Elegant Slape Manor at Netherbury in west Dorset comes with four cottages – including the delightful and famous River Cottage.

Dreamy Slape Manor is set in 83 acres of gardens, woodland, parkland and pasture in its own quiet valley near Netherbury, between Beaminster and Bridport in the glorious West Dorset AONB.

Launched on the market in Country Life at a guide price of £7 million through Savills, this historic, 17th-century manor, listed Grade II*, seems to hug the sheltered contours of the valley traversed by the River Brit, which meanders along the boundary and through the grounds of the estate.

Slape Manor comes with four cottages, including the delightful River Cottage made famous by chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, who rented it from the owners before going on to buy his own farm in the area.

The first three series of his television show were made at the property, starting in 1998, and painting a rosy picture of life in the countryside that inspired thousands of people to follow suit and move to the West Country.

As charming as the cottage is, the main house is the centrepiece of this property. Originally built in about 1600 as an ecclesiastical courthouse by the hierarchy of Salisbury Cathedral, the imposing mellow-stone edifice was converted to private use as a dower house by the Strode family of nearby Parnham House in the early 18th century.

In 1870, the manor was sold into private ownership by the Diocese of Salisbury, although the cathedral still retains a stall for the Canon of Slape.

The new owner of Slape Manor was Mrs Wood (née Gundry), the daughter of one of Bridport’s most prominent families, whose interests included rope-making and brewing.

In 1871–2, she had a number of improvements made to the house by the Dorset architect G. R. Crickmay – including a library and a coach house designed in conjunction with Thomas Hardy, who subsequently abandoned his career as an architect for life as a full-time writer. Slape’s now famous gardens were laid out at about the same time.

In 1919, the manor was bought by a Maj Ronald, who kept a pack of hounds that later became part of the local Seavington Hunt.

Presumably, it was he who, in the 1930s, had the entire manor restored by the Bristol-born architect and archaeologist Edward Prioleau Warren, at which point, the east wing was added.

Whoever chose the site for the original courthouse was clearly divinely inspired as the sheltered valley protects the gardens from the worst of the prevailing winds and ensures the early flowering of many plants and shrubs.

For Mr Holborow, one of the manor’s most intriguing aspects is the fact that visitors arriving at the front door are unaware of the splendid formal gardens laid out at the rear, which include an extensive terrace, sweeping lawns and well-stocked flowerbeds and borders.

Slape’s present owners, Mr and Mrs Antony Hichens, who bought the manor in 1988, have undertaken extensive planting of camellias, rhododendrons and azaleas, all of which produce a magnificent display in the spring and early summer; thanks to the warm location, some varieties have even been known to flower from October onwards.

Other highlights include a striking white wisteria, several large magnolias and an enchanting Italianate garden with a sunken lily pond enclosed by yew and beech hedging.

The eye is also drawn to a stream lined with banks of hostas, gunneras and cryptomeria and throughout the grounds are scattered a variety of mature specimen trees, including wellingtonias, cedars, beeches, willows and Monterey pines. Beyond the gardens, the grounds open onto a charming lake surrounded by trees, meadows and areas of woodland.

The same sure touch is evident throughout the house, with 11,107sq ft of impressive living space sensitively configured to provide a reception hall, a grand inner hall, five reception rooms, a large master suite, seven further bedrooms, five bathrooms and two staff flats.

The reception rooms have high ceilings, elegant windows and working period fireplaces; the ornate panelled drawing room and the library, which have retained their original oak flooring and are connected by double doors, enjoy a triple aspect overlooking both the front drive and the gardens.

Other ancillary buildings include the stables, built in the same warm-coloured stone as the house: these consist of four traditional loose boxes with cobbled flooring and a tack room with its original saddle racks.

Slape Manor is on the market with Savills at a guide price of £7m – see more pictures and details.

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There is something immensely reassuring about a house that’s been lived in by successive generations of the same family – even more so, a house that’s been home to three generations of the same family at the same time.

Such a house is Georgian, Grade II-listed Harptree Court at East Harptree, a popular village in Somerset’s beautiful Mendip Hills AONB, nine miles from Wells, 13 miles from Bristol and 16 miles from the UNESCO World Heritage city of Bath. It’s just on the market via Knight Frank with an asking price of £5,000,000.

The imposing, classically symmetrical stone house was built in about 1797 for Joshua Scrope to the designs of Charles Harcourt Masters of Bath, who also laid out the grounds.

In 1803, Scrope sold the house to the Waldegrave family, who extended it with the addition of a discreet service wing in about 1820 and sold it in 1858 to a Miss Gurney.

In 1879, Harptree Court was bought by William Wildman Kettlewell, whose son, William Robert Wildman Kettlewell, served as a Commander in the Royal Navy during the First World War.

In 1920, Cdr Wildman Kettlewell sold Harptree Court to Charles Hill, the grandfather of the present owner, also Charles, who, with his wife, Linda, raised their children at the house, so that, at one point, three generations were living there.

With four main reception rooms, four main bedroom suites, four further bedrooms and various family rooms to play with, individual space was never likely to be an issue.

But with their children now grown up, Mr and Mrs Hill have decided to hand over the reins of their much-loved family home, which they have run as a successful, super-luxury B&B in recent years. One of the spaces they have let out is a luxury treehouse within the grounds, something which has apparently been let out almost solidly year-round for some time.

The main house itself is a wonderfully unaltered Georgian country house, set in the middle of its 52-acre, ring-fenced estate, with far-reaching views over its parkland towards Somerset’s famously picturesque Chew Valley.

The house stands in magnificent mature gardens and grounds, established by many generations of careful owners. The lower drive sweeps through woodland past a series of spring-fed lakes and over an ornamental bridge, with tantalising glimpses of the house visible throughout.

The upper drive, flanked by fields and lined with lime and chestnut trees, has views over Chew Valley Lake.

Both driveways arrive at the south lawn to the front of the house, which stands against a backdrop of spectacular specimen trees, paved gardens and a lily pond and, to the east of the house, the original walled garden – almost two acres in size – is bordered by deep beds with an array of perennial and seasonal flowers and shrubs.

The timeless beauty of Harptree Court is there for all to see, but there is also much for an enterprising new owner to get his or her teeth into, given the huge development potential offered by the various farm buildings and the Victorian stable yard, all of which are currently ‘in need of some refurbishment’, the agents say.

Harptree Court is on the market with Knight Frank at a guide price of £5m – see more pictures and details.

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Burlington House, a charming former rectory at Burrington, Somerset, has been restored over the owners’ 25-year tenure.

Grade II-listed Burrington House is a charming former rectory which lies in the peaceful village of Burrington, six miles from Cheddar and 11½ miles from Wells.

The house, which is on the market with Knight Frank, stands within 1.8 acres of immaculate gardens and grounds protected by high stone walls and surrounded by glebe land. It’s listed for sale at £2,575,000.

Originally built in 1778, with later additions and alterations, both house and gardens have been meticulously restored and enhanced during the present owners’ 25-year tenure.

The house, built to classic Georgian proportions of rendered natural limestone under a slate roof, boasts flagstone floors in the extensive cellars and timber floorboards throughout the ground and first floors.

It offers more than 7,190sq ft of elegant living space on two floors, including three main reception rooms, a conservatory, a library, master and two guest suites and two further bedrooms with bathrooms en-suite.

The gardens comprise a series of pretty walled gardens, terraces and alfresco eating places, all carefully designed with minimal maintenance in mind.

The heated outdoor swimming pool is surrounded by a patio and garden area that looks like something from a bolt hole on the Riviera rather than the heart of England. Aptly enough, the property details refer to it as the ‘Mediterranean garden’.

There is also a two-bedroom coach house within the grounds – like the main house, it has been completely refurbished by the current owners. Upstairs it features a self-contained flat with its own access to the village, while below is a double garage and a separate smaller garage currently used as a workshop.

Burrington House is on the market with Knight Frank at a guide price of £2.575m – see more pictures and details.

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Yorkshire properties of this calibre are few and far between on the open market: this is a spectacular home with three further cottages, amazing gardens and superb equestrian facilities.

For sale for only the second time since the early 1900s – through both Knight Frank and Strutt & Parker at a guide price of £3.95 million – is the imposing, Grade II-listed Otterington Hall.

This 11,000sq ft building lies between the villages of North and South Otterington, three miles south of the market town of Northallerton and seven miles north of Thirsk, on the western edge of the North York Moors.

Built of brick under a slate roof in the early 1800s, with later Victorian additions, the hall sits centrally within its 91 acres of famous gardens, parkland, pasture and woodland, surrounded by a picturesque blend of open farmland and wooded river valleys.

The house, designed in traditional Georgian country style, boasts an elegant reception hall leading to well-proportioned drawing and dining rooms, and a large family room; the kitchen/breakfast room is another large room with double doors leading out into the gardens.

A sweeping staircase takes you to the first floor, where the master suite, guest suite and seven further bedrooms are located. Attic space on the second floor could be converted to additional bedrooms and, to the rear of the house, a self-contained annexe provides additional three-bedroom guest or staff accommodation.

The gardens with their fabulous topiary (of which more later) are a real highlight – but for the horse lover, this is a very special place indeed.

There are three cottages within the grounds – and two of them, Stable Cottage and Grooms Cottage, are right next to the courtyard with stables. It’s a dreamy set-up for those who’d love to roll out of bed and go for a ride.

The details also list a 2,500sq ft agricultural barn – not quite big enough for a proper indoor manege, but certainly large enough to give horses a little more room to move around indoors on days when the worst of the weather strikes.

Successive gentry families have left their mark on Otterington Hall, among them, in the 1800s, the Aikenheads, who were influential local landowners and magistrates. In the 1900s, it was the turn of the Furness family, notably Eleanor Furness, who, according to a 1983 Country Life article, in the 1920s, designed Otterington Hall’s gardens with their ‘magical yew topiary comprising an extensive variety of green images’.

North Yorkshire has always been steeped in country pursuits, and the Furness family of Otterington Hall helped to secure the survival of their local Hurworth Hunt, one of the oldest in the country. Mrs Furness’s daughter, Eleanor Mary, known to all as ‘Miss Mary’, served as master of the Hurworth from 1936 to 1971.

Although ‘greatly respected as an authority on the Old English foxhound’ she ‘hated publicity, her sole aim being to maintain the long tradition of the pack and to show sport to her friends and neighbours – be they landowners, farmers, townspeople or foot folk’.

Otterington Hall is for sale through both Knight Frank and Strutt & Parker, at a guide price of £3.95 million.

The Golden Grove Estate has come to the market, offering extraordinary sporting and fishing rights and a superb location just a few miles from the M4.

Sir Edward Dashwood’s idyllic, 659-acre Golden Grove estate, near Llandeilo, Carmarthenshire, has come to the market – a majestic property handily located a mere 12 miles beyond the end of the M4.

It’s a truly beautiful place that offers some of the best and most picturesque fishing to be found in the British Isles – according to Knight Frank’s Atty Beor-Roberts. And with a following wind and light traffic it’s little more than a three-hour drive from London. The estate is for sale through joint agents Knight Frank and Pembroke-based Owen & Owen, at a guide price of £5 million.

Perhaps the most dramatic feature of the land is the impressive ruins of Dryslwyn Castle, which probably dates from the 1220s and was owned by the Princes of Deheubarth before falling to the English Crown in 1287. It is currently leased and maintained by CADW.

The main accommodation on this massive parcel of Wales is in the form of Glanryafon Farmhouse, a lovely traditional old home with endless views. There is also a bungalow nearby – which is rented out – and several more modern outbuildings, and a traditional stone-built barn which could be repurposed in all manner of ways depending on the appropriate permissions.

But this is a property whose main selling point is its fishing and sporting rights, which are second-to-none and go far beyond the boundary of the property itself. Golden Grove includes some 10½ miles of sea-trout fishing on the River Towy, where the traditional method is with a fly at night.

The estate also boasts the finest sea-trout fishery in Britain, if not in Europe, and the sporting rights over a staggering 3,366 acres of its own and neighbouring land.

The Golden Grove estate was established in the 16th century by the Vaughans, one of Carmarthenshire’s most illustrious families, before passing to the Cawdor family in 1804.

For many years, Golden Grove was one of the two most important estates in west Wales, before the greater part of it was sold off in the 1970s, although the fishery and most of the sportings remained intact.

Dryslwyn Castle is not the only landmark on the estate, incidentally: Dinefwr Castle, once the seat of the Lords Dinefwr, a prominent Welsh landowning family. That is not included in the sale, however: it is now owned by the National Trust.

The Golden Grove estate is for sale via Knight Frank and Pembroke-based Owen & Owen – see more details and pictures.

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Chicksgrove Manor in Wiltshire sits on the River Nadder.

Delightful 237-acre Chicksgrove Manor Farm is 12 miles west of Salisbury and two miles from Tisbury station – just an hour and 48 minutes by rail from London Waterloo.

Savills quote a guide price of £4.5 million for this enchanting, small estate in the Cranborne Chase AONB, the focal point of which is a charming, four-bedroom stone manor house, listed Grade II*. The 3,975sq ft house faces south over its formal gardens, water meadows and the River Nadder, a chalk stream much prized by fly fishermen, the rights to 1,090m (3,576ft) of which are included in the sale.

The area is famous as the source of Chilmark stone that was used to build Salisbury Cathedral and is the stone used to build Chicksgrove Manor, Garden Cottage, Park House and some of the
traditional farm buildings.

The manor is thought to have been built in Henry VIII’s time by John Davies, of the Earl of Pembroke’s household, whose grandson, Sir John Davies, was a lawyer and adviser to Elizabeth I. The present owners bought the property in 1988 and extensively restored the main house, in the course of which they acquired the surrounding farm and the Grade II-listed, four-bedroom Park House, which they also renovated.

Chicksgrove Manor Farm is on the market with Savills at a guide price of £4.5 million – see more details and pictures.

The Grade II*-listed Longparish house and estate in the North Wessex Downs AONB has more than 6,700ft of double-bank fishing on the legendary River Test.

‘There’s been nothing like this on the market since it was last sold in 2008’, says Alex Lawson of Savills (020–7409 8882) of Hampshire’s glorious, 177-acre Longparish estate on the banks of the legendary River Test, Britain’s most famous chalk stream, in the North Wessex Downs AONB. He quotes a guide price of ‘in excess of £15 million’ for the historic estate with its elegant, Grade II*-listed main house, five miles from Andover, four miles from Whitchurch and an hour by rail from London Waterloo.

In the late 18th and 19th centuries, Longparish House, which, according to its listing, dates from the ‘late 17th or early 18th century, with alterations and additions of the late 19th century’, was owned by the Hawker family, whose best known member was Col Peter Hawker, born in 1786, who served under Wellington in the Peninsular War. His book Advice to Young Sportsmen, first published in 1814, is still the traditional bible of young people taking up shooting or fishing.

In 1919, Maj-Gen Guy Payan Dawnay bought Longparish House, the sporting estate and the farms that went with it. The estate remained with the Dawnay family until 1989, except during the Second World War, when Longparish House was occupied by the Bank of England. Built in the style of a French château, the house has accommodation on three floors, including four fine reception rooms, a kitchen/breakfast room, five bedroom suites, four further bedrooms and a family bathroom. Although well maintained and structurally sound, it could do with ‘some cosmetic refurbishment’, the agents suggest.

The sparkling River Test, which runs through the gardens and grounds, provides a wonderfully serene setting and some of the best chalk-stream fishing in the world, with 644m (2,113ft) of single bank and 2,067m (6,782ft) of double bank on the main stream of the Test, accessible directly from the lawn or the well-tended paths and bridges. Much improved sport in recent years can be attributed to the present owner’s ‘purist’ approach to estate and river management, which has seen the sporting environment transformed into something much more akin to wild fishing, Mr Lawson concludes.

Longparish estate is on the market with Savills – see more details and pictures.

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Coldpiece Farm, Hampshire, has links to the Duke of Wellington.

In Hampshire, Strutt & Parker’s Estate and Farm Agency (020–7318 5166) has launched the 368-acre Coldpiece Farm near Mattingley, 11 miles from Basingstoke, onto the market at a guide price of £9 million.

Thought to have historic links to the Duke of Wellington’s Stratfield Saye estate, Coldpiece Farm has been owned by the Guinness family for almost 60 years. During this time, the farm has been considerably improved by investment in new tracks, fencing and planting under a Woodland Grant Scheme in place since 2009. Flowing through the farm is the River White-
water, a tributary of the Blackwater, which provides more than 3,200ft of double-bank fishing, currently let to a local club on an annual basis.

The Grade II-listed farmhouse, which dates from the early 18th century with later alterations, was impressively gentrified in the 1980s with the addition of an imposing new front façade, with large bay windows accentuating the splendid views. The spacious, 6,892sq ft interior, currently arranged as a large airy entrance hall, three main reception rooms, 10 bedrooms and six bathrooms on three floors, now needs updating and represents an ‘interesting project’, suggests Chris Evans of Strutt & Parker.

Coldpiece Farm is on the market with Strutt & Parker at a guide price of £9 million – see more pictures and details.

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An ongoing £4 billion regeneration programme is breathing new life into the SW1 property market, from classic houses to new-builds.

In 1872, George Walter Thornbury wrote in his classic Old and New London that ‘the City of Westminster proper – that triangular slip of the metropolis which lies between the Thames, St James’s Park, and the Vauxhall Bridge Road, can boast at once of some of the noblest and the meanest structures to be found throughout London.’

Thornbury didn’t stop there.  ‘In Westminster we have the contrast between rich and poor as marked as in St Giles’s and St James’s, for almost within a stone’s throw of the seat of the great Legislature of England there are, or were till recently, more alms-houses, more charity schools, and more prisons, more ancient mansions, and more costermongers’ hovels, more thieves’ dens and low public houses, than in any other part of the metropolis of equal extent.’

Things improved during London’s transport and building boom of the mid-to-late 1800s, which saw the removal of some of Westminster’s worst neighbourhoods, among them part of a slum dubbed ‘the Devil’s Acre’ by Charles Dickens, which was demolished during the construction of Victoria Street, completed in 1851.

But despite Victoria’s emergence as a thriving transport hub, bounded by Westminster to the east, Pimlico to the south and Belgravia to the west – with a prized SW1 postcode to boot – the area around Victoria station remained a dreary backwater in residential terms.

Until now, that is. An ongoing £4 billion regeneration scheme led by Land Securities, the major landowner in the area, and other developers such as Northacre and Grosvenor, the area looks set to become London’s newest prime residential neighbourhood. And, says Robert Oatley of Knight Frank’s Victoria and Westminster office, ‘at half the price of its more fashionable neighbours’.

Oatley points to the number of tech and creative companies now in the area – from start-ups to the giants. ‘Microsoft and Google’s London headquarters are now based in trendy offices on Buckingham Palace Road,’ he says. ‘Fashionable shops, restaurants and bars have followed hot on their heels.’

As a result of all that, a breed of ‘New Victorians’ is now moving in – and here are some of the finest apartments that they’re targeting.

Kings Gate Walk, £2.9 million

With the four penthouse apartments already sold at Land Securities’ clean-cut Kings Gate Walk building designed by Patrick Lynch, Strutt & Parker’s London New Homes division is offering one of the more impressive of the remaining 96 apartments and studios on offer.

For sale at a guide price of £2.9 million, this is an eighth-floor, three-bedroom apartment, with a fully fitted open-plan kitchen and a stylish oak-floored reception room that has large windows leading onto a private balcony, with views to the north and south.

The Nova Building, £2.2 million – £20 million

Meanwhile, Knight Frank and Savills are handling sales of the remaining 19 properties at Land Securities’ flagship Nova building on Buckingham Palace Road and Victoria Street, which has extraordinary views over the palace, The Queen’s private gardens and the terraces of nearby Belgravia. With all the one-bedroom studios now sold, prices range from £2.2m for a two-bedroom apartment to £20m for the one remaining penthouse.

The wider Nova masterplan will include an array of 18 new delis, restaurants, cafes and bars. The development is also ideally placed for commuters travelling to the capital’s business districts or airports.

Queen Anne’s Gate, £19.5 million

The thoroughfare known today as Queen Anne’s Gate is made up of two streets – the eastern named Park Street and the western Queen Square – which were originally separated by a wall surmounted by an iron railing. No. 28 (formerly 10, Queen Square) is one of a terrace of Grade I-listed houses, originally built as fine town houses from 1702, for peers, politicians, writers and rich businessmen. Most of the houses were converted to commercial use in the late 19th and 20th centuries and converted back to private use in the 21st.

‘To stumble upon this most exquisite of streets is one of London’s best architectural surprises… also about the only place where you will see London houses of the 18th century in near mint condition,’ wrote the architectural historians Elain Harwood and Andrew Saint in London (1991).

A Blue Plaque confirms that number 28 was once lived in by Lord Haldane, ‘statesman, lawyer and philosopher’; a 1720s sale document describes the house as ‘containing in front about 29 feet and in depth 40 feet, three storeys high, with a large hall, two parlours and two staircases on the first floor, three rooms on each of the other floors, and kitchens, washhouses and other offices underground’.

The entire house has been refurbished to 21st-century standards of comfort and efficiency, while highlighting its many grand original features, such as the panelled entrance hall and the beautifully carved English-oak staircase. In all, it now offers six reception rooms, five bedrooms and six bathroom.

Notable rooms include the formal dining room overlooking the main terrace and St James’s Park beyond, a front reception room and a state-of-the-art wine-and-cigar room on the ground floor; on the piano nobile above, there is a formal study at the front and, to the rear, a grand drawing room, five windows wide, with even more spectacular, green views of the park.

The garden floor houses more informal living spaces, including a modern kitchen/breakfast room and a huge, 600sq ft, open-plan dining and living area, with doors leading to the landscaped garden. This enviable modern masterpiece is currently for sale through Knight Frank and Dexters at a guide price of £19.5m.

Old Queen Street, £8.95 million

Around the corner from Queen Anne’s Gate, Strutt & Parker are handling the sale – at a guide price of £8.95m – of the charmingly authentic, Grade II-listed 20, Old Queen Street, a splendid Arts-and-Crafts house originally designed by the Scottish architect Francis W. Troup as a family home for Henry Gage Spicer of Spicers’ Paper. The present owners renovated the property in 2009, when great care was taken to highlight its character.

The house, which boasts an impressive panelled drawing room, five double bedrooms and four bathrooms on six floors, all of which have views of St James’s Park, has a light well running through its entire height, which allows natural light to flood the interior.

Various outside living areas include a gated entrance portico, a terrace leading to a large shared garden – and, through a private gate, to St James’s Park – and a large, decked roof terrace overlooking the landmark-studded skyline.

Ashley Gardens, £2.8 million

Savills (020–3430 6860) quote a guide price of £2.8 million for a 2,282sq ft, second-floor, lateral apartment at 165 Ashley Gardens, which has versatile and well-proportioned living space throughout. ‘This is an ideal family home or pied-à-terre, with accommodation comprising 2/3 reception rooms, 3/4 bedrooms and two bathrooms, with a contemporary kitchen/breakfast room and a good sense of natural light in every room,’ the agents say.

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Mawley Hall is nothing less than one of Britain's finest privately-owned stately homes – a truly unique opportunity for whoever takes on this wonderful place.

For sale for the first time since 1962 – at a guide price of £10 million through Savills  and Strutt & Parker – is peerless Grade I-listed Mawley Hall, near Cleobury Mortimer, Shropshire.

This extraordinary building stands in some 550 acres of landscaped formal gardens, rolling parkland and farmland, ‘looking forth from its spur of the Clee Hills upon an almost limitless picture of hill and dale, field and wood, occupying one of the loveliest sections of our Western Midlands’.

The setting evoked in Country Life back in July 1910 remains largely unchanged since the arrival of the Blount family in these parts in the early 14th century.

But that is only part of the charm. Almost miraculously, the imposing Palladian mansion designed by Francis Smith of Warwick for Sir Edward Blount (the 4th Baronet) in about 1730 has remained almost entirely unaltered since it was built. The sole major change is an extension to the dining room in the style of Robert Adam, added by Sir Walter Blount, the 6th Baronet, in the late 1700s.

The Blounts were a staunchly Catholic family, with numerous branches, one of which had its seat at Sodington Hall, Worcestershire, on the opposite bank of the Teme from Mawley Hall. In the 17th century, one of the more prominent family members was Sir Walter Blount, a successful lawyer, MP and Sheriff of Worcestershire.

His zeal for the Royalist cause during the Civil War earned him a baronetcy in the early years of the conflict, but incurred the wrath of the Puritans, who eventually captured him at Hereford and sent him to the Tower. In revenge for his refusal to make arms for the Model Army at the family forge, his Sodington estate was confiscated and his mansion burnt down, although both appear to have been restored to his son.

By the early 18th century, Blount family fortunes were once again on the rise and, in the late 1720s, Sir Edward Blount, the 4th Baronet, decided to replace the existing hall with the present grand mansion, helped, no doubt, by the generous Throckmorton dowry brought by his wife, Apollonia.

However, as one insider observes, ‘the early 18th century remained a sensitive time for Catholics in England, and excessive outward gestures of wealth were constrained. Mawley, with its relatively modest red-brick (as opposed to stone) exterior, is an important example of this.

On the other hand, as a result of spending less on the exterior, the interior was executed seemingly without budget, which is why Mawley has one of the finest and most eclectic interiors in England’.

In the early 18th century, plasterwork was the most expensive and most exuberant form of interior decoration and Mawley’s stucco hall is among the finest examples of the art to be found anywhere in the world.

Budgetary considerations aside, one of the reasons for the exquisite craftsmanship to be found throughout Mawley Hall is the fact that Smith of Warwick was the master builder to the influential architect James Gibbs, whose work spanned the transition between the English Baroque and the Georgian architecture inspired by Palladio.

As such, Smith had access to, and relationships with, some of the best foreign artisans working in England at the time, including the master stuccodore Francesco Vassalli, and it is to him that the exquisite Italianate plasterwork of Mawley’s reception and staircase hall is attributed.

‘Nothing could more beautifully underline the Baroque interest in restless movement than the extraordinary undulating handrail of Mawley Hall’s main staircase,’ enthuses Country Life’s Architectural Editor John Goodall. Indeed, not only is it difficult to find a freestanding staircase on the same scale from the period, given the engineering complexity involved, but there is apparently no known precedent for the serpentine handrail, which is unique to the house.

For many experts who have visited and stayed at the house, the marquetry of the Inlaid Drawing Room is said to be ‘without parallel in the UK and highly unusual’. The Oak Drawing Room in the south-east corner of the Hall is lined with finely carved and ornate oak panelling in the style of Grinling Gibbons, with a trompe l’oeil fresco ceiling by Graham Rust based on Milton’s Paradise Regained, commissioned in 1978 during Rust’s time at Ragley Hall, Warwickshire.

Also notable is the formal dining room, conceived some 40 years after the house itself and attributed to Robert Adam, which has moulded cornicing, Corinthian columns and a large curved alcove with moulded friezes.

As is the norm with country houses designed by Smith, Mawley Hall’s 21,616sq ft of living space is simply laid out over four floors, with the principal rooms on the ground floor being of particular architectural importance. The first floor offers five bedroom suites, each having large sash windows for maximum light and magical views over the surrounding countryside.

The second floor, which needs updating, has seven further bedrooms, including two bedroom suites.

The lower-ground floor, historically the servants’ domain, has been remodelled by the present owners and includes a strongroom, a wine cellar, offices and stores.

However, it’s not just Mawley Hall’s interior that captivates: the estate’s mainly ring-fenced acres offer everything a classic English country estate should, including an impressive, Grade II-listed converted coach house, five houses and cottages, landscaped formal gardens with temples and follies, an exceptional high-bird pheasant shoot and two miles of fishing on the River Rea.

This country idyll is a far cry from the dilapidated Mawley Hall estate that went under the hammer in November 1960, when the Hall and 121 acres were bought for £15,500 by J. E. Talbot, MP for Brierley Hill, who sought to demolish the house. However, the Ministry of Works intervened, intimating that the property should be sold to a private buyer who would undertake the necessary, extensive repairs.

A year or so later, a saviour appeared in the shape of Anthony Galliers-Pratt, who bought the estate and immediately instructed Knight, Frank and Rutley to have the renovations put in hand.

Working closely with the Ministry of Works and the Historic Buildings Council, he undertook a complete renovation of the house, a mammoth undertaking that included the replacement of all the exterior stone facings, the landscaping of the park and drives and the creation of Mawley Hall’s splendid gardens.

The gardens in particular were a labour of love on the part of Mrs Galliers-Pratt. Over the ensuing 22 years she completely transformed the scene by planting hundreds of trees and shrubs, creating avenues and vistas, developing an arboretum, rose and herb gardens and building a folly, all recorded in the pages of Country Life back on March 5, 1987.

Mawley Hall is on the market with Savills and Strutt & Parker at a guide price of £10 million – see more details and pictures.

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Brightwell Park offers the opportunity to re-create a beautiful quintessential English estate with a traditional 'big house' at its heart.

Historically overshadowed by the dominating presence of Brightwell Park on its northern boundary, nowadays, the main claim to fame of the pretty south Oxfordshire village of Brightwell Baldwin, at the foot of the Chilterns between Oxford and Henley-on-Thames, is probably its role as the setting for multiple episodes of Midsomer Murders.

As intriguing as any of the series’s story-lines, however, is the history of the ruined mansion that abuts the 18th-century former coach house and stables, which now serve as the main estate house – all currently for sale, together with Brightwell Park’s other estate houses, farm buildings and 135 acres of ancient woods and parkland, at a guide price of £8 million to £10 million through Savills.

According to local records, the village name is of Anglo-Saxon origin, the ‘bright well’ being the clear stream that was dammed to create the lake in the park, with the Baldwin element added in the 14th century when Baldwin de Bereford became Lord of the Manor.

Thereafter, the Brightwell Baldwin estate passed through a number of influential families, among them the Cottesmores, the Parkes and the Carletons. In 1754, it came down to the Lowndes Stone family, when Francis Lowe left it to his daughter, Catherine, who had married William Lowndes Stone in 1744.

At this time, there existed an Elizabethan manor house, although no trace of it remains. That house burned down in 1787 and was swiftly replaced, in about 1790, by a new, square, stone-built house, thought to have been designed by James Wyatt for Lowndes Stone’s son, also William.

The ice house, the two Grade II-listed Georgian lodges, the bridge and the kitchen garden are all thought to date from that time.

During the Second World War, the mansion was used to house two prep schools, before being largely demolished in 1947. The part that remains – the present Dower House – has been converted into three flats, below which is a massive ground floor, unused for more than 70 years.

The Grade II-listed former coach house and stables that make up the present, six-bedroom, main estate house, also known as Brightwell Park, form three sides of a cobbled courtyard separated from the Dower House by garages with courtyards to either side.

Both the mansion ruins and the Dower House are unlisted and there is now the opportunity to create one magnificent country house with outstanding views to the Chilterns over Brightwell’s glorious parkland – certainly the project of a lifetime, but not one for the faint of heart.

It is to the credit of Oxfordshire District Council that, despite the lack of a traditional ‘big house’ at the heart of the estate, one of the county’s most beautiful parks and its former estate village have been preserved for future generations, having been mostly designated a Conservation Area in July 1990 – an area extended to include all the historic parkland in October 1993.

The character of the parkland, which slopes down towards the former fishponds and the stream that traverses it, reflects the 18th-century landscaping scheme believed to have been laid out by Humphry Repton – although no Red Book exists.

The area, comprising 75 acres of grazed parkland, 21 acres of woodland and 29 acres of pasture, includes a mix of formal and informal tree planting, the crowning glory of which is a 200-year-old cedar avenue that meanders through the park and is reputed to be one of only two of its style and age remaining in the country.

Brightwell Park is for sale via Savills at a guide price of £8 – £10 million – see more details and pictures.

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Within easy reach of London, Oxford and Reading lies an impossibly romantic house and estate, Coombe Park – a faded beauty in need of a saviour.

‘A completely faded glory… a place that time forgot’. How could you not warm to a place immediately on hearing such a description?

The property in question is Coombe Park at Whitchurch-on-Thames, Oxfordshire. This 125-acre estate on within its Repton landscape on the banks of the Thames is for sale at a guide price of £10m via Strutt & Parker (whose agent Mark McAndrew provided that enticing description) and Knight Frank.

Created by James Gardiner, scion of a Bristol family, which derived its wealth from sugar and slavery, on his return from the East Indies in 1865, the heart of the estate was a grand, 18th-century mansion, the main part of which was demolished after the Second World War, with the former servants’ wing and coach house adapted to form the principal estate residence.

This was extended and refurbished in 1982 to create the still imposing, 13,368sq ft main house, which is now said to be ‘in poor order’, having remained unoccupied for more than four years; it has four main reception rooms, six bedrooms, five bathrooms and an indoor swimming pool.

Yet while work is needed, the grandeur is clear to see. From the romantic gates which guard the property’s entrance to the beautiful ceilings and parquet floor in the ballroom to the sweeping staircase in the main hallway, this is a house with all manner of fine touches which just need the right hand to bring them back to their best.

Reflecting Coombe Park’s ownership by the Howard family of racehorse owners and breeders from 1898 until after the Second World War, which saw the estate expand to 670 acres in 1920, is a complex of period stud buildings, cottages and offices, and a range of 10 stables and outbuildings, together with a large traditional brick barn.

Shades of Edwardian splendour are evoked by the picturesque brick-and-tile boathouse on the leafy banks overhanging the Thames. Even at this chilly time of year it’s almost impossible not to imagine yourself enjoying warm summer’s evenings down by the water’s edge.

Coombe Park is for sale at a guide price of £10m via Strutt & Parker and Knight Frank – see more details and pictures.

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The enduring English love affair with the Palladian tradition is encapsulated at glorious Henbury Hall in Cheshire, inspired by Villa Capra at Vicenza.

Set against the backdrop of a historic 17th-century landscape, the exquisite neo-Classical Henbury Hall near Macclesfield, Cheshire, was the realisation of a vision long held by its late owner, Sebastian de Ferranti. It was encapsulated in a painting by artist Felix Kelly and brilliantly executed in perfect symmetry by the eminent country-house architect Julian Bicknell. Widely recognised as one of the most important country houses built in England in the 20th century, the Hall and its immaculate, 530-acre estate have been launched onto the market by Savills (020–7016 3780), at a guide price of £20 million for the whole.

A grand house known as Henbury Hall existed in the area in the 1600s. This was replaced by another hall built on the site of the present house in 1742, remodelled in the early 19th century and drastically reduced in size in the 1850s. Following a disastrous flood in 1872, the estate was sold to wealthy local silk manufacturer Thomas Brocklehurst, who also remodelled the hall.

In 1957, Sebastian de Ferranti’s father, Sir Vincent Ziani de Ferranti, whose father founded the Ferranti electrical engineering company in the late 19th century, bought the estate from the Brocklehurst family and demolished the dilapidated main house, by then riddled with dry rot.

The Grade II-listed former Tenants Hall, built in 1770 and originally part of the former mansion, was converted to a house for Sir Vincent, who always toyed with the idea of rebuilding Henbury Hall, although it was left to his son to realise the dream, following his father’s death in 1980.

Writing in Country Life (February 28, 2002), Jeremy Musson highlighted the enduring English love affair with the Palladian tradition, which, for lovers of classic country houses, makes ‘a first sight of the great villas of the Veneto feel like coming home’.

For the distinguished de Ferranti family – an ancestor of which, Sebastiano Ziani, served as Doge of Venice from 1172 to 1178 – the Veneto was home. So the concept that emerged of an elegant new house in the form of a Palladian temple set on a commanding site within Henbury’s historic parkland made perfect sense.

Inspired by Andrea Palladio’s classic Villa Capra (known as La Rotonda) at Vicenza in northern Italy, which served as a model for the early-18th-century Chiswick House in London and Mereworth Castle in Kent, the idea of the new Henbury Hall as a rotunda, which would make the most of the estate’s many splendid vistas, was developed by de Ferranti and Kelly, who, in 1982, produced an oil painting of how such a house might look.

A year later, in 1983, Kelly introduced de Ferranti to Mr Bicknell, whose eventual design for Henbury was, according to Mr Musson, ‘a skilful evolution of the initial idea, meeting the ambitions of the patron for a Palladian villa that satisfied the requirements of modern living… while incorporating much of Kelly’s original painting, with four Ionic columns to each portico, rather than the Palladian model of six’. Henbury Hall’s distinctive dome was modelled on that of 18th-century Mereworth Castle.

With de Ferranti’s hand firmly on the tiller at every stage of the building process, the landmark new house was completed in 1986 and, the following spring, the family moved in.

Built mainly of French limestone with a roof of local stone under its striking lead dome surmounted by a lantern of gun metal and gilded copper, Henbury Hall is by no means large in country-house terms, having little more than 9,000sq ft of internal space, plus 3,300sq ft of cellars from the previous house – but what a glorious space it is.

In line with the Palladian tradition, the ground floor houses the kitchen, utilities, nursery and playrooms, with the elegant, first-floor piano nobile centred around a vast central hall leading to all the main reception rooms – the two largest being the dining room to the east and the drawing room to the west.

These richly decorated rooms, together with the charming library and a pretty sitting room with a painted ceiling, have immensely high ceilings and are separated from the towering central space by tall, polished-oak doors carved in York by Dick Reid. Still on the first floor, six bedrooms, each with its own bathroom, are arranged around a gallery overlooking the piano nobile.

Henbury Hall’s 12 acres of breathtakingly lovely gardens, which predate the present house, are a tribute to successive generations of devoted custodians, among them Gilly de Ferranti, the present vendor and Sebastian’s widow, who has restored the Grade II-listed walled garden, which is now completely organic, growing fruit and vegetables for the house, along with cutting flowers.

To the west of the walled garden is the magnificent pool house, designed and built of curved glass by Francis Machin. Highlights of the gardens, which are beautifully laid out around two central lakes, include extensive Victorian glasshouses by Foster & Pearson. They are still in use and contain many fine and rare specimens of orchids and other plants, which are liberally displayed throughout the house.

However, true to the English ideal of a ‘proper’ country estate, Henbury Hall’s pristine 530 acres are no mere showcase for an architectural masterpiece. With some 394 acres of farmland, including parkland and a polo field, together with 108 acres of woodland, this is a fully functioning farming and sporting unit, with a successful shoot run in conjunction with the neighbouring estate.

Henbury Hall is on the market with Savills at a guide price of £20 million – see more details and pictures.


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Smuggler, property tycoon and gentleman – William Baldock was among the wealthiest men in England.

At the time of his death, William Baldock was a well-respected property tycoon, owning houses across the south east of England. He was also half-way through building what was then claimed to be the largest private house in the country. Not bad going for a man who started off as a smuggler before moving on to brewing and then property.

The launch onto the market of the elegant, mid-Victorian Petham House at Petham, near Canterbury, east Kent, at a guide price of £3.95 million through Strutt & Parker , recalls the remarkable life story of Baldock – one of Georgian England’s most fascinating business characters.

Upon his death in 1812 Baldock was still building and enlarging his own Georgian home – the largest private house in the county, or so it was claimed – much of which, sadly, was demolished to make way for the present home which lies on the site.

Although little is known of William’s early life, he managed to infiltrate the lucrative smuggling network operated – behind a cloak of the utmost respectability – by the Seasalter Company, founded by Dr Isaac Rutton of Ashford and based at the Seasalter Parsonage Farmhouse, which the good doctor leased from the Dean and Chapter of Canterbury.

Having made enough money from his own smuggling activities to buy St Dunstan’s Brewery in Canterbury, William expanded the Seasalter Company’s sales of contraband throughout east Kent under cover of the brewery’s legitimate distribution system and, when Dr Rutton died in 1792, acquired the remaining lease of the farmhouse from his sons.

Always flying close to the wind, William invested in property and land ‘from the Isle of Sheppey to the town of Deal’, but, for him, the pinnacle of success was the purchase of the Petham estate around the turn of the century. Here, he indulged his passion for thoroughbred horses, which he raced on the Barham Downs, and rubbed shoulders with the local gentry of which he was now a part.

He also maintained a fine cellar of wines and liquors, sold after his death by Rainey Auctioneers of Bath, which listed the contents as ‘120 dozen of Valuable Wine, comprising Champagne, Claret, Hock, Port, Madeira, Sherry, Marsala etc., which were procured by the late Proprietor under most advantageous circumstances’.

Following his widow’s death in 1813, the Petham estate passed to William’s nephew, William Henry Baldock. Renowned for the ‘urbanity’ that was then considered to be the mark of a gentleman, William Henry’s social standing was reflected in his appointment as High Sheriff of Kent in 1818; he was also a magistrate and Deputy Lieutenant of the county.

At that time, his seat was described as ‘an elegant modern structure, situated in a small park’, which included more than 338 acres of woods and farmland.

William Henry inherited the bulk of his uncle’s estate, but little of his business acumen. In 1841, he was one of three partners in the Union Bank of Canterbury – it collapsed with massive debts, which the three partners were called upon to honour.

Unable to meet his obligations, William Henry was declared bankrupt and, the following year, suffered a major stroke, from which he never recovered.

The next owner of Petham House was Thomas Henry Mackay, who, in about 1850, commissioned the architect Robert Palmer Browne to design a large, stuccoed, Italianate villa on the site of the Baldock house, which was demolished, apart from part of the old staff wing.

According to its listing, the new Petham House was stuccoed with nine tall chimney-stacks, built on two storeys with an L-shaped, two-storey service wing, later reduced to one.

Notable features include a massive porte-cochère on the north entrance front and a grand entrance hall with a fine stone cantilever staircase.

The house remained with the Mackay family for several generations before falling on hard times in the 20th century. It was rescued by its former owners, Mr and Mrs Graham, in the early 1980s.

At the time, the house wasn’t listed, but even more disturbing was the fact that Petham’s historic parkland, by then owned by a number of individuals, was an obvious development target, given its proximity to Canterbury and the rapid expansion of east Kent, following the completion of the high-speed commuter rail link to London.

A campaign of polite, but persistent lobbying of the friendly local planners resulted in Petham House being listed Grade II in 1993 and the entire park being declared a conservation area.

In the ensuing decades, the Grahams lavished care and attention on the house and its grounds until, 12 years ago, they finally decided to call it a day and sold the house to its present owners.

Now, they, too, are moving to be closer to family elsewhere in Kent and their charming, 10,000sq ft country house, set discreetly among the trees on high ground overlooking its 50 acres of gardens, parkland and the picturesque village below, awaits the next chapter in its intriguing history.

In immaculate order throughout, its boasts a reception hall, three impressive main reception rooms, a breakfast room, conservatory, five bedrooms and four bathrooms, with a gym, games room and office on the lower-ground floor.

Petham House is on the market with Strutt & Parker at a guide price of £3.95 million – see more details and pictures.

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Not only is Solton Manor one of Kent's most beautiful country houses, it also boasts an interesting and chequered history.

Lovely, Grade II-listed Solton Manor at East Langdon, two miles from the sea at St Margarets and a quick 20 minutes from Canterbury via the A2, is a house with an interesting and chequered history. It is now for sale through Strutt & Parker and local agents Marshall & Clarke at a guide price of £2.35 million.

Of particular note are two of the former owners, the first being Sir John Finet, who was born at the manor and later inherited it. His grandfather had come to England with Cardinal Campeggio, married a maid-of-honour to Catherine of Aragon and settled there.

The young Sir John was brought up at Court and later became Master of Ceremonies to both James I and Charles I. His portrait by Tintoretto hangs in the National Portrait Gallery.

A very different picture is presented by the enterprising Arthur Burr, who owned Solton Manor in the early 1900s. He was a speculator who almost single-handedly developed and ran the Kent coalfields for almost 20 years and, in 1913, was given the Freedom of Dover for being ‘one of the greatest benefactors Dover had ever known’.

Sadly, Burr was not all he seemed and, in 1914, he faced legal action for fraud and misuse of shareholders’ funds. Described as ‘a dangerous rogue’ by the judge, he had a judgment of £80,000 made against him and was declared bankrupt.

With other legal actions still pending, he died a broken man in 1919. Solton was a working farm before the current owners bought it in 1991 and adapted its extensive period outbuildings to create a successful wedding venue.

The house stands in some 8½ acres of beautifully landscaped gardens scattered with wildlife ponds, stone ruins, woodland and paddocks. There are also a couple of stable blocks, which could be filled with a string of horses – or converted into further accommodation, should you prefer.

The core of the main house itself is oak-framed with fine original timbers, particularly on the first floor, which boasts exposed stud walling and Tudor oak-plank doors.

What are unusual for a house of this period are the exceptionally high ceilings and well-proportioned rooms, which include three fine reception rooms – notably the splendid drawing room with its original Tudor fireplace.

There is also a recently refitted kitchen/breakfast room, a games room, six bedrooms and four bath/shower rooms, with a further four rooms on the second floor.

Solton Manor is on the market with Strutt & Parker at a guide price of £2.35 million – see more details and pictures.

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Haryln House's wonderful views and 36 beautifully-proportioned rooms were almost lost – but a plucky owner has saved the building, and now a new family is sought to turn it into a home once more.

This uncertain market currently has more buyers for houses that have been done up than for ones in need of renovation, according to Lindsay Cuthill of the country department at Savills.

‘More than ever, time is of the essence and younger buyers, in particular, would prefer to spend, say, £4 million on an immaculate house that reflects someone else’s “good taste”, rather than £2 million on a house that’s taken two years to find and might take another two to renovate,’ he says.

‘The buyers most likely to undertake a serious long-term restoration project are those with a passion for a particular building or period, for whom authenticity is of the essence.

‘It’s worth remembering that someone who buys a house for £2 million, and spends another £2 million doing it up, could save about £200,000 in Stamp Duty.’

If tackling a complete wreck is too much, however, there are always less daunting opportunities – such as the one that awaits at the Grade II*-listed Harlyn House, at Harlyn Bay near Padstow.

The potential reward for whoever takes on this £3m home – on the market with Lilllicrap Chilcott – is fabulous: the end result will be one of north Cornwall’s most prestigious seaside houses.

Most of the really nasty work has already been done. The house was in a sorry state a few years ago – indeed, it was declared ‘past saving’ by an architect shortly after the second world war.

Thankfully, however, it survived, and the present owner has done a huge amount to secure the building’s structure. What’s left is the job of finishing it off and turning it once more into a grand country house.

And what a house it is. With spectacular views and set in just under five acres, Harlyn offers almost 10,000sq ft of accommodation from the medieval, Jacobean and Georgian periods in 36 rooms.

For selling agent Andrew Chilcott, this house ‘full of intrigue and possibilities’, offers a new owner the chance to write their own piece of history on this hallowed site a few hundred yards’ walk from the beaches of Harlyn and Constantine Bay.

Harlyn House, for centuries the most prominent property in the area, was owned from the 15th century by the Tregew family, then by the Michells, whose last surviving male, Henry, carried out extensive works in the 1630s in preparation for his daughter, Elizabeth, to live there with her new husband, Thomas Peter.

During the next 400 years, the Peters, a gentry family, many of whom were High Sheriffs of Cornwall, extended and altered the house until, in 1856, John Peter, having no heir, sold the 1,300-acre estate to the Hellyar family.

The new owners were farmers who did little to the house and, in 1946, sold it to Capt N. P. S. Millar with leaking roofs, decaying walls – it was at that point that an architect’s report declared that it could not be saved.

The present owner, who inherited in 1984, has carried out an extraordinary programme of renovation, leaving this remarkable building ready for someone new to make their mark on it.

Harlyn House is for sale via Lillicrap Chilcott at £3m – see more pictures and details.

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Dunley Manor is an impressive and splendid historic house formerly owned by the Earls of Portsmouth; today, the building remains grand, but requires complete refurbishment throughout.

It takes cash, courage and commitment to restore a historic house and buyers will find plenty to challenge their reserves of all three in taking on this substantial country house.

Knight Frank are handling the sale of impressive, Grade II-listed Dunley Manor in the rural hamlet of Dunley, near Whitchurch, Hampshire, which lies between Newbury and Winchester in the North Wessex Downs AONB. The agents quote a guide price of £2.95m for the gracious, 8,848sq ft, 18th-century country house built of brick and flint under a clay tile roof and set in 45 acres of gardens, parkland, pasture and woodland, which is being offered as a whole or in six lots.

Originally owned by the Wallop family, the Earls of Portsmouth, the Dunley estate was bought by Sir Alfred Herbert, the scion of a wealthy Leicestershire farming family, in 1917. He decided to become an engineer and founded Alfred Herbert Ltd in Coventry, one of the world’s largest manufacturers of machine tools.

In 1915, he joined the Ministry of Munitions as Controller of Machine Tools, for which he was knighted. From 1917 onwards, Sir Alfred’s life was divided between his factory and his estate, where he pursued his favourite country sports.

A keen fisherman and a fine shot, he entertained liberally before his death in May 1957, at the age of 90, while taking sherry with his friend Tommy Sopwith. The estate was then sold to Sir Brian Manton of Eagle Star Insurance.

In the 1970s, Dunley was acquired by Capt George Brodrick, a former Irish Guards officer, who farmed 3,000 acres in Kent.

He was also a fine sportsman, described in his obituary as ‘a superb and elegant shot’. He remodelled and extended the manor house and laid out the gardens, mainly to the north and west.

Capt Brodrick died in December 2003, aged 88. Following his widow’s recent death, the manor is being sold on behalf of the family.

The main house, which boasts some splendid internal spaces, including an impressive entrance hall and a grand drawing room, three more reception rooms, eight bedrooms and five bathrooms, ‘now requires complete refurbishment throughout’, says selling agent Ed Cunningham.

Dunley is for sale via Knight Frank – see more pictures and details.

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The Mill House is a Hertfordshire home with genuinely spectacular gardens, but none which is in need of some TLC to restore its glory within.

Idyllic, picturesque – and now in need of ‘a thorough overhaul’. The estate agents at Savills do not mince their words about The Mill House: after 53 years of ownership by the same family, some fresh energy is needed to revitalise this lovely place.

Not that it’s a wreck: it’s a four-bedroom home in perfectly liveable condition, and full of charm – not least thanks to the wonderful location right on the bank of the River Mimram at Tewin, near Old Welwyn, Hertfordshire. The house is for sale via Savills at a guide price of £3.5m.

Once part of the Cowper family’s Panshanger estate, The Mill House and its secondary properties – set in almost 10 acres of enchanting gardens, woodland and wildflower meadows – are being offered for sale as a whole.

The house stands on a site listed in Domesday and once occupied by several mills, the last of which was pulled down in 1911, leaving a number of original features, such as a millpond wall, several grinding stones and an underground waterway leading to the Backwater.

There is 3,550sq ft of accommodation, including a reception hall, four reception rooms, four bedrooms and three bath/shower rooms, with a morning room and two further bedrooms in the 894sq ft adjoining wing.

In 1934, Dr Lane-Roberts, an eminent London gynaecologist, leased The Mill House. He enlarged the house and laid out the gardens, using tons of York stone to create paths and old brick from the nearby Digswell viaduct for decorative walls and terraces.

Yew walls were planted to create garden ‘rooms’ planted in the fashionable Sissinghurst and Hidcote style and seven gardeners were employed.

From 1960 to 1964, The Mill House was owned by a builder who made a few changes to the house, but neglected the gardens. It was sold in 1964 to Richard Knight, a local GP, and his wife, Margaret, both passionate gardeners.

The Knights carried on where Dr Lane-Roberts left off, replacing species, improving borders and planting rare specimen trees. Each year, a large sack of daffodil bulbs would be planted along the river and in the woodland, creating a magnificent display for the many visitors who came to view the gardens when they were opened for the NGS.

As well as the main Mill House itself, three other properties are included in the sale, each with two-bedrooms. North Lodge and  The Bothy are both self-contained and detached, while The Wing is part of the main building.

The Mill House is for sale via Savills at £3.5 million – see more pictures and details.

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Waystrode Manor was originally granted by King John – a sovereign whose name is synonymous with punitive taxation. How ironic, then, that today the manor offers both a beautiful country house and a way to beat the taxman, as Penny Churchill reports.

It’s no secret that sales of country houses valued at more than £2 million have fallen sharply since the introduction of punitive rates of Stamp Duty in December 2014. Add to that the uncertainty created by Brexit and the fallout from the Prime Minister’s disastrous snap General Election in May this year and it seems nothing short of miraculous that any business at all is being done in this flagship sector of the marketplace.

Fortunately, miracles do happen, a fact confirmed by Edward Rook of Knight Frank’s country department, who’s happy ‘just to be trading’ and insists that ‘there are plenty of buyers out there – it’s just a question of buyers and sellers finding common ground on price’.

Although most agents would prefer to fly solo, in times like these, two heads can be better than one. Consequently, Knight Frank and Savills have linked up as joint agents in a bid to find a buyer for immaculate Grade II*-listed Waystrode Manor at Cowden, Kent, having already handled its sale, in 2009, to the present owners, Claus and Valerie Prom. A revised guide price of £3.25 million has already attracted several interested parties and the vendors are looking forward to a successful outcome.

Waystrode Manor’s precise date of origin isn’t known, although Elizabethan historians claim that its first owner was a knight by the name of Wheystrode, to whom King John gave the manor ‘for services rendered’ in 1208.

Wheystrode and his descendants held it until 1460, after which it was sold, according to Hasted’s History and Topographical Survey of Kent (1797), first to a man called May and then, in 1460, to the Style, or Still, family, in whose hands it remained for the next 300 years. Their descendants were still living in Cowden in the 1960s.

Its 1954 English Heritage listing describes the manor house as ‘a restored 15th century farmhouse, with later 16th and 17th century additions’, all of which are discernible in the present building, which is generally referred to as Tudor – reflecting Cowden’s importance at a time when the area, rich in ironstone, produced guns for the army and navy, as well as agricultural and household goods.

The picturesque village stands close to the point where the three counties of Kent, Surrey and East Sussex all meet and is known for its ancient church with the famously crooked spire that once inspired the rhyme ‘Cowden church, crooked steeple; Lying priest, deceitful people’.

Today, however, the picturesque village is renowned for its friendly and lively community and is among the most sought-after places to live within the lovely High Weald AONB, only 30 miles from central London.

Historically the heart of a busy farming estate, Waystrode Manor stands about half a mile north of the famous church. Acquired in 1963 by Jill and Peter Wright, it was to be their much-loved family home for the next 46 years. Mrs Wright, in particular, was a passionate gardener, who created the manor’s 7.8 acres of wonderful gardens and grounds on land over which the Romans built their London to Lewes Way.

Having refurbished the manor on arrival, the Wrights thereafter concentrated their efforts on the gardens and the house more or less took care of itself.

Mr and Mrs Prom were commuting bet-ween a flat in Warwick Square, London SW1, and a weekend cottage at Chiddingstone Hoath, near Sevenoaks in Kent, when, in 2009, they decided to make a permanent move to the country with their son and daughter.

Having bought Waystrode Manor, they lived in the three-bedroom garden cottage for the following 18 months while they renovated the main house from top to bottom, adding, among other things, new bathrooms, underfloor heating and a new kitchen with a glazed dining/family area overlooking the gardens.

The manor now boasts 4,435sq ft of elegant living space, including three main reception rooms, the kitchen/breakfast room, a large master bedroom suite, four further bedrooms and two family bathrooms. Amenities include a swimming pool, a pool house and a tennis court.

In addition to the cottage, Waystrode Manor comes with some important secondary buildings, including a Grade II-listed, timber-framed barn, a charming 1,132sq ft oast house and a coach house, all of which have residential potential, enabling a future purchaser not only to provide independent accommodation for parents or grown-up children.

It also offers a way to qualify for a substantial saving in stamp duty, under the Inland Revenue’s Multiple Dwellings Relief scheme – a piece of legislation that, curiously enough, the tax authorities tend not to publicise.

Taking Waystrode Manor as a case in point, it works as follows: at a guide price of £3.25m, were the house to sell as a single dwelling, the stamp duty payable would normally be £303,750. However, with two dwellings on the property, the buyer can apply to claim the relief and pay only £217,500.

Provided the annexe is worth less than one-third of the total value of the house – which it clearly is – then, under the current rules, the average value of both elements is calculated as £3.25m divided by two, or £1.625m. At that level, the stamp duty payable is £108,750, which is then multiplied by two to apply the rate to the whole purchase price, giving a total liability of £217,500 – a saving of £86,250.

Waystrode is for sale via Savills and Knight Frank at £3,250,000 – follow either of the links for more information and to see more pictures.

Luckington Court's claim to fame was once its starring role in the 1995 adaptation of Pride & Prejudice starring Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle. The rumour mill now suggests that it might soon have a very different claim to fame.

A few months ago, we wrote an article about Luckington Court, a beautiful Cotswolds mansion that was, at the time, most famous for being a location in the BBC’s iconic 1995 adaptation of Pride & Prejudice.

Rumours are now swirling that it will become the family home of HRH Prince Harry and his bride-to-be Meghan Markle after their wedding next May – the house had been on the market for a few months, but was swiftly removed as the engagement was announced.

No doubt that will be confirmed or  denied shortly – but Penny Churchill’s piece about this gorgeous home (originally published in May) is well worth a read in any case.

Luckington Court was Bennet family home in the BBC’s 1995 TV adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, starring Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle.

Launched onto the market for the first time in 70 years is the Grade II*-listed Luckington Court at Luckington, two miles from Badminton, which is currently on the market for £9.5 milion via Woolley & Wallis.

As selling agent Sam Trounson observes, it’s rare indeed to find a fine, early-18th-century house with land in the Cotswolds these days and Luckington Court sits beautifully in its 156 acres next to the church on the edge of the village. Running through the estate is the fledgling Bristol Avon fed by seasonal springs in the valley below, of which the 17th-century writer John Aubrey wrote: ‘In this village is a fine spring called Hancock’s well… It cures the itch and Scabbe; it hath done much good to the eies.’ Hancock’s well still flows strongly in its stone culvert down to the river close by.

Local history places Luckington Court on the site of a manor owned by King Harold before 1066. Built in local creamy Cotswold stone, the present house was extended and remodelled around a 16th-century, or earlier, core by the Fitzherbert family, wealthy merchants from Bristol, who bought Luckington in 1632 and owned the estate until the early 1800s. Further alterations were carried out in 1921 by the Johnson-Ferguson family, including the addition of a service wing to the north.

The sleepy village of Luckington became a centre of intrigue in the late 1930s when Baron Robert Treeck, claiming to be a Latvian landowner whose property had been seized by the Bolsheviks, leased the local manor and sought to recruit Nazi sympathisers among the local gentry.

Soundly rebuffed by influential residents such as Maj-Gen Sir Stewart Menzies, who was head of MI6 (SIS) during and after the Second World War and reputedly the inspiration for ‘M’ in Ian Fleming’s ‘James Bond’ novels, Treeck disappeared abruptly at the outbreak of war in 1939.

Another active wartime agent was Guy Vansittart, the younger brother of leading British diplo- mat Robert Vansittart, who was recruited into the shadowy ‘Z’ network and the SOE and lived at Luckington Court in the 1940s.

Luckington is surrounded by rich dairy and arable farms, many of them owned by the nearby Badminton Estate, the principal seat of the Somerset family since the late 1600s. Badminton also became the headquarters of the Duke of Beaufort’s Hunt in 1762, when Henry Somerset, 5th Duke of Beaufort, decided to focus on foxhunting after an unsuccessful day hunting deer.

Following the unlikely success of London’s ‘austerity Olympics’ in 1948, the 10th Duke of Beaufort held the first Badminton Horse Trials on the estate in 1949, with a view to helping British riders prepare for international competition.

The first director of the world’s most prestigious three-day event was Lt-Col Trevor Horn, who had bought Luckington Court two years previously, in 1947. He remained at the helm until 1956 and died at Luckington 10 years later. Following her mother’s death, Lt-Col Horn’s daughter, June Pollock, moved back to Luckington Court in 2003, where she has carried out a sympathetic programme of modernisation and improvement.

The house now boasts more than 9,600sq ft of living space, including six reception rooms, seven main bedrooms, six bathrooms, an integral flat and an annexe, surrounded by beautifully maintained gardens, paddocks, pasture and woodland with frontage to the River Avon. Secondary buildings include traditional stabling and outbuildings, five cottages and a number of modern farm buildings.

‘Everyone expects a house that has been owned by the same family for 70 years to be covered in cobwebs, but that is certainly not the case at Luckington,’ Mrs Pollock says firmly.

The archetypal English country house, with its elegant, well-proportioned rooms, good ceiling heights and tall sash windows, Luckington Court was the answer to a location agent’s prayer, when both the interiors and exteriors were used to represent Longbourn, the Bennet family home, in the BBC’s 1995 TV series Pride and Prejudice, starring Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle.

Luckington Court is on the market via Woolley & Wallis – get for more details and pictures.