This small estate in Gloucestershire offers a huge home that mixes medieval charm with 21st century panache. Penny Churchill reports.
Lockdown buyers looking to swap a city environment for a family farmhouse in a picturesque location could narrow their search by homing in on houses historically owned by traditional landed estates: these are usually solidly built and always have the best views. Although not many of these buyers would consider a major renovation project in the current economic climate, the launch onto the market of an expertly restored farmhouse complex in an idyllic West Country estate setting may tempt the more adventurous to go that extra mile.
Most historic farmhouses sold away from a landed estate tend to be altered or extended over time, but few can match the progression of Scatterford, near Newland, in the Forest of Dean, 21 miles from Gloucester and five miles from Monmouth.
Accommodation includes a drawing room, dining room, snug, study, kitchen/breakfast room, master-bedroom suite, four further bedrooms and three bathrooms, plus a one-bedroom annexe.
The outbuildings include a studio/office and a substantial stone barn with evident scope for further improvement.
The original house at Scatterford was altered and extended in the 16th and 17th centuries, before the farm became part of the Newland estate owned by the Symons family in the 1720s. Numerous alterations were carried out in the 18th and 19th centuries before the estate was split up in the 1870s.
A further renovation took place in the late 1980s/early 1990s, before its current owner, Tim Hely Hutchinson, embarked on a full restoration and improvement programme between October 2010 and the spring of 2013.
A holistic approach to the renovation saw the restoration of the house and garden as a single ‘living project’, with the building works direc-ted by the architect, John McCall, and the creation of the formal and informal gardens an inspired collaboration between Mr Hely Hutchinson’s partner, garden designer Sean Swallow, and landscape architect Max Askew.
Hundreds of tons of earth were moved to create the gardens and allow more light into the interior. The house, comprising two parallel ranges linked by a central corridor, was completely re-roofed, with private water and drainage systems renewed, new bathrooms and kitchen installed, and windows replaced or restored.
The list of repairs, alterations and additions is encyclopaedic, the end result a remarkable blend of architectural integrity, historic character and discreet innovation.
Down in deepest Devon, the tiny hamlet of Penstone, 4½ miles west of Crediton and just 12½ miles from Exeter, sits in a traditional farming area scattered with old manors and farmhouses. Penny Churchill takes a look.
Anyone on the lookout for a proper Devon residential farm will be delighted to see on the market the 105-acre Penstone Barton, which offers land, privacy, seclusion and glorious views across the undulating mid Devon countryside towards Dartmoor National Park, with the River Yeo running through the land from north to south. It’s for sale via the Exeter office of Strutt & Parker with a guide price of £2m.
Once part of the Coombe estate, Penstone Barton has been farmed for the past 20 years by its present owners, who are now retiring to their native Herefordshire. At its heart stands Penstone Barton Farmhouse, listed Grade II*, which, according to its listing, ‘probably dates from the 16th century, with major 17th-, early-18th- and 19th-century improvements and extensions’. Being unusually large for a thatched house, it may even have been a manor house back in the day, selling agent Will Morrison suggests.
Recently re-roofed and beautifully maintained, the house is full of character and original features, from the central plastered ceiling motif dated 1737 in the drawing room to the original fireplace behind the Aga in the kitchen.
Surrounded by traditional outbuildings and well-kept gardens, it offers some 6,000sq ft of living space laid out around a central courtyard.
There are three main reception rooms, a large country kitchen, seven bedrooms and four bath/shower rooms, with a further two bedrooms in the self-contained annexe at the rear.
The land runs down the valley to the south and east of the house, and comprises 93½ acres of pasture and arable, with 2½ acres of orchards and two trout lakes, all of which provides a natural haven for the rich and varied local wildlife.
There followed a 10-year-long restoration of the entire complex of ancient buildings arranged around two courtyards, the oldest of which is the medieval main house, which dates from 1120.
There are also several more recent buildings — including a pair of 18th-century cottages, listed Grade II, now used as holiday lets — while later extensions to the main house and the standalone gatehouse date from about 1450 to 1475.
The location and size of the complex suggests that it served in medieval times to house pilgrims journeying from Buckfast to Santiago de Compostela in northern Spain.
It comprises the original four/five-bedroom main house, attached to which is a range of restored 15th-century ecclesiastical buildings, one chamber of which is now used as a library, another as a party room.
The present owners have spent the past five years developing Leigh Barton’s 11 acres of custom-designed gardens, based on monastic principles of design and incorporating plants known to have been cultivated in England before the Dissolution.
Set away from main roads towards the bottom of a quiet, sheltered valley in the heart of the South Hams countryside, where better to confront the mysteries of life in the uncertain times ahead?
It’s set in 20 acres of gardens, woodland and pasture on the edge of the historic Boconnoc estate, near Lostwithiel, with far-reaching views over the surrounding countryside towards the coast.
Over the past 10 years, Hill Farm, built in the 18th century and previously a farm on the Boconnoc estate, has been sympathetically renovated by architects Harrison Sutton and conservation builders Heritage Cornwall.
The project has included the total renovation of the five-bedroom main house, two barns and a workshop/laundry room.
The heart of the house is the beautiful open-plan ‘live-in’ kitchen-dining room with Aga.
It also looks a perfect place for inviting friends or family and staying active. There is a recently-constructed stable block, a heated outdoor swimming pool and a landscaped Mediterranean garden.
One of the barns, meanwhile, is a detached ‘party barn’ complete with games room.
Agent Mr Cunliffe speaks with pride about this part of the county. ‘Largely protected by Boconnoc, this part of Cornwall has escaped development and is tremendously peaceful,’ he says, adding that there are huge expanses of unspoiled rolling countryside running down to the River Lerryn, a tributary of the Fowey estuary.’
Buyers looking for potential and space — lots of space — have a great option now on the market not far from the pretty town of Marlborough. Penny Churchill investigates.
Everything as far as the eye can see comes with this property — and then some.
Across the county border in Wiltshire, the sky’s the limit in sporting terms for the successful buyer of the spectacular, 1,400-acre Ogbourne Down estate, which comes to the market in Country Life at a guide price of £15m through Knight Frank and Webb Paton.
By far the most important farming property to hit the open market this year, the classic estate amid rolling chalk downland is situated in a secluded and peaceful location to the south of the landmark Barbury Castle Iron Age hill fort and the ancient Ridgeway, three miles north of Marlborough in the North Wessex Downs AONB and just 80 miles from the centre of London.
Although at present there is no grand house on the estate, at its heart is the recently built, three-bedroom Ogbourne Down Farmhouse, which has magnificent south-westerly views across the entire farm and, subject to planning, could be extended or replaced by a much larger house should a new owner so wish, selling agent Clive Hopkins suggests.
Also present is New Barn Farmhouse on the edge of Ogbourne St Andrew village, and a pair of semi-detached cottages and a stable court-yard with evident scope for redevelopment, again subject to planning.
The land is farmed in hand under contract with some 1,105 acres in arable production and 212 acres in permanent pasture, including sweeping grass gallops currently used by neighbouring trainer Neil King.
The estate also includes some 52 acres of amenity woodland, ideally located in a strategic box across the estate, and although no formal shoot is currently run, the carefully managed woodland and the glorious contours of the landscape provide the basis for an excellent partridge shoot, adds Mr Hopkins.
The location is also ideal for those looking for an estate with easy access to the city. Junction 15 of the M4 is 10 miles away, from which Heathrow Airport is less than an hour’s drive, while Bristol, Bath, Oxford and the South Coast are all within easy reach.
A magnificent Essex estate has come to the market at which the celebration of Nature is every bit as important as the grand house in the centre.
For the past 12 years, a love of sport and conservation has been the driving force behind the transformation of more than one-third of the 180 acres of rolling parkland, arable farmland and woodland on the Ulting Hall estate (for sale via Jackson-Stops) near Maldon, Essex, into an award-winning conservation area.
Here, owner Nigel Musto, working closely with Natural England and the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust, has planted 4,500 trees for hedging, established beetle banks to encourage ground-nesting birds and flooded an area alongside the river to create a marsh for waders and splashes for duck. As a result, the fields are a cheerful patchwork of cover crops, nectar mixes and wildflowers.
At the heart of the estate stands Grade II*-listed Ulting Hall, which, according to its listing, dates from the 16th century or earlier with ‘later additions and alterations including a fine late-18th-century or early-19th-century hall, staircase and study’.
It enjoys uninterrupted views over the surrounding Chelmer Valley and the well-proportioned living space comprises three reception rooms, an open-plan kitchen and breakfast room, and five bedrooms.
Three cottages provide additional accommodation and the summer house/shoot lodge can seat 16 for dinner. Other amenities include a swimming pool, a tennis court and extensive garaging.
The Musto name is already synonymous with country sports and sailing through the country-clothing range established by Nigel’s father, Keith, an accomplished sailor who represented Britain at the Tokyo Olympics.
Now, Nigel plans to rekindle his passion for sailing and the sea by downsizing to a new home on the south coast. Therefore, his Ulting Hall estate has come to the market through Jackson-Stops in Chelmsford.
The entire estate is a haven for wildlife, including partridge, pheasant, brown hare, teal, snipe and a host of songbirds. There is a private family shoot on five days a year, with an average bag of 50 birds per day.
Equestrian sport is also well catered for in a modern equestrian barn equipped with six Loddon boxes, an indoor school and a 2½-mile track around the estate perimeter that offers room to stretch the muscles whether riding, running or walking.
Penny Churchill takes a look at the aptly-named Blissamore Hall, on the North Wessex Downs AONB.
For sale for the first time in 25 years — at a guide price of £9.5 million through Savills — handsome, early-Georgian Blissamore Hall at Clanville, near Andover, sits comfortably at the centre of its 150 acres of well-tended gardens, rolling parkland, rich pasture and ancient woodland on the edge of the North Wessex Downs AONB.
Although ownership of the former manorial land on which the hall stands can be traced to the mid 10th century, when it was held by Edith, consort queen of Edward the Confessor, and after the Conquest by Wilmington Priory, the present Blissamore Hall has at its core an early to mid-17th-century house, altered in the 18th, early and late 19th centuries and, apparently, ‘to a great extent rebuilt’ at some point.
In the 18th century, Blissamore was run as a farm, until it was acquired in 1794 by John Bellenden Sawlor, a prosperous London lawyer, whose work in the notoriously long-winded Court of Chancery assured him of rich pickings for life. For whatever reason, he changed the name of the house to Clanville Lodge, although he rarely occupied it for any length of time.
This pleasant part of north Hampshire probably boasts more high-ranking army officers to the acre than anywhere else in England and, from 1799 to 1805, Sawlor rented Clanville Lodge to Gen Edward Mathew, a veteran of the American War of Independence. Following his death in December 1805, his son took over the tenancy until, in 1812, Sawlor sold the property to Henry Bosanquet, a local magistrate and High Sheriff of Hampshire.
On Bosanquet’s death in 1817, Clanville Lodge passed to his son, also Henry, who lived there until 1823. Lacking both the will and the wherewithal to live there permanently, he sold the estate in 1833 to Lt-Col Hugh Stacpoole, an officer in Her Majesty’s 45th Regiment of Foot, who served under Wellington in Portugal, and later saw action in South America, Ceylon and Burma.
At home, hunting with the Tedworth was a welcome respite from the stresses of active service. After his death in January 1840, his widow, Jane, and her unmarried sister, Mary, lived on at the house, attended by a ‘downstairs’ staff of seven live-in servants.
At the time, the estate comprised the main house, three coach houses, stabling for eight horses, walled gardens of a fraction more than an acre, and the adjoining 120-acre farm, together with a newly built farmhouse. Although Bosanquet’s father had paid £8,250 for the estate in 1812 and spent a further £5,000–£6,000 on the house alone, and he, too, had expended ‘very large sums of money’ on the house, offices and farm buildings, Lt-Col Stacpoole managed to buy three Bosanquet estates in the area for £15,624, 17s — £2,000 less than the original asking price for all three properties.
In February 1920, Country Life announced the sale of Clanville Lodge, describing it as ‘a choice freehold estate with an old-fashioned house of 15 bed and dressing rooms’ — too large for most buyers in the servant-less period after the First World War. The army again rode to the rescue in 1930, when Clanville Lodge was bought by Capt R. A. Heath, who ran a famous dairy herd of Jersey cows on the land.
Following his death in 1943, Clanville Lodge was bought by Major Genereal John Frederick (‘Jack’) Combe, a much-decorated former commanding officer of the 11th Hussars, who converted the old dairy farm and added more stables to create the Clanville Lodge Stud. His best horse was Pipes of Peace (third in the Epsom Derby) and his best mare Big Berry (second in the 1954 1000 Guineas and the foundation mare for Clanville’s successful Berry line).
When Combe died in 1967, the estate was bought by David Bradstock and his wife, Phillipa, who ran Clanville as a broodmare stud for flat horses. After starting from scratch with only a few ponies, they went to the sales in December 1971 and bought two mares and a foal. The foal was Red Berry out of Big Berry, rated the fourth top-rated filly in England in 1973 before becoming a broodmare at Clanville, where she bred eight winners. One of her foals, Falcon Berry, also became a Clanville broodmare and the dam of 12 winners.
The stables
In 1995, the Bradstocks sold the Clanville Lodge estate and stud to the late Sir Christopher Bland, one of Britain’s most distinguished businessmen, and his wife, Lady Jennie Bland. They renamed the house Blissamore Hall and Lady Bland ran the Clanville Stud, starting with Top Berry, which they bought along with the stud.
One of her foals was Blaeberry by Kirkwell, which won two races at three years old, four races over hurdles at five and six years, and two races over fences, aged six and seven, before joining her own dam as a Clanville broodmare. Lady Bland ran the stud for 19 years until 2014, since when it has been let to former jockey Stephen Kemble, a breeder and dealer who also looks after Lady Bland’s horses.
Those were golden years at Blissamore Hall, which has been a much-loved family home throughout the Bland era and, following Sir Christopher’s death in 2017, now awaits the latest chapter in its long and eventful story.
Although no one yet knows if the next incumbent will continue Clanville Stud as a breeding operation or as a centre of excellence in another field of equestrian sport, the heart of the estate will always be the hall itself.
It’s a house that really is quite something. There are grand reception rooms, 10 bedrooms, six bathrooms and wonderful views over the beautifully landscaped gardens, paddocks and surrounding parkland. It comes with three cottages, an outdoor swimming pool, a tennis court, outbuildings and barns.
Thomas Pitt's ill-gotten gains earned him the money to found a political dynasty, as well as buying a series of country estates. One of them is now for sale.
West Woodyates Manor, Dorset.
Five thousand years of history lie beneath the gently rolling landscape of the picturesque, 970-acre West Woodyates Manor estate, which sits in peaceful seclusion within the Cranborne Chase AONB, two miles north-east of the east Dorset village of Sixpenny Handley and 11 miles south of the cathedral city of Salisbury, Wiltshire.
The sale of the impressively diverse residential, farming, sporting and conservation estate for the first time since 1929, at a guide price of ‘excess £18.5 million’ through Knight Frank, is ‘a rich and rare event’ in this timeless part of Dorset, says selling agent Clive Hopkins.
Although the country around West Woodyates has been occupied and farmed since Neolithic times, earlier Mesolithic flint implements, from scrapers to axe-heads and laurel-leaf knives, have been found on the farm. The discovery of coins from the reign of Constantine I (272–337ad) and the ancient well in the Well House, thought to be of Roman origin, suggest that West Woodyates was well established as a farming settlement in Roman times.
In the Middle Ages, the land formed part of the estates of Tarrant Abbey, founded as an independent monastery in 1186. It was refounded in the early 1200s as a Cistercian nunnery that became one of the richest in England. Its links with West Woodyates are commemorated by an area of the estate known as Tarrant’s Hill and a number of mounds and depressions in the lower park point to the remains of an abandoned medieval village, possibly from the time of the Black Death in the mid 1300s.
At the heart of the estate stands West Woodyates Manor, listed Grade II*, the core of which dates from the 17th century or earlier. Historically, the position of the house in a hollow of the landscape, with its front to the open farmland and its back to the oak forests of Cranborne Chase, ensured access to food, fuel and water, together with good communications and excellent security. It still does.
According to its Historic England listing, the manor was remodelled in the early 18th century by Thomas Pitt, 1st Lord Londonderry. He was the second son of Thomas ‘Diamond’ Pitt, the enterprising son of the Rev John Pitt, rector of Blandford St Mary, who went off to India, where he ran rings around the powerful East India Company before returning to England to found a Parliamentary dynasty.
He famously bought a number of West Country estates, including West Woodyates, with the proceeds of the sale of a huge uncut diamond acquired in India for £20,400 in 1701 and smuggled back to England. It took two years to cut and even longer to sell, but in 1717, the magnificent finished stone, known as Le Régent, was sold to Philippe, Duke of Orléans, for £135,000. The profit, expressed in 2020 prices and taking into account the smaller diamonds also cut from the original stone, was in the tens of millions.
West Woodyates remained in the Pitt family for most of the 18th century, during which time the striking Queen Anne front was added and the formal gardens laid out. These include two important 18th-century garden elements, scheduled as Ancient Monuments by English Heritage. These are the ha-ha, built to separate the park and its livestock from the garden without spoiling the view from the house, and several bastions or ‘prospect mounds’ that provide viewpoints from which the house, garden and estate can be seen to best effect.
Early-20th-century additions include a long brick range of racing stables (now barns) built by the Hayter family and the vaulted drawing room added by the Eastwood family. Today, West Woodyates Manor provides 10,630sq ft of manageable living space, including, on the ground floor, four fine reception rooms running along the main façade and a delightful family kitchen. The first floor houses a charming master suite with spectacular views over the estate, four main bedrooms and three bathrooms, with further bedrooms and a bathroom on the first and second floors.
An underground tunnel linking the manor house with the pretty, four-bedroom Manor Cottage was added in the 1930s — reputedly to conceal the sight of servants moving between the buildings from visiting gentry. Nowadays a substantial portfolio of let cottages generates a useful income stream.
Farming is still the lifeblood of the estate, with some 750 acres under cultivation and 37 acres of permanent pasture. Cropping is based on a three-course rotation of winter wheat, spring barley and oilseed rape, together with beans and other break crops. The business is run as a family partnership, with fieldwork carried out by a contractor using the best modern growing techniques and technology.
Sporting and wildlife conservation are close to the hearts of the current owners of West Woodyates estate, where an abundance of deer and partridge provide the basis of an enjoyable wild-game shoot. Beetle banks have been installed in the larger arable fields to provide cover for ground-nesting birds. Wildflower headlands have been established as part of a mid-tier Countryside Stewardship Scheme and previously cultivated land allowed to revert to rough grassland or downland to create areas rich in wild flowers.
In addition, some 65 acres of former arable land have been planted alongside Denbose Wood, a 30-acre block of ancient woodland designated a Site of Nature Conservation Interest. Numerous species of orchids can also be found on the estate, as well as 50 breeding species of birds and 30 species of butterflies, including the magnificent but elusive purple emperor.
Blenkinsopp Hall looks and sounds like the sort of grand country seat which would feature in a PG Wodehouse story. Penny Churchill takes a look.
It’s hard not to be bowled over by the scale of the opportunity when a property such as the gloriously scenic, 540-acre Blenkinsopp estate arrives on the market.
The estate — near Haltwhistle, Northumberland — nestles in a wooded, south-facing valley bounded to the north by Hadrian’s Wall and to the south by the River South Tyne, tributaries of which, the Tipalt and the Painsdale Burn, traverse its land.
This is Reiver country, a Border region of wild beauty rich in history and folklore, although the estate’s sheltered location and well-managed landscape — a mix of rolling grassland, ancient woodland, young trees and winding burns and lakes — provide an altogether more intimate setting for the handsome stone manor at its heart.
For sale for the first time in 145 years, at a guide price of £4.85 million through Knight Frank in Melrose, the estate is centred on Grade II-listed Blenkinsopp Hall, a handsome castellated structure built by Col John Blenkinsopp Coulson in the early 1800s on the site of an ancient pele tower, one of two border forts controlled and defended by Blenkinsopps since Norman times.
One was Bellister, which became the seat of the younger branch of the family; the other was Blenkinsopp Tower, previously called Dryburnhaugh, which was incorporated into the new Blenkinsopp Hall.
Designs for the improvement of Dryburnhaugh were sought from J. White Junior in 1806 and, in 1835, the noted Northumbrian architect, John Dobson, added the south-east tower (later demolished), the stables and the interiors seen today. In 1840, the hall was described in glowing terms by the Rev John Hodgson: ‘Seated on rich ground, at the opening of a woody glen it smiles sweetly on the eye of day, and stretches out its towered walls and long-extent of front to the noon-tide sun. The entrance hall and dining room occupy the ground floor of the centre of the front.’
The hall’s present custodian, Mrs Fiona Lees-Millais (neé Joicey), who has lived there with her husband, Patrick, and their sons, Marcus and Rory, since 2001, remembers being told that the old entrance hall, now the dining room, was the original footprint of Dryburnhaugh, as the thickness of its walls suggests.
The Blenkinsopp estate has been owned by her family since July 1875, when it was bought by Edward Joicey of Whinney House, Gateshead. Since then, it has been lived in by family members, who have executed a number of extensions and alterations. In the early 1900s, a new frontage was added to the stable block to create an enclosed stable yard with a handsome clock-tower.
Blenkinsop Hall itself offers more than 14,000sq ft of living space on two floors and comfortably sleeps 20 people. The interior is largely original and includes four main reception rooms, 10 bedrooms, four bathrooms, a conservatory and an integral flat.
The estate comes with 11 estate houses and cottages, most in good condition and let on Assured Shorthold Tenancies. The stableyard includes two cottages, six working stables, an office and a game larder.
A wide variety of trees and shrubs in the hall’s well-tended grounds offer a constantly changing scene throughout the year. The garden is especially noted for its daffodils, azaleas, rhododendrons and herbaceous borders. Although no longer in use, there is also an impressive walled garden.
Some 84 acres of pasture are let annually to neighbours, with a further 98 acres forming part of a Farm Business Tenancy that terminates in 2023. The balance of the tenancy comprises 116 acres on Blenkinsopp Hill, on the northern edge of the estate close to Hadrian’s Wall, an area suitable for tree-planting or re-wilding.
Throughout the estate, some 218 acres of mixed woodland provide shelter and privacy, as well as forming the basis of a well-established pheasant shoot. Other sporting amenities include fishing on the River Tipalt and roe-stalking.
Penny Churchill looks at Beachampton Hall, a country house steeped in history and royal connections.
Grade II*-listed Beachampton Hall sits in an idyllic landscape next to the Great Ouse in Buckinghamshire. Previously known as Hill Farm, the stone-gabled house stands on high ground on the south bank of the river beyond Beachampton’s delightful 14th-century village church, three miles from Stony Stratford and 6½ miles from Buckingham.
Set in 33 acres of landscaped gardens and paddocks, it comes with outbuildings, stabling, an outdoor school and fishing rights on the river. An additional 30 acres of paddocks are available by separate negotiation.
The house as it stands was essentially built in the early 1600s, though the hall was once part of a larger manor house, remains of which are incorporated in a charming summerhouse in the grounds.
This house was owned by Catherine Parr, the sixth wife of Henry VIII; she may never have lived at Beachampton Hall, but the property was listed as part of her extensive dowry when she married the King. Queen Anne of Denmark certainly visited early in the 17th century, surveying the grounds from a balcony overlooking the river.
Over the centuries, influential owners of Beachampton Hall estate have included the Marquess of Salisbury, the Cecil family and a former Lord Mayor of London, whose crest is engraved on the window of the first-floor Great Chamber, now the drawing room.
The main house offers some 6,700sq ft of living space, including a large reception hall, five reception rooms, a bespoke fitted kitchen/breakfast room, a master suite, five double bedrooms and three bath/shower rooms.
Tysoe Manor has gone through tumultuous upheaval during its 600-plus years of existence. Today, more change beckons as it comes to the market — Penny Churchill investigates.
The oldest parts of the house are over 600 years old, but Tysoe Manor has been well maintained and modernised by recent owners. It stands in 11½ acres of beautifully designed gardens and grounds that include a tennis court and swimming pool.
The house offers more than 11,000sq ft of comfortable accommodation including five reception rooms, a kitchen/breakfast room, nine bedrooms and two attic bedrooms with bathrooms.
Tysoe Manor is close to the site of the battle between Parliamentarians and Royalists at the start of the English Civil War. Local folklore has it that Sunday service was in progress in Tysoe on the evening of October 23, 1642, when the rival artillery made the evening hideous with its roar, and ‘the parish clerk, hearing the sound of guns, cried to the parson, ‘Ad damn ‘em: they’re at it’, and rushed from the church followed by parson and people’.
Since then, the imposing medieval manor house, which dates from the 14th century with 17th- and 20th-century additions, has enjoyed long periods of relative tranquillity — apart from the Civil War period, when it was taken over by Cromwell’s army.
It was returned to its owners, the Compton family of Compton Wynyates, also in Warwickshire, at the Restoration. The middle section of the house was added in about 1670, with the next section being built in about 1720. The Comptons sold Tysoe Manor after the First World War, after which the entire east-facing wing was added.
The idyllic image of cottages covered in flowering wisteria on a Cotswold stone wall. These homes are in the village of Broadway, but there are all sorts of other options for those looking to move to the Cotswolds.
Credit: Robert Harding / Alamy
For the brave of heart — and the deep of pocket — an opportunity has arisen in Cambridgeshire which offers quite incredible potential. Penny Churchill explains more about Lilford Hall.
At the heart of the estate stands Grade I-listed Lilford Hall, an imposing, 32,400sq ft Jacobean house first built as a Tudor mansion in 1495 and substantially enlarged in 1635, before being sold in 1711 to Sir Thomas Powys, attorney-general to James II.
In the 1740s, the architect Henry Flitcroft carried out some major alterations for Sir Thomas’s grandson, also Thomas, installing the Georgian interiors, building the Georgian pavilions and adding additional storeys to the east end of the two wings.
Flitcroft also formalised the park by removing the village and church previously located to the south of the hall. The house was further remodelled and extended in the mid and late 19th and early 20th centuries by Sir Thomas’s great-grandson, Baron Lilford, and his descendants.
The estate remained in the Powys family until 1947, when it was sold to the Merchant Venturers. In 2004, the current owner and his family bought the estate and embarked on a partial restoration of the main house, including most of the ground floor and the south wing that now make up the family’s living quarters.
These parts of the house provide comfortable living accommodation, with grand, well-proportioned reception rooms and bedrooms, including the impressive entrance hall, panelled dining room and, overlooking the terrace of the south wing, the music room, library and theatre room.
Beyond that, however, things look very different. The rest of the 32,400sq ft house has been unoccupied for 50 years and now needs complete renovation, as do the Georgian pavilions (each more than 5,000sq ft) and various historic outbuildings.
Among these buildings is the dilapidated squash court, which is said to be the oldest private softball court in the world, built in about 1923 by the 5th Baron Lilford.
A scion of the legendary Sitwell family of writers, innovators and eccentrics, the author, food critic and Master-Chef panellist William Sitwell is selling his much-loved Northamptonshire manor house, Grade II*-listed Weston Hall at Weston, near Towcester, through Knight Frank’s country department at a guide price of £4.25 million.
A seat of the Sitwells since 1714, the rambling, late-17th-century stone house, extended in the 1770s and remodelled in the early 1800s, stands in 49 acres of gardens, grounds, pasture and woodland in a wonderfully private position on the edge of this peaceful rural village. It comes with a swimming pool and tennis court, a two-bedroom lodge, stabling, a coach house and various outbuildings. The sale includes the optional purchase of the pretty, four-bedroom Gardeners Cottage with its charming, wisteria-clad walled garden.
For half a century from the early 1920s, when William’s grandfather Sir Sacheverell Sitwell and his Canadian wife, Georgia, came to live at Weston Hall, the manor played host to an eclectic circle of friends, artists, writers and musicians who, according to Country Life writer Francis Bamford in January 1976, ‘found here, as the guests of the Sacheverell Sitwells, peace, refreshment and renewed mental stimulation’. Cecil Beaton, Evelyn Waugh, Patrick Leigh Fermor and Nöel Coward were regular visitors and the young William Walton, a protégé of the Sitwells, composed much of the music for his choral cantata Belshazzar’s Feast when he was living at Weston Hall.
The house dates from the 1680s, when William Hiccocks, finding his father’s Elizabethan village manor house too small for his growing family, demolished a nearby farmhouse and built the present hall. By 1714, however, the Hiccockses were in financial difficulty, when local grandee, Sir John Blencowe, offered to lease the house for his widowed daughter, Susanna Jennens, and her children. In January 1721, he bought the freehold and gave it to Susanna as a valentine the following month. Susanna died in 1760 and was succeeded at Weston Hall by her son, Richard, who contented himself with breeding horses.
The house continued to be run as in his mother’s day. He died in 1773, leaving Weston Hall to his elder sister, Mary Barnardiston, a wealthy widow whose daughter, Elizabeth, had married Richard Heber, reputedly ‘a handsome young man of ancient lineage and broad acres in Yorkshire and Shropshire’.
When Richard died three years later, aged 39, Elizabeth went to live with her mother at Weston Hall. Mary Barnardiston transferred a substantial collection of pictures and furniture from houses in London and Hayes, Middlesex, to Weston Hall, where, in 1776, she built the drawing room and the bedrooms above, thereby linking the original 17th-century gabled wings.
At the same time, the remodelling of Greatworth Hall, near Banbury, allowed her to buy some discarded fittings for her new drawing room, including the chimneypiece, above which portraits of her mother, her brother and herself, still hang to this day.
In July 1787, Mary Barnardiston’s granddaughter, Henrietta Heber, married the handsome and wealthy William Wrightson of Cusworth in Yorkshire. Ten months later, the Wrightsons’ daughter, Harriet, who would eventually inherit Weston, was born and Mary Barnardiston died at Hayes. Weston Hall passed first to her daughter, Elizabeth, then to Elizabeth’s daughter, Mary, and finally to Harriet Wrightson, who later married Col the Hon Henry Hely-Hutchinson, a dashing cavalry officer who fought at Waterloo.
Although Mary Heber made few changes to Weston Hall, in about 1800, she began designing and planting the picturesque Wilderness that screens the hall from the village beyond and is frequently mentioned in Sir Sacheverell’s writings.
Her successor, Col Hely-Hutchinson, was more ambitious. By 1830, he had added a conservatory to the west end of the house and re-routed the drive so that visitors were set down at the conservatory entrance. This meant crossing the Justice Room to reach the hall — an awkward arrangement if the Colonel was sitting in judgement on some unfortunate poacher. He also refaced the outer walls, added a wooden veranda and later built the Gothic porch on the east front and carved out a gun room from the Great Parlour.
The situation was rectified in the 20th century when Lady Sitwell, wife of Sir Sacheverell, removed these Victorian ‘improvements’ and restored the Great Parlour for use as the dining room. At the same time, the veranda was demolished and the front door returned to the north front, where it was fitted with a modest Regency porch.
Harriet Hely-Hutchinson died in 1864, leaving Weston Hall to her daughter, Harriet Frances, later Lady Hanmer, who, in turn, left Weston Hall to her nephew, Sir George Sitwell, for the benefit of his younger son.
Although, for William Sitwell, many of the rooms at Weston Hall remain time-capsules of English social history — from the 18th-century library (his personal favourite) to the 17th-century Justice Room, the intimate dining room painted purple by his mother and the vast entrance hall that she painted pink — in many ways it is the perfect country house, neither too big, nor too small.
With 12,940sq ft of living space, including the reception hall, four/five reception rooms, four bedroom suites and eight further bedrooms, plus attics, Weston Hall is equally suited to large-scale entertaining or small intimate occasions for family and friends.
Thanks to its location in one of Northamptonshire’s ‘lost’ villages, Weston Hall remains a haven of peace and tranquillity, yet is easily accessible from London via an excellent train service from Milton Keynes that Mr Sitwell finds invaluable. ‘I can leave the house at 6.30am, be in Soho by 8am, do a day’s work and be back home in the swimming pool, looking at the sky, by 7.30pm in the evening’, he says.
The owners of Staloch House took it on in a sorry state. A decade later, they've done it proud — but it's now time to move on, as Penny Churchill reports.
Anyone embarking on the restoration of a dilapidated historic house needs staying power and a well-honed sense of humour, as Allan Duguid and his wife, Jacqueline, discovered when, in 2009, they bought the secluded, 245-acre Straloch House estate near Newmachar, 10 miles from Aberdeen, five miles from the city’s airport, and for sale with a £2.95m price tag via Galbraith.
Once part of a 6,000-acre estate, at its heart stood Category A-listed Straloch House, a handsome, classically symmetrical Georgian mansion, built in about 1780 on the site of the former castle of Straloch and by then in need of serious renovation.
Undaunted, the Duguids installed themselves in the west wing as they set about repairing the roof of the 13,000sq ft main house and its matching wings, installing new central heating and new timber windows throughout, followed by a complete refurbishment of the interior.
It was a massive operation that took five years to complete, and, today, Straloch House is again a pristine country house with a total of three main reception rooms, 15 bedrooms, a billiards room and a gym.
The results — as these pictures show — speak for themselves, but the agents put it rather well in their listing: ‘The entire scope of work has been completed to an exceptional standard, for which Straloch House and its stature deserves, thus allowing any potential buyer of Straloch House Estate the rare opportunity to acquire a historic mansion house in impeccable condition.’
The grounds are equally worthy of mention, surrounding the house with rolling wooded grounds, well-tended lawns, and a two-acre walled garden. It means that Straloch House can be home to Mr and Mrs Duguid, their two daughters and grandchildren, each family having their own separate domain.
Now, following Mr Duguid’s retirement, the time has come to downsize, and the Straloch House Estate is for sale through Galbraith in Aberdeen.
Let the scenery and wildlife of this Scottish estate inspire you, says Penny Churchill.
The waterfalls at Castle Lake and Japanese Water Gardens are part of the Stobo Estate.
Now, more than ever, the ‘ageless hills and waters’ of the Tweed Valley, inspiration for writers such as John Buchan and Sir Walter Scott, are attracting buyers to the Scottish Borders, says James Denne of Knight Frank, who moved there from Kent more than 30 years ago.
‘People who come here, particularly from the South of England, are blown away by the clean air, clear skies and overall quality of life that we enjoy in this most accessible region of Scotland,’ he declares.
Today, Mr Denne is overseeing the launch of the spectacular, 3,884-acre Stobo estate, located some six miles upstream from the Royal Burgh of Peebles, where the River Tweed meanders through a landscape of rich lowland pasture scattered with hillside woodlands and flanked by heather-clad, round-topped hills. Knight Frank expects offers ‘in excess of £12 million’ for the estate as a whole, or in seven lots.
Historically, the estate was part of the lands of nearby Stobo Castle, the seat of an ancient barony re-granted to Sir John Maitland, Lord Chancellor of Scotland, in 1587. Over the following century, ownership alternated between opposing sets of Stuart allies — Maitland’s descendants, the Earls of Lauderdale and the Dukes of Lennox and Richmond, favoured kinsmen of the English kings James I, Charles I and Charles II.
After the Glorious Revolution, the barony passed to the Murrays, wealthy baronets who supported the Jacobite cause and forfeited lands and titles in the wake of the 1745 Rebellion.
In 1767, Stobo was acquired by James Montgomery, Lord Advocate of Scotland, later Sir James Montgomery, 1st Baronet, who invested heavily in the colonisation of Canada’s Prince Edward Island, thus enabling his heir, the 2nd Baronet, to build Stobo Castle between 1805 and 1811.
The barony remained in the hands of the Graham-Montgomerys until 1905, when the Stobo Castle estate (although not the barony) was sold to the cricketer Hylton Philipson, a passionate gardener.
After his death in 1935, Stobo was bought by the Countess of Dysart, who owned it until 1972, when castle and estate were finally divided and sold off separately. Since then, Stobo Castle and its immediate grounds have operated as a luxury spa hotel and the Stobo estate — centred on the handsome Georgian Home Farmhouse, built as the factor’s house in 1805 — has been developed by the current vendors as a picturesque and well-balanced residential, sporting, farming and forestry enterprise.
The estate includes two principal houses: the six-bedroom Home Farmhouse and another six-bedroom family house at Easterknowe Farm. There is also a portfolio of 15 houses and cottages that are either let or occupied by staff.
Planning potential (subject to permissions) exists on other estate buildings and locations, including the substantial, three-storey former Stobo Mill and power house.
A modern steading at Home Farmhouse and a modern sheep shed with stock-handling facilities serve the in-hand livestock farming business. The farmland includes 765 acres of pasture and an extensive area of hill ground.
The estate also benefits from large native and commercial forestry plantations. Of mixed ages, the forestry currently covers 444 acres in all, but could be considerably extended, again subject to the necessary consents.
Stobo offers first-class country-sports facilities, including sika deer-stalking, a fine driven pheasant shoot, excellent trout fishing on the estate’s two lakes and duck-flighting on the outlying ponds. In addition, the owners have, in the past, walked up grouse on Stobohope, a 2,338-acre block of hill ground in a hidden private location, at present used for upland grazing, but equally suited to tree-planting or rewilding.
At the heart of the estate lie the splendid Castle Lake and the exquisite Japanese water gardens.
Developed by Philipson a century ago and lovingly maintained ever since, the gardens are covered by a commercial arrangement with the Stobo Castle Health Spa that generates a useful income.
It's incredibly unusual to come across an opportunity such as this: the chance to own a vast estate covering a staggeringly beautiful area in the heart of the Highlands.
The sale of any large Scottish Highland estate is bound to attract interest from around the world, not only for its all-round sporting amenities, but also, in an increasingly carbon-conscious world, for its afforestation, carbon-capture and conservation potential.
Such a rare entity is the dramatically scenic, 9,309-acre Kinrara estate, which lies on the edge of the Cairngorms National Park in Upper Speyside, 39 miles from Inverness airport, and 122 miles from Edinburgh. It comes to the market this week through Scottish agents Galbraith, who seek ‘offers over £7.5m’ for the estate as a whole.
Last seen on the open market in 2005, when the estate included the historic, Georgian Kinrara House — built by the Duchess of Gordon in the 1700s and now in separate ownership — Kinrara has seen substantial investment from its Scottish owners and is now ‘a wonderful mixed, all-round estate, offering great amenity and scope, underpinned by good housing, including the comfortable, six-bedroom Lynwilg House and seven further houses and cottages, in addition to well-run farming and forestry operations and a wide range of sporting activities,’ says selling agent John Bound.
The Kinrara estate, some nine miles long and three miles wide at its widest point, boasts an excellent network of well-maintained farm and hill roads, allowing quick and easy access to all parts. The low ground is gently undulating, extending from pasture to the south and east of Loch Alvie, to farmland around Ballinluig to the north of the main A9.
Lynwilg House is the finest property included with The Kinrara Estate.
The moorland at Kinrara rises from the lower slopes of the Monadhliath hills to the 2,700ft summit of the ridge between the valleys of the Spey and its tributary, the River Dulnain. Much of the grouse shooting and red deer-stalking takes place on either side of this picturesque spate river.
With its gullies, ridges and undulating terrain, the Kinrara moor provides some of the most challenging and exciting grouse shooting to be found anywhere in the High-lands, showing a 10-year average of 559 brace, despite two recent poor seasons due to bad weather. The estate also offers some enjoyable stalking, which, historically, has taken place in the latter part of the season, when the grouse shooting has finished.
The low-ground pheasant shoot is exceptional, with conifer woodlands and extensive areas of natural woodland, together with strategic areas of game crop, holding the birds well and the terrain ensures some very challenging shots. Typically, the vendors shoot 10 days per season, with bags of about 200 a day. The estate also provides some good rough shooting and wildfowling.
The River Dulnain is an important spawning tributary of the legendary River Spey and there are a number of holding pools that can provide good sport for salmon and sea trout in the right conditions. Loch Alvie and the hill loch, Lochan Dubh, also offer enjoyable trout fishing.
Buyers from the UK or overseas looking to enjoy the space, tranquillity and freedom of a traditional country estate can still find a reasonably-priced historic house in an estate setting north of the Scottish border.
The launch onto the market of Ashe Park, a charming estate in Jane Austen country, could set the tone for the country house market this autumn, says Penny Churchill.
The past 100 years have been a roller-coaster ride for the 235-acre Ashe Park estate near Steventon, a small, rural village in the rolling north Hampshire countryside, best known as the birthplace of Jane Austen.
The oldest part of the house dates from the 1600s, since when it has been altered, extended and improved a number of times. The estate was tenanted in the 18th and early 19th centuries, during its ownership by the influential Portal family.
Col Robert Portal, who lived there himself from 1862 to 1888, extended and remodelled the house, creating a comfortable Victorian residence with an estate of 1,787 acres.
The early 1920s was a period of great upheaval in the country-house market and an advertisement in Country Life (on February 2, 1924) offered Ashe Park with ‘870 acres or less… to be sold at a low price through Messrs Knight, Frank & Rutley’.
Two years later, in January 1926, the magazine announced the private sale of the estate with ‘650 acres of land, including 135 acres of woodland, the home farm and Upper Ashe Farm’.
The new owner, Col Sir John Humphery, spent a fortune on improvements and, when the estate came back to the market six years later (Country Life, May 28, 1932), it boasted ‘1,663 acres of land, including a stretch of fishing on the Test, excellent shooting and a house with every modern convenience, in a secluded position in a well-timbered park’.
The house was owned by the Boyle family from the early 1930s until 1975. A fire in 1938 had destroyed the roof at the west end; this was restored with a flat roof and a parapet.
In the 1950s, Capt Boyle added projecting wings to either side of the front door, after which the house, which is unlisted, was described as Georgian. Although remnants of the gardens established by the Boyles survived the Second World War, when Bank of England employees were housed on site, much of the planting dates from the late-Victorian period, with further tree planting and formal landscaping carried out in the past 20-odd years.
In 1975, the new owner initiated the commercial extraction of mineral water from springs on the estate, but the venture failed and, by 1985, Ashe Park had shrunk to 42 acres and was offered for sale for £750,000.
There ensued a period of dereliction, followed in the 1990s by a fresh revival. The grounds were re-landscaped to take advantage of the wide lawns, open views and pleasant parkland vistas. A polo centre was established and the Ashe Park mineral-water business successfully relaunched.
Extensive planting took place along the main road and within the park; a small lake was created from a spring on the estate and fields were turned to grazing for the horses.
The present owners, who bought the estate in 2006, are keen and knowledgeable gardeners and have taken the refurbishment of the house and grounds to a new level. In 2008, a meticulously detailed programme of works saw the interiors transformed and the front elevation extended to create a spectacular reception hall with guest suite above.
The main house now offers 13,134sq ft of elegant living space on three floors, including the reception hall, five main reception rooms, a palatial principal bedroom suite, six guest-bedroom suites, a staff apartment and a splendid modern kitchen with a south-facing bay window and French windows opening onto the terrace.
Outbuildings include five cottages, a party barn, offices, garaging, a 16-box stable yard and 22,000sq ft of modern agricultural buildings. A touch of technical genius was the reassignment of the water-extraction rights to supply the ground-source system that heats the house.
The landscaped gardens and grounds, cleverly laid out as individual areas, each with its own character, provide a colourful backdrop to the main house, which, thanks to its elevated parkland position, takes full advantage of the ‘borrowed landscape’ of the North Wessex Downs.
Beyond the formal part of the gardens, the perimeter is almost entirely ring-fenced, its boundary a romantic mosaic of bluebell woods, arable fields, parkland, woodland and lakes, with potential for a family shoot.
He quotes a guide price of ‘excess £3m’ for the exquisite small manor house which, according to its Historic England listing, evolved ‘around an early-16th-century core with later additions and much restoration and alteration in the 19th century’.
For the past 10 years or more, the manor’s globe-trotting owner and ‘serial collector’, Tony Hill, has painstakingly restored and modernised the quirky, 3,700sq ft house set in three-quarters of an acre of totally private gardens in the heart of the town, with guidance and advice from Cheshire-based Nigel Daly Architectural Design.
Built of Cotswold stone under a slate roof, the greater part of which was replaced eight years ago, the house has been completely rewired and replumbed. Original leaded light windows have been restored and replicated.
Lime-rendered internal walls, solid oak and stone-flagged floors, oak beams and huge oak A-framed trusses and natural materials — old and new — have been used creatively throughout. All stone-flagged ground and lower-ground floor rooms have underfloor heating and all outer walls are fully insulated.
The attention to detail is remarkable throughout. Approached by a gravel drive under an enormous cedar of Lebanon, the flag-stoned entrance hall leads directly into the bespoke fitted kitchen, with its four-door gas Aga, honed slate worktops, tall windows overlooking the front garden and French doors leading to the colourful south terrace.
Stone steps from the hall lead to the light-filled main drawing room with its oriel window and window seat, where bespoke bookcases made from reclaimed elm boards surround the open fireplace. Another flight of stone stairs leads from the inner hall to the dining room with its vaulted ceiling and impressive carved stone fireplace. A large games/media room is used as a home cinema, office and party room.
New 17th-century-style oak stairs lead to the first floor and the delightful principal bedroom suite with its vaulted ceilings and triple-aspect views of the garden and the hills beyond. There are four further bedrooms (three with en-suite bathrooms) on the first floor, with a guest bedroom and bathroom on the floor above.
Completing this picture of a country house in town, the garden hides a discreetly placed swimming pool with a pool house and a ‘den’ above.
Escape the city and relax in the idyllic beauty of the Cotswolds.
The idyllic image of cottages covered in flowering wisteria on a Cotswold stone wall. These homes are in the village of Broadway, but there are all sorts of other options for those looking to move to the Cotswolds.
Credit: Robert Harding / Alamy
An Oxfordshire property that espouses the benefits of town and country living hits the market. Penny Churchill takes a look.
London families who are looking for a safe haven in the country within easy reach of the capital can enjoy the best of both worlds in this manor currently on the market in rural Oxfordshire.
That was when its owner, Bryan Harris, returning to the UK after working overseas, spotted an advertisement for the house in a copy of Country Life that was lying on a table in the waiting-room of his London lawyer’s office. Pointing to the picture of the classic Queen Anne house, he reputedly said to his man of business, ‘when I’m rich enough, I’m going to buy a house like that’. His lawyer replied, ‘well you are, and you can!’ So he did.
Later that year, Mr Harris and his wife, Betty, moved with their four daughters to the imposing, late-17th-century manor house, the principal house of the village, set in seven acres of idyllic gardens and grounds next to the 12th-century church of St Michael and All Angels, also listed Grade II*.
Aston Tirrold, whose name derives from the Old English for ‘east town’ and its ownership by ‘Nicholas, son of Torold’, who held the manor in 1166, was part of Berkshire before being transferred to Oxfordshire following the 1974 boundary changes. It lies on the edge of the North Wessex Downs AONB, three miles south-east of Didcot, a picturesque and protected area traversed by gallops, bridleways, cycle and footpaths, that offers endless opportunities for lovers of sport or Nature.
According to the Victoria County History of Berkshire (1923), in the early 1700s the manor of Aston Tirrold was jointly owned by members of the Fuller family and, by the close of the 19th century, was wholly owned by Thomas Wellingham Fuller who, in 1901, sold the manor house with its surrounding estate to Bolton industrialist Francis John Kynaston Cross. He modernised the manor house and farm, and after the First World War, substantially extended the house to the rear, almost doubling it in size with the addition of a coach house and further outbuildings.
Following Mr Cross’s death, an advertisement in Country Life announced the sale, through Hampton & Son, of Aston Tirrold Manor, Berkshire, described as ‘an attractive small residential and agricultural estate of about 101 acres’ including a ‘lovely Queen Anne Residence: hall, 4 reception rooms, 8 principal and 6 staff bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, etc..’. Cross was succeeded at The Manor by four owners — the Pope, Hunt and Ball families and, for a time, Lady Ellen Smith — before the arrival of the Harris family, by which time the acreage was much reduced.
During their tenure, both The Manor and its enchanting landscape of varied garden spaces — including walled and kitchen gardens, and an elegant swimming pool set against the backdrop of St Michael’s church — have been the subject of constant improvement by the owners, the most recent being the renovation of the Victorian greenhouses as a tribute to Mrs Harris on her 80th birthday, and the addition of the orangery to the main house.
Two of their daughters were married in St Michael’s with receptions held in The Manor grounds, which, over the years, have been the setting for village fêtes and other community events — even, in 1977, a Jubilee son et lumière based on the life of Henry V.
In its present configuration, The Manor offers six reception rooms, including an impressive dining hall, a formal drawing room overlooking the walled gardens, a pretty morning room, a study and a library lined with bespoke bookshelves with access to both the orangery and the kitchen/breakfast room.
The house currently offers eight bedrooms and two self-contained apartments on the first and second floors, with proposed floor plans suggesting an alternative 21st-century layout. The property comes with a pretty, three-bedroom cottage that boasts its own private garden and other amenities, including a tennis court, garaging for six cars, stabling and paddocks.
With 45 years of memories to look back on, the decision to sell has clearly not been taken lightly. As one family member put it, ‘it takes leaving a place for you to truly understand the legacy you have been a part of’.
Catch up on the best country houses for sale this week that have come to the market via Country Life.
The idyllic image of cottages covered in flowering wisteria on a Cotswold stone wall. These homes are in the village of Broadway, but there are all sorts of other options for those looking to move to the Cotswolds.
Credit: Robert Harding / Alamy
A house in Suffolk's 'Constable country' has come to the market, offering an idyllic rural escape yet within an hour of London. Penny Churchill takes a closer look.
Like many of his estate agent colleagues, the ever-cheerful Tim Dansie of Jackson-Stops in Ipswich has been run ragged as buyers and vendors make the most of a busy country market that ‘may not go on forever’. The current pride of his portfolio is Grade II-listed The Old Rectory in the village of East Bergholt, on the northern side of the lovely Stour Valley — Constable country — for sale at £3.15m.
The impeccably restored former rectory, which dates from 1714 with additional wings added in the 1820s, was once the home of Dr Rhudde, the grandfather of Constable’s wife, Maria.
Built on high ground overlooking the Dedham Vale AONB, the elegant, 7,408sq ft house has light and spacious accommodation on three floors, including a large reception hall, three main reception rooms, a study and a kitchen/breakfast room on the ground floor.
The rest of the accommodation is split between the two floors above. There are eight bedrooms and four bathrooms on the first floor, with a further three bedrooms on the second floor.
The main house, set in eight acres of gardens, grounds and woodland, with amenities including a hard tennis court, a croquet lawn and a swimming pool, is on offer at £3.15 million, with an additional eight acres of pasture priced at £200,000 and a 13-acre arable field at £150,000.
The location is ideal for those wanting a country house setting but still able to get further afield. It’s a short drive to the main A12, with Ipswich and Colchester each about 9 miles away.
Those keen on the idea of a commute from Suffolk will be happy to see that the railway station at Manningtree — three and a half miles away — has a mainline service into London’s Liverpool Street Station which takes 55 minutes.
