Penny Churchill looks at The Vine Farm at Northbourne, a small estate with a fine old house at its heart, and just enough land to open up possibilities without demanding a major operation in place.
Edward Church of Strutt & Parker’s Canterbury office quotes a guide price of £3.75m for The Vine Farm at Northbourne, a charming, 49-acre small estate centred on a fine, Grade II*-listed Jacobean manor house with a Grade II-listed, 18th-century cottage and a period farmstead with planning consent for a ‘sympathetic’ conversion into two dwellings.
Approached over a gravel driveway from Northbourne village street, the house stands on high ground overlooking the garden. The best views are those seen from the rear of the house, where a large terrace looks south over lawns and a ha-ha to a wide avenue of trees and its own farmland.
The land, which is ring-fenced with no public rights of way, is divided into fields thought suitable for planting with vines, interspersed with small areas of woodland. The Jacobean main house is arranged in a classic E-shape and offers 5,344sq ft of accommodation on three floors.
There is a porch and inner halls, four reception rooms, a kitchen, boot room and various utilities on the ground floor; seven bedrooms and four bath/shower rooms on the first floor.
On the second floor are three further bedrooms and a bathroom plus the wonderful Cyclops room (once a nursery, now a sitting room) whose central round window has the best view of all over the surrounding countryside.
There is also a summerhouse, greenhouse and three-bedroom cottage included.
According to its Historic England listing, Vine Farmhouse dates from the 17th century and was rebuilt in 1911 by Frederick Lancelot Hamilton Morrice, whose grandfather (also Frederic Morrice) built nearby Betteshanger House in 1829.
At some point, F. L. H. Morrice bought The Vine Farm (then known as The Vine) and embarked on a major renovation of the house, reinstating the former east wing on its original foundations.