only had three owners since it was built in 1900. The first was the Rev Richard Baker, who bought the land from the Church Commissioners and built the house. Rev Baker enjoyed his creature comforts and was known to get a little tiddly on occasions, leaving his groom to wonder whether he would remember to duck as he entered the stable building on his horse on returning from lunch. Often he didn’t and there was plenty of colourful language flying as he hit his head.

For the record, the stable building has since been converted to a garage and home office.

When Rev Baker died in 1936, the house passed to his widow, Ethel, who lived there for a further 25 years until she died in 1961, at which point, the Clifford-Brown family acquired it from her executors. In 1963, they bought additional land so they could plant an orchard and build the tennis court. Mr Clifford-Brown died in 1974 and his widow continued to live at the house until her own death in 1988.

The present owners, John and Sheila Perry, bought the house privately from the Clifford-Browns that same year; now, after 31 happy years, they have reluctantly decided to move on. Apuldram House offers 3,488sq ft of light-filled living space, including a reception hall, three reception rooms, a study and a kitchen on the ground floor, with six bedrooms and three bathrooms on the first floor.

In addition to the slipway, amenities include a hard tennis court and a heated swimming pool. The owners also have the use of a deep-water mooring allocated by the harbour authority.

Apuldram House is on the market through Jackson Stops for £4.95m. Click here to see more information and pictures. 

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Belvedere wants for nothing. A beautiful location, large rooms and acres upon acres of beautifully landscaped woodland all make this one of the most special properties on the market at this moment in time. Penny Churchill reports.

The crenellated west façade of Belvedere at Lympstone, near Exmouth, Devon, has long been a familiar landmark for sailors passing up and down the picturesque Exe Estuary. Now for sale through Knight Frank and Savills for ‘offers over £5 million’, the intriguing Georgian house, listed Grade II, stands in splendid seclusion within almost 13 acres of beautifully landscaped gardens and woodland, with far-reaching views over the estuary to the countryside beyond – itself unseen except from the water.

Historically, Belvedere was part of the Nutwell estate, which spanned both banks of the River Exe and descended through the Drake family of Buckland to the notoriously unsociable Sir Francis Drake, 5th Baronet and the last of the Drake male line. He left Nutwell to his nephew, Francis Eliott, 2nd Baron Heathfield, who died without a male heir in 1813.

The estate eventually passed through a female line to Sir Francis and Lady Eliott Drake who, in 1894, let Belvedere to a Mr White, a local farmer, whose eldest daughter, Annie, born in 1897, compiled a memoir of those early years: ‘Sir Francis was an invalid and did not live long after their arrival, but Lady Drake was an able and revered ruler of the little kingdom set like a fortress within its high brick walls… [she] was always The Ladyship and her orders were simply given and firmly enforced.

Sometimes she would call to inspect the trees in the avenue which formed a beautiful crescent around part of the field in front of our house, for trees were her great delight.’

The account continues: ‘Little girls were neither to be seen nor heard on the occasions of these state visits. The early Georgian front of Belvedere was built on to a much earlier structure which could be conveniently shut off from the rest of the house, so we were whisked off to the kitchens or up the back stair to the old attic room under the roof where the letters “A. S. 1747” and another date less distinct of the 17th century, were cut deep into the sloping ceiling.’

In a seamless transition to the 21st century, the Belvedere has been extended and improved by its current owners, who carried out a major renovation in 1997. With its high ceilings and large windows, the grand reception hall sets a scene of casual splendour; the dining room in the older part of the house has a cosy, more relaxed feel, thanks to the slightly lower ceilings.

An open archway links the kitchen and breakfast room, leading through to the west-facing drawing room, where vast windows and glass doors allow magical views of the gardens and estuary beyond.

With seven bedrooms and four bathrooms on the first and second floors, Belvedere has 7,742sq ft of living space, excluding the spectacular swimming-pool and leisure complex – undoubtedly the most notable recent addition, built underground to the north of the house and lit by a central skylight. Behind the entrance gates, a pretty single-storey lodge provides further staff or guest accommodation.

Belvedere sits centrally within its landscaped formal gardens, paddock, woodland and orchard. The formal gardens wrap around the rear of the house, where the tennis court and pavilion are located. Along the boundary behind the house, a path leads to the woodland, through which several paths have been cut. The estuary views from here are sublime, with the area offering a haven for wildlife and a captivating outlook back towards the house.

Belvedere is on the market through Savills and Knight Frank for offers over £5 million. Click here for more information and pictures. 

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The name 'Lower Court Farmhouse and Estate' underplays what is for sale in this extraordinary piece of land in a prime Cotswolds location, which offers as great an opportunity as Penny Churchill can remember.

Mark McAndrew of Strutt & Parker doesn’t comment on the £20 million asking price of the Lower Court estate at Chadlington in West Oxfordshire, four miles south of Chipping Norton, except to say: ‘It’s the Cotswolds.’

This isn’t any old part of the Cotswolds. With Daylesford Farm Shop five miles to the west and Soho Farmhouse at Great Tew eight miles to the north, Chipping Norton has become the epicentre of an area of unspoilt countryside much favoured by the Notting Hill set and prime country properties are priced accordingly.

Timeless Lower Court, although beautifully farmed, isn’t just any old farming estate. Bought by a Cornish family in the 1920s and held in a family trust, the estate, including its Grade II*-listed former manor house and several cottages, has been tenanted in recent years and is now ripe for renovation.

Launched on the market last month, it has attracted potential purchasers not only from London, but also from further afield. Such has been the level of interest that Mr McAndrew expects to close the book on the sale within the next few weeks.

A first-rate working farm, Lower Court is being offered either as a whole, or in 10 individual lots, some or all of which could be combined in as many as four separate restoration projects.

The ancient village of Chadlington, which dates from Saxon times, lies on the northern slopes of the fertile Evenlode Valley, between Chipping Norton to the north and Wychwood Forest and Charlbury to the south. The Evenlode rises near Moreton-in-Marsh, Gloucestershire, and flows south-east for 45 miles before joining the Thames at Eynsham Lock in Oxfordshire.

The village meanders through five distinct neighbourhoods — Brookend, Eastend, Greenend, Millend and Westend — some of which are almost separate hamlets and at its heart is the exquisite St Nicholas Church, built in 1100.

The agents quote a guide price of £9m for lot 1, comprising Grade II*-listed Lower Court Farmhouse — the former manor house of Chadlington West — with its traditional stone courtyard, modern farm buildings and a block of arable farming, pasture and woodland, comprising some 150 acres in all.

According to its listing, the manor house was built in about 1700 for Sir William Osbaldeston, 4th Baronet Osbaldeston of Chadlington, who was High Sheriff of Oxfordshire in 1710 and died in 1739 (the title became extinct with the death of Sir Charles Osbaldeston, 5th Baronet, in 1749).

The house was altered in the late 1700s, possibly by the Baynton family (Stukeley Baynton was High Sheriff of the county in 1768) and remodelled in the 19th century. Thereafter, it became a farmhouse and was lived in mainly by tenants, during which time it saw little investment, although it was well maintained.

The house retains some fine original elements, including an oak open-well staircase, marble mantelpieces, tall sash windows and chimneypieces and an ornate Rococo ceiling in the rear drawing room.

It currently offers 5,856sq ft of living space on three floors, including three main reception rooms, a study, a kitchen/breakfast room with a one-bedroom flat above, three bedrooms and a bathroom on the first floor and a further bedroom and bathroom, plus three unused attic rooms on the second floor.

The house enjoys a protected farmland setting, with glorious views down the valley to the river, which forms the estate’s southern boundary. Although no planning consent exists as yet, a well-thought-out scheme incorporating the redundant barn attached to the west side of the house, and possibly the traditional farm buildings that guard it to the north, could create, it’s suggested, ‘a wonderful and important country house’.

A guide price of £5.5m is quoted for lot 2, the picturesque Barter’s Hill farmstead, comprising two unoccupied semi-detached cottages and a large range of traditional stone farm buildings with significant potential for conversion, the whole set in some 137 acres of arable land.

Originally a working dairy farm, the charming farmstead is located down a long private driveway off the Greenend Road.

Lots 3 and 4 include the buildings at Barter’s Hill, along with 95 acres of land, plus a further 127 acres of arable land north of Greenend Road that includes a small former stone quarry.

The remaining lots comprise five estate cottages — three terraced and two semi-detached. Lot 10 is a paddock with former allotments and an old gardener’s shed on the edge of the village, for which planning consent for conversion is considered unlikely.

It all adds up to a property-and-investment portfolio the like of which may never be seen again in this coveted part of the Cotswolds.

Lower Court Farmhouse and Estate is for sale at £20m for the whole via Strutt & Parker, but can be split into 10 lots — see more pictures and details.

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Little Manor in Tackley is anything but little — nor is the asking price, for that matter. But it's as beautiful and well-located a house as we've seen in some time. Penny Churchill reports.

Little Manor in the village of Tackley, three miles from Woodstock and 12 from Oxford city centre, projects the grace and sophistication of life at the cutting edge of academia.

Reflecting its innate superiority, the exquisite, Grade II-listed William-and-Mary house, originally built as a rectory in 1696, is on the market with Knight Frank.

It stands on high ground overlooking the village and its church of St Nicholas, with far-reaching views across the Cherwell valley, yet is itself invisible from the outside world.

Approached through Cotswold-stone entrance gates and along a tree-lined gravel drive, the house stands in nine acres of immaculate formal gardens, grounds and paddocks, where sporting prowess can be displayed on the Astroturf tennis court, in the all-weather cricket nets, in the squash court, on the manicured turf of the paddocks or in the heated outdoor swimming pool.

During their tenure, the current owners have carried out an intensive programme of renovation and refurbishment of Little Manor’s elegantly proportioned rooms, which are a pleasing mix of early- and late-Georgian styles, with a mid- to late-19th-century former chapel in the Gothic Revival style — a nod to its ecclesiastical origins.

The house boasts 6,461sq ft of well-designed living space on three floors, notably the drawing room, in which two smaller rooms have been combined to form one gracious reception room, and the family-friendly kitchen/breakfast room.

As fine a wine cellar as you could hope for, meanwhile, is down below.

On the ground floor are located four main reception rooms, the chapel room/study, the kitchen/breakfast room and the flower room, with the master suite and two guest bedrooms on the first floor and a further four bedrooms on the second floor.

Little Manor is an architectural gem deftly arranged to appeal both to the most demanding of international buyers and the most successful of Britain’s high-achievers, neither of whom is likely to balk at the ‘excess of £10m’ guide price quoted by Rupert Sweeting of selling agents Knight Frank.

Little Manor is for sale via Knight Frank — see more pictures and details.

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‘I will raise up his ruins, I will build as in the days of old.' True to the motto inscribed on its gateway, Waddington Old Hall that provided refuge to Henry VI has been beautifully restored.

Shrewd investment in South African gold mines funded John Waddington’s restoration, in 1899–1901, of historic Waddington Old Hall on the banks of the Ribble, near Clitheroe, in what was then the West Riding of Yorkshire and is today Lancashire. Further restored and embellished by successive owners, the hall is now for sale through the Harrogate office of Strutt & Parker at a guide price of £4.25 million.

The pretty village of Waddington nestles between the southern edge of the Forest of Bowland AONB and busy Clitheroe, a market town that boasts one of the smallest Norman keeps in Britain.

Discreetly tucked away at the heart of the village, surrounded by more than two acres of beautifully landscaped gardens and grounds, Waddington Old Hall, listed Grade II, is one of the oldest houses in the area and is best known for its links with the unfortunate Henry VI, the last king of the House of Lancaster. He took refuge there in 1465, a year after his defeat at the Battle of Hexham, during the first phase of the Wars of the Roses.

The Tempest family were lords of the manor of Waddington for 300 years from the early 1300s, having inherited it through the marriage of their ancestor, Sir Roger Tempest, to Alice, the daughter and heiress of Walter de Waddington.

Henry’s host at Waddington was Richard Tempest, a Lancastrian supporter, whose brother, Sir John, was loyal to Henry’s cousin and rival, the Yorkist Edward IV. Henry hadn’t been long ensconced at the hall when he was recognised by‘a black monk of Abingdon’, who informed Sir John of the fugitive king’s presence.

According to Warkworth’s Chronicle (1473), the king was quietly seated at dinner in company with Dr Thomas Manning, Dean of Windsor, when a group of armed men, led by Sir John’s son-in-law Thomas Talbot and others, burst in on them.

Henry managed to escape up a secret staircase and out through the mullioned window of what is still known as ‘the king’s room’, before crossing the Ribble via the stepping stones, where he was caught by his pursuers. The following day, on horseback, with his feet tied to the stirrups, the royal prisoner was ‘thus disgracefully conveyed to the Tower of London’.

Ensuing centuries saw a decline in the status of Waddington Old Hall, which sank to the level of a lowly farmhouse. An extract from An Illustrated Itinerary of the County of Lancaster, published in 1842, describes a scene of ‘meanness and dirt, cows and cow-houses, dogs and stables, with shattered implements of husbandry…

‘The king’s room, however, has an old oak floor, the walls are very thick, “Henry’s staircase” is narrow and winding, built of stone… A stone coffin stands at the back door, the rudeness of whose masonry not unaptly corresponds with the actual condition of this perishing edifice’.

The gateway of the hall is surmounted by a hand carrying a lance and battleaxe, and the inscription ‘I will raise up his ruins, I will build as in the days of old’. This John Waddington did, with no expense spared.

The original walls and deep-set windows can be seen in the Great Hall and the adjoining Monk’s Room – the oldest parts of the house, thought to date from the 11th century.

The hall was sold several times in the past century and underwent a further major renovation in 2002, when the spectacular vaulted swimming pool and cloistered garage were created on the site of former stables and domestic offices. The present owners, who bought the hall in the early 2000s, have maintained the house and grounds in the same spirit of sensitive conservative repair as the more illustrious of their predecessors.

Today, Waddington Old Hall comprises 10,124sq ft of elegant and atmospheric living space, including reception and inner halls, four fine reception rooms, a kitchen/breakfast room, master and guest suites, three further bedrooms and a family bathroom – truly a house fit for a king.

Waddington Old Hall is on the market through Strutt & Parker at a guide price of £4.25 million. Click here for more information and images. 

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