A few weeks ago we popped around to some friends to watch the Eurovision Song Contest. No, there's no need to feel sorry for me, for we had several things on hand to ease the pain of three hours of Euro-pop, toe-curling banter and bizarre costumes. First, we had the company of friends. Second, we had alcohol and snacks. And third, we had the Eurovision Bingo Card.

The latter gave a reason — perhaps the only conceivable reason — to pay close attention to proceedings. Does this song features a glitter cannon — tick! Did the singer just wink at the camera? Tick! Singing out of tune after a key change — tick! You get the idea. Lots of fun had by all.

What made Eurovision bingo pop into my head today? Taking a look at the almost-tautologically-named Crakehall Hall in North Yorkshire, which has just come to the market via Knight Frank at £3 million. For if we ever put together a Country Life Property Bingo Card, we could use the place as a template for all things country house.

It really is remarkable. Elegant Georgian architecture? Tick. Ivy, rose and-wisteria clad walls? Tick. A grand piano in the drawing room? Tick. Walled garden? Tick. Open fires, 12ft ceilings and an Aga in the kitchen? Tick, tick and tick again. It's really got the lot, right down to the fact that it overlooks a village green on which cricket is played on summer afternoons.

The Grade II*-listed Crakehall Hall is a beautifully preserved, early-Georgian house in the picturesque village (surely another tick on the bingo card?) of Crakehall in North Yorkshire, a tiny place (population: 630) that sits on the River Beck, three miles from the charming market town of Bedale.

The hall celebrates its 303rd birthday this year, having been built in 1723 as part of the Crakehall manorial estate with links to the Duke of Leeds. Built of stone on three storeys, with a symmetrical front of seven bays and a three-storey rear wing, the hall has been lovingly restored in recent years by its present owner, a leading light of the York Georgian Society.

Set in 2¾ acres of immaculate gardens, including a vast rear walled garden arranged as a series of well-planned outdoor ‘rooms’, the house showcases original Georgian crafts-manship throughout, with high ceilings, sash windows with working shutters, refined fireplaces, exquisite joinery and a sweeping staircase lit by Venetian windows.

It provides stylish family accommodation on three floors, including five reception rooms, nine bedrooms and six bathrooms, with extensive cellars beneath.

Highlights include a grand reception hall, the aforementioned splendid drawing room (one of the rooms that looks over the village green), an elegant library and a fine kitchen/family room — the undisputed heart of the home — with vaulted ceiling and French doors leading out to the garden.

All in all, there is more than 11,900sq ft of space on offer, making it ideal for a large family, multigenerational living, or the mother of all Eurovision Song Contest parties. Don't forget the bingo cards.

Crakehall Hall is for sale via Knight Frank at £3 million — see more details. .

There is nothing more romantic than the idea of living in a castle.

But if you talk to someone who actually does live in a castle — as we did when we spoke to Cosmo Linzee Gordon a while ago — you'll find that as well as being dramatic and wonderful, it's can also be cold, damp, ruinously expensive, and a constant stream of problems to solve. Not for nothing did we headline that particular Country Life Podcast as 'Epic beauty, sweeping grandeur and water pouring through the ceiling.'

Just occasionally, though, a castle comes up for sale which shows that it doesn't always have to be this way. Bellister Castle, set beside a sweep of the River Tyne on the edge of the Northumberland village of Haltwhistle, is just such a castle — and it's for sale through Knight Frank at £2.5 million.

From afar, Bellister is the very image of the medieval castle: a towering, castellated and imposing presence that looks over this green and rolling landscape, almost exactly half-way along Hadrian's Wall. And more than that, Hadrian's Wall is actually a part of the castle in a very literal way: the early portions are believed to have been built using stone that was, er, 'borrowed' from the wall itself.

Get closer to this Grade I-listed landmark, however, and you begin to see that a huge amount of work has been done over the years to bring what was once a 13th century castle into the 21st century.

The very walls show evidence of the changes that have gone in to the place over the centuries: this is a castle which has been extended, repaired, refurbished and improved many times, with major projects taking place in the 17th, 19th and 20th centuries to get it into the form it takes today.

Much of the 20th century work followed a fire in 1906 which seriously damaged a large portion of Bellister Castle.

Rebuilding of the living quarters — which in the main owe their layout to the 19th century Gothic-style changes made by James Dobson — took place, but a large part of the building lay derelict for years. It was given to the National Trust in 1976, who retain the freehold, as well as the management and ownership of the ruined tower adjacent to the house.

A new 125-year lease was issued to the vendors in 2020, and as we understand it the ground rent is around £260 a year, though obviously any buyer will need to get their solicitors to check the details.

Further recent work in the past few years has enhanced the place still further, and the mullioned windows, crenellations and other period details are superb.

Yet amid the ancient touches, modern comforts have been integrated into the castle’s historic fabric, preserving its atmosphere while enhancing its functionality. An Everhot range in the kitchen and French doors in the drawing room that open on to the 4.5 acres of gardens sit alongside ornate fireplaces, intricate ceilings and silk-lined walls

The bedrooms are a perfect example: magnificent four-poster beds with swish bathrooms attached, blending medieval, Victorian and 21st century together.

Bellister isn't huge by castle standards. The living space spans 4,778 sq ft across three floors: the ground floor with grand entrance hall, sitting room, dining room, drawing room and a kitchen diner. There's also a laundry room, boot room, cloakroom and boiler room.

Head up the fine wooden staircase and you'll find the principal bedroom suite (as pictured above) as well as two further double bedrooms and a family bathroom. The second floor has three more double bedrooms plus a study and another bathroom.

The property includes several more noteworthy additions. The first is the two-bedroom lodge, a self-contained home with its own pretty garden. The whole thing was completely renovated in 2020.

The other addition is all about potential: a series of 19th century, stone-built barns and storage buildings. At the moment they're merely used as storage but — subject to the appropriate permissions, not least from the National Trust — they do seem to be a heaven-sent layout for holiday accommodation, offices or the creation of leisure facilities. Perhaps a little bit of all three; after all, Bellister is a castle that's moved with the times throughout its 800-year existence. The time might well be right for that to happen once again.

'Over the centuries, Bellister has passed through distinguished ownerships, each contributing to its preservation,' say the agents. 'Properties of this calibre are rare and the launch of Bellister Castle offers a chance to own a landmark home steeped in English heritage.'

Bellister Castle is for sale through Knight Frank at £2.5 million — see more details.

As claims to fame go, having a tree planted by HM The King's grandmother is an unusual one — particularly if you live in a sleepy village in Northumberland.

The tree is part of the deal at Beltingham House, whose royal links come through the maternal line. Built in around 1750, this delightful Georgian home was originally a built as a dower house for nearby Ridley Hall, one of the main properties of the Bowes-Lyon family.

Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon — better known as the late Queen Mother — visited regularly to see her relatives here throughout her life, and the tree was apparently planted in June 1989. That's just 14 months before her 90th birthday, something which clearly ran in the family: the Queen Mother's daughter, the late Queen Elizabeth II, also planted trees well into her 90s, and King Charles was still laying his own hedges on the Sandringham estate despite being in his 70s.

The Bowes-Lyonses family sold up shortly after the Queen Mother's death in 2000, after which it was taken on — and entirely refurbished — by local interior designer Andrew Bottomley. As such — and as the pictures here show beautifully — it's a home with a great combination of period charm and modern comfort, while also keeping the look and feel of the place true to its Georgian design.

Northumberland-based agent Ryan Eve of Finest quotes a guide price of £1.75 million for this beautiful Grade II-listed home.

Built on two storeys of squared stone under a slate roof, the handsome mid-18th-century house stands in almost two acres of gardens overlooking open fields.

The main house offers bright, refined and comfortable accommodation, including three fine reception rooms, a snug, kitchen/breakfast room.

Upstairs there are five bedrooms, three of which are en-suite, plus a couple of bath/shower rooms.

A service wing set back from the house was converted from a farm building in 1903 and currently serves as informal quarters for guests or extended family.

The house which stands alongside St Cuthbert’s Church in the peaceful hamlet of Beltingham, a mile south-east of Bardon Mill and 10 miles west of Hexham. It's a lovely place, described in the local press a few years ago as 'one of the most charming hamlets in Northumberland'.

Beltingham House is for sale via Finest Properties — see more details.

Not many kitchens in Britain can claim to be lit via stained-glass windows, but Greystead Old Church in Tarset, within Northumberland National Park and designed by Henry Hake Seward — a student of Sir John Soane — is one such property. It's just one of a long list of things that make this home incredibly special; it's for sale for £750,000 via Finest.

The neo-Gothic building began life as a Georgian church called St Luke's, and was part of a parish used to provide comfortable livings for chaplains who had retired from the Royal Navy. The current owners — both art historians — tell the fascinating history of the church and the nearby rectory on their website, which is part of a site used to rent out the church and nearby cottage. Greystead Rectory has remained their family home.

While the rectory has been in the same family since 1950 the church was bought later, after it was deconsecrated in 1998. A full, sympathetic conversion followed in 2013, with original features retained — not least the wonderful tower, of which more later — and the stained glass, created in the style of Burne-Jones, becoming a dazzling feature.

The kitchen is part of a mezzanine floor, with units crafted by Neptune, countertops that are granite and a substantial central island. You can stand her and and cook, or sit long over a summer supper, watching jewelled light flood the room.

In total, there are two reception rooms, including the sitting room, from where the full splendour of that Burne-Jones window is also evident, plus four bedrooms on the ground floor.

The West Tower is a truly exceptional addition. Accessed via a spiral staircase, the steps lead up to a secluded seating area that offers a peaceful retreat — and views across the glorious surrounding landscape.

Greystead Old Church is for sale via Finest at £950,000 — see more details. It's also available as a whole along with The Rectory and The Cottage, with the three properties together having an asking price of £2.25 million.

The name ‘Kirk Hammerton’ might sound like a 1970s DJ; but it’s actually a place whose roots go back well over 1,000 years. This pretty village, about 10 miles from York, takes its name from its astonishing church — a church that had already been standing here for well over a century before William the Conqueror ever stepped foot in Britain.

This Saxon church dates from the ninth century, and though it’s been added to — a tower in around 950 AD, and an extension in 1892 — much of what is here has survived almost 1200 years. The original church is now the south aisle and the entrance, and — according to a Country Life report back in 1988 — is still largely as it appeared in the Middle Ages, barring a couple of new windows. It's one of a vanishingly-small number of churches of this age in Britain which are still standing today.

Just along the lane from this ancient place of worship is a house which is a relative baby, yet is itself 250 years old: the beautiful Kirk Hammerton Hall.

Grade II-listed and set in expansive grounds, the house dates from the mid 18th century with late-19th-century additions, and it’s being launched onto the market with Savills in York for a guide price of £4.95 million.

The current owners have spent some time gently bringing the house up to date with a new roof, replacing or refurbishing windows and having the wiring and plumbing upgraded throughout. And the work done has been utterly splendid, giving a definite Downton Abbey look to some of the spaces.

It's not just a beatiful building; it's also a huge home that measures more than 12,500sq ft, with seven bedrooms, four bathrooms and five reception rooms.

The grounds are just as extensive: the hall is surrounded on two sides by formal gardens, which have been arranged over different levels and bounded by mature hedging and tall brick walls.

There is a more formal box parterre and Japanese-inspired garden close to the house, and beyond that lies a swimming lake complete with a sandy beach and a boating jetty. In all, the grounds amount to about 9½ acres.

Selling agent Ed Stoyle believes that it is one of the finest houses in the region. ‘This house will suit a family who appreciates the style of the architecture, the proportions of the rooms and the setting in the Golden Triangle and who don’t want to take on a house in need of serious work,’ he says.

‘It’s a fantastic place to entertain family and friends and there’s a good-sized annexe with its own kitchen that would suit guests, a nanny or a relative.’

Kirk Hammerton Hall is for sale via Savills — see more details.

‘I know we’re not meant to have favourites, but this is one of mine,’ says estate agent Edward Hartshorne, who’s handling the sale of Helperby Manor. ‘I sold it to the current owners about six years ago and they’ve carried out a thorough renovation project — it’s all been done.’

‘Thorough’ is indeed the word: the immaculate condition of the place is a strong selling point for Helperby Manor. Sitting on the edge of the village of Helperby in North Yorkshire, it’s on the market for offers in excess of £3.5m through Blenkin & Co in York. That’s a lot in Northern England, but for good reason: this house is right in the middle of Yorkshire’s so-called ‘Golden Triangle’, the patch of countryside that lies between Harrogate, Leeds and York. The asking price is simply reflective of this high competitive market — and this house, with nine acres including parkland, formal gardens, woodland and an orchard — is the epitome of the Yorkshire dream.

Inside, Helperby Manor has plenty more to justify the price. This house, with more than 8,000sq ft of interior space, has undergone a reconfiguration and modernisation project that was hugely extensive.

It involved reducing the number of bedrooms from 12 to eight, and creating a large, light-filled kitchen/breakfast room that leads into a dining room and living room.

The work continued elsewhere in the grounds, with what was once the chauffeur’s annexe above the coach house now converted into a one-bedroom holiday let. The former stables, meanwhile, have become a gym.

Helperby is also set up for a sustainable future. The owners installed 40 ground-mounted solar panels with a Tesla battery storage capacity of 13kW and there is underfloor heating laid throughout the ground floor.

‘We’ve seen evidence of younger buyers turning their backs on rambling country houses in favour of something more compact,’ says Hartshorne. ‘This is an impressive house, but it’s also very cosy and made for modern family living.’

The house was built in 1913 as a dowager house for Helperby Hall, the seat of the Milnes Coates family. It isn’t listed and it stands on the edge of the village, which is actively supported by the Helperby estate, including through the provision of land for the creation of a new playground.

There are sports grounds and a cricket club and many events centred around the village hall, including an annual beer festival in September. Amos & Welsh, a local micro bakery, operates a mobile version on Sunday mornings.

‘People bandy the word around a lot, but the village has a really strong community,’ adds Hartsborne.

‘I’ve sold quite a few houses in the village over the years and it’s a common refrain said by those who know it well. The great thing about Helperby Manor is that you’re completely private, but can walk into the village.’

Helperby stands midway between the market towns of Easingwold and Boroughbridge and is an easy drive away from both Harrogate and York. ‘Judging by the interest we’ve seen so far, I expect it will sell to someone from Yorkshire looking to move into this patch, which is known for its excellent schools, or from down south and returning to their roots,’ Hartsborne continues.

‘Of course, some buyers come to Yorkshire in search of somewhere completely isolated that warrants a huge chest freezer and a hardy 4x4 to cope with the long winters, but for those looking for accessible countryside, this is it.’

Helperby Manor is for sale via Blenkin & Co — see more details.

Although prime property prices in many southern locations remain below their pandemic peak, those in some parts of the North have fared better. According to Hamptons, northern areas, which recovered more slowly following the 2008 financial crisis, are now catching up after the surge in London values between 2010 and 2015. The North-West has seen up to 90% price growth over the past decade.

Part of the reason is down to affordability. As Sam Gibson of Galbraith in Hexham, Northumberland, says: ‘A budget of up to £1.5 million will secure you quite a grown-up house in the northern counties — that’s not necessarily the case down south.’ He reports that buyers’ appetites for properties up to that value are healthy, but anything above is less so.

‘We all have to look forward rather than backwards, and everyone acknowledges the difficulties of last year,’ says Gibson. ‘Houses worth £2 million in this part of the world are rare and, at this stage of the year, owners aren’t convinced that they would get a warm welcome from prospective buyers if they launched onto the market right now when spring is still a long way off.’

Gibson has no such concerns for four-bedroom Grade II-listed Hartlaw Manor, which lies a few miles south of the historic market town of Alnwick and is on the market for offers over £1.25 million. That buys you 5,000sq ft country home — enormous for a four-bedroom house — for the price of a terrace in Twickenham.

Not only is the asking price within the current ‘sweet spot’, but the location is spectacular, with far-reaching views south across the Vale of Coquet to Longhorsley Moor and as far as Cresswell Point. ‘It’s a cinch to get to from either Morpeth or Alnwick and, for those who are doing the weekly commute to London, trains from Alnmouth to King’s Cross take about 3½ hours.

Sitting within a hamlet — the wonderfully-named Guyzance — the house is secluded, but not isolated, which is ideal for many buyers, and central Newcastle is about a 40-minute drive.’

The garden extends to just over an acre and includes an attractive walled garden, which is also Grade II-listed; a further 26 acres with outbuildings and an outdoor school are available by separate negotiation.

There is another advantage that will attract would-be buyers to Hartlaw Manor: its condition. ‘It’s effectively a new house within the envelope of an old building,’ explains Gibson. The property originally formed part of Hartlaw Farm and was described in the early 18th century as ‘a goodly house, on an eminence’.

Over its long history, the house, which was originally constructed as a long and narrow dwelling, was divided into two, and later three, homes before being restored into one property.

The current owner purchased the house in 2010 when it was in a state of disrepair. Since then, they have carried out a full renovation programme, adding a modern extension to the northern end to give it more depth. ‘It has an EPC [energy performance certificate] of C, which is epic for an 18th-century house,’ adds Gibson.

Hartlaw Manor is for sale via Galbraith at £1.25 million — see more details.

I spent what feels like eight years studying Wuthering Heights.

It probably wasn't eight years; actually, definitely not, because it was one of my set texts for A-level English. It merely felt that long because I hated the entire thing. The characters, the setting, the language... the whole lot.

You might think that means I'm not excited by the prospect of the new Wuthering Heights film adaptation, but you'd be wrong.

I've not seen it yet, but by all accounts it does everything it can to take the best ingredients (Sex! Death! Adorable old houses! The Moors!), skate over the boring bits (everything else), and wrap it up in a movie that sounds like a sort of Inglorious Basterds treatment of Emily Brontë. And the best bit? I'll be able to watch the whole trashy mess in a fraction of the time it'd take to read a single chapter of Nelly warbling on about the Earnshaws and the Lintons.

So while the book itself did its best to turn me off going to live in a remote Yorkshire farmhouse, the film has turned me back on to it — and I don't think I'll be alone in that. So here, for those of us who find themselves pining for an existence that ends with their lifeless body being dug up by a crazed former lover*, is our pick of the best Wuthering Heights-worthy farmhouses for sale across Britain right now.

North Yorkshire — £3.15 million

Let's start this look at Wuthering Houses with this absolute beauty of a place which is, at first glance, almost too beautiful to be part of the Brontë world. Built in 1716, Hornby Grange is a six-bedroom house near Northallerton that's set in 20 acres of grounds, with wonderful views of the North Yorks Moors.

Inside, the place is quirky in a very Wuthering way, from the charmingly old-school hallway to a magnificently Gothic home office, complete with wood panelling and a suit of armour in one corner. You can almost picture Nelly coming in and stoking the open fire with another scoop of coal.

Hornby Grange is for sale at £3.15 million through Knight Frank — see more details.

North Yorkshire — £735,000

The classic stone-built house, the slate roof, the backdrop of hills... This house in Upper Niddderdale is the absolute epitome of the Yorkshire farmhouse, and it even dates to the era of Wuthering Heights: it was around half a century old when the book was published.

There's good news for those who want a touch of Brontë romanticism without actually having to rough it too much: the place is gorgeously refurbished inside, with a nicely-balanced blend of old and new.

This property is technically a leasehold, but with 10,000 years left on that lease — coincidentally, the same number of years that it took me to wade through Wuthering Heights.

For sale at £735,000 via Hopkinsons Estate Agents — see more details.

Yorkshire Dales — £725,000

Now this is the sort of view that film-makers dream of when green-lighting the 83rd screen adaptation of Victorian novels. This remote farmhouse is tucked away in a narrow valley between the villages of Dent and Cowgill in the Yorkshire Dales National Park.

It's a way off to the north of the old Brontë home at Haworth, but in every other respect this four-bedroom place could be lifted from the pages of the original novel. Beamed ceilings, thick walls, low doorways and huge stone fireplaces in pretty much every room add all the character you could wish for.

As well as the generous gardens and high-speed internet (an unexpected surprise, half-way up Dentdale) there's another bonus: planning permission to convert the barn. Could you turn it into a Brontë tribute holiday home? Why yes, we think you could.

For sale at £725,000 via Fisher Hopper — see more details.

West Yorkshire — £895,000

Finally, we head into West Yorkshire, just a few miles from Brontë Ground Zero at the parsonage in Haworth. And what a find we've made there: Upper Saltonstall, a magical old house, built in 1604, and in the sort of location which will probably make Wuthering Heights's producers kick themselves for not having used the place in the film.

Not only is the setting perfect, everything about the place inside screams 'Wuthering Heights': the ancient stone floors, the wooden panelling, the exposed stonework and beams, the original doors and doorways. This is it. This is Wuthering Heights.

Except, since it's 2025 and not 1847, it's Wuthering Heights with hot water, electricity, 1800Mbps broadband, a decent mobile phone signal, bathrooms swish enough to grace a decent hotel, an Aga in the kitchen and a double-garage.

In other words, it's a house that is a perfect mash-up of Gothic fantasy and post-industrial consumerism. Just like the film, in fact. What a place it would be to live.

For sale at £895,000 via Charnock Bates — see more details.

*Apparently, the director left this bit out of the film. Which is like leaving the 'To be or not to be' soliloquy out of Hamlet. Madness.

The columns, the statues, the gardens... at first glance you'd be forgiven for assuming that the property on this page was a minor palace set in the rolling hills of Umbria. You'd be one letter 'c' away from the truth: it's actually in Cumbria, in the countryside outside St Bees, amid grounds with lawns, woodland, terraces and flowerbeds, where red squirrels and deer regularly visit.

Linethwaite Hall — currently on the market at £1.2 million via Finest — is a wonderful and fascinating house, originally built in around 1720 by a family who owned coal mines in the area.

The classic elements of Georgian architecture are easily spotted in the high ceilings, bay windows and generously proportioned rooms, but the place has been much changed over the years, and the house as it stands today owes more to a Victorian remodelling than its original creator.

The changes didn't stop there, though: what was once the coach house has now been amalgamated into the main building as a separate wing, massively increasing the floor space, and bringing a games room-slash-pub into the mix.

Regardless of which elements came when, this is a grand home that makes an impression from the moment you turn in to the driveway, beneath a sandstone arch featuring a carving of Poseidon.

More statues await at the main house itself, from across the eras, and with some unusual choices: Queen Victoria and William Shakespeare take their places alongside Joan of Arc and — at least according to the agents' notes — King John. Commemorating one of English history's most notorious tyrants is certainly an unusual choice, but who are we to question it? It's also worth noting that the house is unlisted — something very unusual for a home of this age and size — so the new owner will have the option to bring in a sculptor to remodel John into someone else. Henry II? Oliver Cromwell? Gary Lineker? Elon Musk? Your could let your imagination can run wild.

Head past those statues into the house itself and you'll discover even greater joy: it's utterly immaculate, and beautifully decorated and fitted out. Oak doors, herringbone flooring, a firm grasp of bold colours, delicate cornicing and exposed stone elements create a lovely feel in this grand country house.

A fine staircase leads upstairs where there are six bedrooms, three of which sit in the main footprint of Linethwaite Hall, with the other three accessed via a separate landing on the first floor of the coach house wing. It brings a welcome element of separation which families with older children in will probably appreciate.

On that same score, head down to the lower ground floor and past the gorgeous wine cellar and you'll find a separate, self-contained two-bedroom flat, with its own kitchen, living room, hallway and entrance.

This could be ideal for multi-generational living; and if that's the way you're thinking, a three-bedroom bungalow within the grounds is also for sale via separate negotiation.

Linethwaite Hall is for sale at £1.2 million via Finest — see more details.

Hilary Pegrum of York-based Blenkin & Co emphasises the appeal of well-built former vicarages for Yorkshire home owners seeking to downsize from large family homes in the countryside. She quotes a guide price of £1.5m for the pick of her current portfolio: elegant, Georgian The Old Vicarage at Easingwold, which, for her, is North Yorkshire’s loveliest market town.

Set roughly halfway between York and Thirsk, at the foot of the Howardian Hills National Landscape, the area was once surrounded by the vast Forest of Galtres, much favoured by hunting monarchs from King John to Charles I. Easingwold is now widely recognised as a ‘foodie’ destination, offering locally sourced food and drink in its friendly restaurants, pubs and cafés.

One of Easingwold’s landmark houses, the former vicarage, listed Grade II, is accessed from Tanpit Lane in the town’s conservation area, which surrounds the picturesque central Georgian marketplace.

Originally built in 1770, with additional wings added in 1812, the house, set in half an acre of garden — which includes a croquet lawn — has been sympathetically renovated in recent years by the current owners and now offers more than 4,200sq ft of beautifully proportioned living space full of period character.

Features include herringbone wood flooring, panelled doors, restored sash windows, fireplaces with open fires, original coving and panelling and a traditional turning staircase with a handsome banister.

A key transformation involved reconfiguring the former sitting room, dining room and utility into a large, open-plan kitchen/dining room. The garden room has been re-roofed to create a usable year-round space and the elegant 22ft drawing room, with its open fire and French doors leading to the garden, has been sympathetically restored.

Upstairs, the principal bedroom suite, which overlooks the croquet lawn, boasts a crescent-shaped en-suite bathroom with a vaulted ceiling and a glazed cupola.

There are five further bedrooms and three bathrooms on the first floor, with a charming seventh bedroom and bathroom on the top floor.

The Old Rectory in Easingwold is for sale via Blenkin & Co — see more details.

Some 40 miles due north of both York and Harrogate, the historic village of Great Smeaton sits in a conservation area near the River Wiske, roughly halfway between Northallerton and Darlington and close to the North York Moors and the Yorkshire Dales, both of which offer a wide range of rugged outdoor pursuits.

Here, Janet Edwards of Strutt & Parker in Harrogate is handling the sale of arguably Great Smeaton’s prettiest property. The East House, a classic Georgian home which overlooks the village green, is now on the market at a guide price of £1.495 million.

Previously listed as Home Farmhouse, indicating a house of status associated with the local manor, The East House dates from about 1735, with two further wings added in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

The updating has continued into the present century, as the pictures here show, and the home has been renovated throughout by the current owners.

There's a comfortingly traditional look and feel in the rooms, which have clearly been done with love.

There are a few surprises too — particularly in the room that was once the kitchen: it has been converted into a gym, but the original stove is still in place. A gym with an Aga is a new one on us; every day's a school day at Country Life.

Turning a downstairs room into a gym is indicative of how much space is on offer here. East House offers 5,905sq ft of light-filled, flexible accommodation, and includes six reception rooms, seven bedrooms and three bathrooms laid out over three floors.

The house, built of brick under a pantile roof, is approached along a private road, with access to the rear through a side electric gate. This opens to private parking, which leads to an outbuilding with a double garage and two stores.

The well-tended rear garden is enclosed by the original high brick wall, which ensures privacy and seclusion. A gravelled rear terrace with a paved seating/dining area provides distant views over the surrounding farmland.

The East House is for sale at £1.495 million — see more details.

Tucked away in a small wooded valley accessed by a network of narrow winding lanes off the main A61, some 10 miles north of Harrogate and six miles south of Ripon, is the charming rural village of Burton Leonard. According to James Wort of Strutt & Parker’s Harrogate office, it is much sought after by commuters working in Harrogate, Ripon and further afield, who also covet its location within the catchment area of the highly regarded Ripon Grammar School, founded in 1555 and rated ‘top state school in North Yorkshire’ by the Sunday Times. Once owned by nearby Fountains Abbey, Burton Leonard is surrounded by the wooded hills and farmland of North Yorkshire and is a stone’s throw from the windswept moorlands, steep river valleys and rolling pasture of the Nidderdale National Landscape.

Mr Wort is currently handling the sale — at a guide price of £2.5 million — of handsome, late-19th-century The Old Vicarage.

This superb house stands in well-wooded grounds to the north of St Leonard’s Church on the edge of the Burton Leonard Conservation Area. The church itself was designed in the distinctive Gothic Revival style by the prolific church architect Charles Hodgson Fowler and built in 1878 on the site of the original 13th-century village church, thanks to funding donated by a local landowner, James Brown of Copgrove Hall.

The classic Victorian former vicarage is approached through stone pillars and electrically operated iron gates over a gravelled driveway, which leads past the house to a paved rear courtyard and a heated triple garage with an EV charging point and double inspection pit.

Separate doors lead from the garage to a recording studio on the ground floor and the entrance to the coach house, which has stairs leading to three interconnecting first-floor rooms: these could be converted to a self-contained annexe, subject to the usual consents.

The part-walled garden is laid mainly to lawn with paved terraces surrounding the house, the whole bordered by well-stocked shrub beds and mature trees that complete the scene of seclusion and tranquillity.

The main house provides 5,025sq ft of well-planned living space on two floors, including seven reception rooms, five bedrooms and five bathrooms. The whole has been fully refurbished by the current owners, who bought the property in 2013. They also added a spectacular orangery with a large, vaulted skylight and wrap-around sash windows that flood the room with natural light.

Highlights include the grand entrance hall with a galleried landing above; a dual-aspect drawing room with a pretty fireplace; an impressive dining room; a comfortable, south-facing sitting room; and a country-style kitchen/breakfast room with a range of Shaker-style wall and base units, and a large central island.

The vast principal bedroom suite has fitted cabinetry and an opulent en-suite bathroom with twin sinks, a central free-standing claw bath and a separate walk-in shower.

Three further double bedrooms have en-suite bathrooms or shower rooms; a smaller, fifth bedroom would make an ideal nursery or home office.

For sale via Strutt & Parker at £2.5 million — see more details.

This feature originally appeared in the December 3 issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.

Carlton Hall is a Yorkshire gem. It stands in the village of Carlton Husthwaite, a few miles south of Kilburn, amid nine acres of landscaped gardens. As well as the main house — which is Grade II-listed — there are outbuildings, a fenced paddock and fields sited alongside the Grade II*-listed St Mary’s Church, which was built as a chapel of ease to St Nicholas Church, Husthwaite, and completed in about 1677. Blenkin & Co are handling the sale at a guide price of £2.375m.

Originally a Jacobean mansion with a dovecote, stables and walled garden, Carlton Hall was built in the early 1600s by the influential Freer family, who owned several houses in the village.

At that time, the house was fronted with six mullioned and pilastered windows on the ground floor, with another six above them and an extended Jacobean porch in the middle. In about 1790, the Kitchingman family remodelled the Jacobean frontage, upgrading it to a more fashionable Georgian style by reducing the 12 leaded windows to eight larger Georgian sash ones and removing the Jacobean porch.

In the 1830s, Carlton Hall became the family seat of the Peckitt family, when Henry Peckitt, then chairman of the Leeds stock exchange and a director of the North Eastern Railway, bought the house, which remained in the family until 1941.

In about 1860, Peckitt added an Italianate extension and verandah overlooking the garden to make the most of Carlton Hall’s sweeping views of the White Horse at Kilburn, which had been built into the hillside three years earlier.

He also added an impressive drawing room, with a French Louis XV marble fire surround, a mezzanine landing and stair-case, and two extra bedrooms for his growing family and guests, together with a purpose-built wine cellar.

Elegantly unified and sympathetically restored in recent years, Carlton Hall provides 6,885sq ft of comfortable family living space in the main house, including an entrance hall, three fine reception rooms, a study, kitchen/breakfast room and utilities on the ground floor.

Above you'll find a large principal bedroom suite, five further bedrooms and three additional bathrooms on the first and second floors. Below, an office, wine cellar and basement rooms are on the lower ground floor.

The first-floor gatehouse annexe has been recently renovated and is now a blank canvas, offering accommodation for the wider family, guests or a source of additional income.

Carlton Hall is for sale via Blenkin & Co at a guide price of £2.375m ‚ see more details.

Six miles east of Thirsk — best known for its racecourse and as the home of the vet Alf Wight, alias James Herriot of All Creatures Great and Small fame — lies the village of Kilburn, situated on the edge of the North York Moors National Park.

The village is well known for its ‘Mouseman’ Thompson furniture workshops, and also the famous Kilburn White Horse landmark, cut into the southern flank of Sutton Bank, near Roulston Scar, at the edge of the Hambleton tableland. And in this charmingly unspoilt spot, a lovely home has come to the market: The Old Vicarage at Kilburn, for sale at £2.75 million.

The largest and most northerly of Britain’s 16 white chalk horses, the Kilburn White Horse measures 97m (318ft) long by 67m (228ft) wide, faces south-south-west and is visible for miles around. On a clear day, the horse can be seen from north Leeds, 28 miles away on the higher ground to the west of the Vale of York.

The figure was reputedly cut in 1857 on the initiative of Thomas Taylor, a native of Kilburn, who apparently attended celebrations at the prehistoric Uffington White Horse in Oxford-shire that year and was inspired to provide his home village with a similar landmark. Thirty-three men were involved in cutting it, with six tons of lime used to whiten the exposed Jurassic lime sandstone.

During the Second World War, the horse was covered over to prevent it from becoming a navigation landmark for enemy bombers. In 2018, the site was handed over to Forestry England as part of Kilburn Woods; in 2022, the horse was resprayed at a cost of £20,000.

Hilary Pegrum of York-based Blenkin & Co, is handling the sale of The Old Vicarage at Kilburn, which an unlisted late-Victorian village house originally built in 1870 of the local stone under a slated roof. It once served as the vicarage to the neighbouring Grade II*-listed St Mary’s Church, which dates from the 12th century and was restored in 1869.

Set in an acre of landscaped gardens on rising ground at the edge of the village dominated by the White Horse, the main house offers 5,245sq ft of elegant accommodation on three floors, with a gym, shower room, sauna and store room in the converted annexe and a double garage, stores and summerhouse in separate outbuildings.

The former vicarage has been refurbished in an expert collaboration between interior designer Stephen Nealls and Woods of Harrogate Furnishings and combines 19th-century architectural integrity with bespoke contemporary interiors.

Accommodation includes an entrance vestibule, staircase hall, two reception rooms, a study, kitchen/dining room and various utilities on the ground floor, with a splendid principal bedroom suite, a guest-bedroom suite, three further bedrooms and a house bathroom on the second floor.

Handmade bronze casement windows and doors, underfloor heating beneath parquet floors, cast-iron radiators, antique fireplaces and a Stûv woodburning stove set the tone for the interiors. Luxurious finishes abound, from Moiré wall coverings and Belgian carpets to Forbes & Lomax switches, Drummonds bathrooms and Czech & Speake fittings with indulgent deluge showers.

The Old Vicarage Kilburn is for sale at £2.75 million — see more details.

If every Englishman’s home is his castle, then the opportunity to snap up Ripley Castle could fulfil the ideal for some. This property near Harrogate, ancestral seat of the Ingilby family for the last seven centuries, came onto the market in January at £21 million. Perhaps unsurprisingly considering the size and variety of the 445-acre estate, the family are happy to split things into lots; but the bulk of the asking price was the £15 million for the castle itself, including 166 acres of parkland, woodland, lakes and a temple.

Since then, the asking price for the Grade I-listed, 14th-century Ripley Castle been slashed by £7.5 million — something which might set alarm bells ringing, especially as the reduction ‘is principally down to market conditions’, points out Mark Granger, consultant at Carter Jonas. The other eight lots — including a pub, village store, woodland and cricket ground — have apparently generated a good deal of interest at or above their original guide price. So why the price cut for the main attraction?

Part of it is the market. Evidence suggests that demand for country houses is slowing, and buyers are becoming picky: ‘in 2025, among homes priced above £3 million, more than 43% of listings have seen a price reduction, and you are now three times more likely to withdraw from the market than to secure a buyer’, says Jonathan Handford, managing director at Fine & Country, and ‘while the market has not collapsed, it has become highly selective.’

But there's another more important aspect to the Ripley Castle story. Appraising a stately home for sale — each a one-off with its own set of tangible assets and idiosyncratic qualities — is no easy task, and there is no simple science to it. Fewer equivalent properties at this end of the market means agents must make a careful assessment of a wider range of factors than the norm, from property size and location to architectural attribution and historic pedigree, state of repair, and even commercial potential.

‘Pricing a country house is much like valuing an antique’, says Annabel Blackett of Strutt & Parker’s national country house department covering Scotland and the North.

‘Condition, provenance, and rarity all come into play. Pitch it high, and the room falls silent; get it right, and the bids start flying. In a market like this, that has never rung more true. We recently sold Howsham Hall, a beautiful Grade I-listed property in Yorkshire, for 10% above its guide price in under two months. Proof that sharp pricing brings strong results.’

Howsham, a 17th century, Grade I-listed house with 83 acres of land, had an asking price of £5 million, seemingly bringing it much more into line with the new valuation of Ripley Castle. Peter Edwards, head of super-prime sales in Knight Frank’s country department, points out that the considerations are huge, also taking into account ‘the extent and use of land, including different types such as arable, pasture, or woodland, outbuildings and their orientation and proximity to the main house, and any secondary accommodation.’

But while some say international and domestic interest in rural estates is still strong, swirling fiscal dynamics like the upcoming November Budget, Stamp Duty, interest rates and the shifting tax burden, along with the cost of borrowing, are undoubtedly curbing the appeal of fresh custodianship of former family seats.

The investment required for the restoration of a substantial historic home — which can be considerable — might also prove off-putting, not only for financial reasons, but because of legislative obligations relating to heritage, planning, and the need to hire skilled specialists. Maintenance could also prove prohibitively expensive; heating bills might run into tens of thousands of pounds per year. Others might be wary of changes to the Renters’ Rights Bill and the potential impacts on country domains with tenanted cottages.

Yet, some buyers are enticed by ancient history; others by dispassionately ploughing money into real estate. The strength or lack of an emotional response can be just as persuasive as the cost of bricks and mortar. This means that a smart sales strategy comes into play, balancing the interests of the audience, and the seller’s expectations and needs — especially to do with time frames. And price reductions might be necessary: Strutt & Parker did just this at Nursted Barns, Petersfield in Hampshire, down from £6 million to £4.95 million for a small, but charming estate with a Grade II Listed, early-18th-century barn conversion at its core.

And size often matters, so it may also be that splitting a larger estate into separate units is helpful in tempting buyers in: ‘the art lies in the lotting — knowing where to draw the lines so each piece tells its own story’, advises Liza Howden of Strutt & Parker's National Estates and Farm Agency department.

‘When you lot an estate, the individual guide prices are lower, meaning they appear in more searches and, sometimes, buyers will end up purchasing additional lots anyway. At the end of the day, we want the best outcome for the vendor, and that’s as much about realism as romance’.

There is also evidence that those looking to acquire a country pile are willing to wait longer for the right place to come along: ‘what we have noticed’, reveals Phillippa Dalby-Welsh, head of Savills Country Department, ‘is that a drop off in buyer registrations over the past 12 months has not been quite as dramatic as anticipated in the prime markets. The real difference is that buyers are more careful about taking action and are price sensitive, but there is still some activity.’

And there are emerging geographical trends: ‘We have had a more fluid market in parts of the north, where there is a more domestic market as well as pockets that attract those with a specific sporting focus, for example football or equestrian', but of all the features considered desirable, 'land is high on the agenda, providing many benefits from a buffer zone for privacy to space for equestrian facilities, or scope to indulge a hobby or passion, like re-wilding or setting up a vineyard. A commercial angle already in situ might mean mixed use relief on Stamp Duty too’, she adds.

If an appraisal of a country house should be done on a case-by-case basis, then consider the rarities Savills has previously encountered, valuing a house with a private beach, another with a moat and drawbridge, a Classical mansion in Hampshire with a slide from the upper floor into the kitchen — and even a property with a giant zip wire, ‘which we were encouraged to try out’ says Phillippa. If the price is right, come on down.

Ripley Castle is for sale via Carter Jonas at £7.5 million — read our original story about it, or see more information from the agent.

Historic country houses surrounded by moats do have a certain fairytale charm, don’t they? It’s as if they’ve jumped straight out of the pages of a children’s story book. The sort that might involve damsels in distress, knights in shining armour, and the odd beast perhaps.

But Holford Hall is no work of fiction. It is a spectacular Grade II*-listed timber-framed Tudor house surrounded by a moat near Knutsford in Cheshire. To add to its charm, there’s even a 17th century sandstone bridge.

The property is set within a 125-acre parcel of land that also includes a separate mill house, a converted barn used as an events venue, equestrian facilities, and extensive grounds.

This historic country estate has now hit the market for £6.5 million. Fisher German, the selling agent, says it is ‘not only a remarkable piece of Cheshire’s architectural history, but also a prestigious and versatile countryside residence’.

Holford Hall is the surviving part of a quadrangular residence built in 1601 for the aristocrat Mary Cholmondeley. It is an architectural beauty, featuring a striking black-and-white façade with jettied upper floors, ornate gables, and classical pilasters.

The architectural details have been retained inside too: think exposed timber beams, stone mullioned windows, original woodwork, and a grand fireplace.

The hall appears to be in good nick and has been sensitively modernised. At the heart of it is a spacious drawing room packed with period details.

Elsewhere, there’s a striking garden room with views across the impressive-looking topiary outside, as well as a large open-plan kitchen and sitting area with what appears to be all the mod cons. Other rooms downstairs include a family room, study, and a laundry room.

On the first and second floors, there are five bedrooms (one with a walk-in wardrobe), a study, and various bathrooms. More unusually though, there’s a family room on the first floor, described as a ‘natural gathering place’, that opens onto a mezzanine level in the garden room.

Also part of the estate is The Mill House, a modern five-bedroom home with a conservatory, that ‘stands as a light-filled and versatile residence’, according to the sales listing. Plus, a large restored traditional brick barn, which is currently used for weddings and other events.

No write-up of Holford Hall would be complete without mentioning the equestrian facilities, which include stables for up to 10 horses, an outdoor manège, and yard space.

The 125 acres of grounds vary from formal gardens and lawns, through to woodland, grazing paddocks, and arable land.

Matthew Allen, partner at Fisher German, says: ‘Holford Hall Estate’s incredible beauty, generous grounds and its mix of outbuildings gives buyers many different options.

‘It would be perfect for an ambitious equestrian business, another wedding provider, or hotelier, to name just a few. Alternatively, the estate would make an exceptional private family home for the right buyer.

‘It is rare that a property of this stature comes onto the market in Cheshire.’

The estate can be bought as a whole, or Holford Hall and The Mill House can be purchased in separate lots.

Holford Hall is for sale as a whole for £6.5 million. For more information and pictures, click here

What are the questions you should ask yourself when buying a castle? For me it would be a mix of complex and simple ones. Simple ones would be questions such as: ‘Does the roof leak?’ or ‘how much does it cost to heat’ or ‘is there decent water pressure in the showers’?

More complex, but in my opinion equally important, questions to consider would be: ‘How castle-y does it look?’, ‘Is it one of only three complete and intact Norman Keeps in the UK, built in around 1100 and continuously occupied?’ and ‘Would it make a suitable location for the hit tv show, The Traitors?’.

Very important questions, I think you would agree. While I can’t comment on the status of the roof, heating bills (although I would guess the answer is: quite a bit) or water pressure, there’s no doubt Appleby Castle in Cumbria answers the other three questions with an emphatic yes. Up for auction with Knight Frank on October 30, at a guide price of £5.5 million.

There’s much to love about Appleby Castle. It offers 22 bedrooms in total, as well as three self-contained holiday cottages. There are two ‘great halls’, for one’s banquets. A commercial kitchen, library, billiard room, gym/spa and wine cellar. Don’t forget fishing rights on the River Eden, the tennis court, and the bee house, as well as 25 acres of parkland.

Looking through the particulars, it’s clear that this residence is currently used as an events space, for those who enjoy cosplaying medieval life. The interiors are achingly period, with lots of bits of armour about, four-poster beds, big fires, wooden panels and exposed brick or stone walls. Per Knight Frank, it hosted everything from weddings, conferences and school visits, to classic car rallies, battle re-enactments, concerts and falconry displays. You better believe that I was to take the keys of Appleby, there would be plenty of falconry and battle re-enactments.

Could you also use it for the Traitors? Absolutely, should the current owners of Ardross Castle decide they don't want Claudia on the lawn anymore, this place would be as good as any.

Combine all of those glorious amenities with a storied history, and surely you have a winner. It boasts a distinguished lineage of owners, including Henry II, Richard the Lionheart, Richard II and Lady Anne Clifford. It can even trace its origins to Roman times. Plus, and this is crucial, it looks and feels like a proper castle.

Appleby Castle is for sale via auction with Knight Frank. For more details and pictures, click here. Falcons not included.

The imposing, Grade II-listed Sigglesthorne Hall —one of the grandest country houses in the East Riding of Yorkshire — has come to the market. Set set in 18 acres of formal gardens, grounds and parkland, it's located on the edge of the ancient village of Sigglesthorne, four miles inland from Hornsea on the Holderness Coast, with its Blue Flag beach. Beverley is nine miles away, while the house is 12 miles from Yorkshire’s maritime city of Hull.

Edward Hartshorne of Blenkin & Co quotes £2.5 million for the recently restored hall, which, in 1892, was described in local archives as ‘a handsome mansion in the Italian style, built by the late Sir William Wright soon after the estate came into his possession. It is embosomed by trees and surrounded by shrubberies and tastefully laid-out gardens and pleasure grounds’.

Sir William was chairman of the Hull Dock Company for many years and, following his death, Sigglesthorne Hall was acquired in 1888 by Major Richard Riall, who had married the daughter of J. S. Harrison of nearby Brandesburton Hall the previous year.

In 1892, Sigglesthorne Hall came back to the market and was acquired by Capt George Bethell, a Royal Navy officer who was MP for Holderness from 1885–1900. He died in 1919, after which the estate was sold again.

Finally, in May 1972, the hall and its neighbouring Home Farm were split up and sold off. Yorkshire houses generally tend to stay in Yorkshire hands, but that changed in 2010, when Sigglesthorne Hall, by then in need of modernisation, was acquired by the current owner, a businessman who had moved north to run a pharmaceutical business in Hull.

According to its Historic England listing, the house, built of light-grey brick with stone dressings and a slate roof behind a parapet, dates from about 1820. It was enlarged and altered in about 1850 by the fashionable Yorkshire architect Cuthbert Brodrick, who practised in Hull from 1845 — other renowned Yorkshire buildings designed by him include the Hull Royal Institution (1852), the Grand Hotel in Scarborough (1867) and Leeds Town Hall (1852–58).

Sigglesthorne’s present owner has had the entire property upgraded, refurbished and embellished with a number of internal fittings taken from nearby Winestead Hall, a large country house built for the Hildyard family in the 1720s.

They sold it in the 1890s to Hull Corporation, who demolished it in 1936 to make way for a hospital; the contents were sold at auction. Among those that found their way to Sigglesthorne Hall are a striking, hand-carved overmantel in the style of Grinling Gibbons and several Adams-style fireplaces.

Sigglesthorne Hall offers some 7,500 sq ft of elegant living-space on three floors, including a vestibule and staircase hall, four fine reception rooms, a study, kitchen/breakfast room, utility and cellars, principal bedroom suite, seven further bedrooms and three further bathrooms.

Additional accommodation is provided in an attached two-storey cottage that forms the southern wing to the main house. Secondary buildings include the original two-storey coach house and a large period outbuilding, which houses the swimming pool.

The gardens, grounds and outbuildings wrap around the house, with seven acres of formal gardens enclosing it on three sides. Sweeping lawns are planted with a variety of specimen trees including oak, chestnut, beech, yew, cedar and a towering leaf-fern beech tree.

A stone-flagged terrace abuts the house and provides for alfresco dining. A charming historic summer house overlooks a tennis court. Within an area of woodland is a large wildlife pond, the whole bounded by mature hedging and fencing. An 11-acre paddock on the southern boundary is scattered with established parkland trees.

Sigglesthorne Hall is for sale via Blenkin & Co — see more details.

Do you remember Yurtle the Turtle? A Dr. Seuss creation who believed himself to be the king of all he could see? Well, he would be absolutely snapping at the prospect of purchasing this property.

Mellguards in Howtown, near Penrith in the northern Lake District, is on the market at £1.75 million with Blenkin & Co and the five-bedroom home’s lofty location means it comes with impressive, uninterrupted views across Ullswater and the Fusedale Valley.

Formerly two 18th-century cottages, the house retains many period features, including exposed beams, solid oak doors and flagstone floors in its 3,600sq ft interior.

It also comes with three bathrooms and ample grounds that feature a long tree-lined drive, giving the property a grand feel. Its private location makes Mellguards ideal for anyone seeking a peaceful home and an elegant stone feature makes the gardens particularly of note.

Inside, the drawing room has dual fireplaces with Honister slate hearths, perfect if you’d appreciate the sight of a crackling fire, whichever way you faced, when taking a break from a good book.

For hosting, two staircases to the first floor provide plenty of space from your guests, should they become tiresome during their stay, and five generous double bedrooms means it would be easy to avoid them completely, by darting into each empty one for an escape, if necessary.

There is also a cast-iron bath in the master bedroom for submerging yourself in once you’d finally seen the back of them, while you surveyed the magnificent views outside your window. Enough to satisfy even the most power-hungry turtle.

Mellguards is for sale with Blenkin & Co for offers in excess of £1.75 million — see more details.

Thanks to the efforts of dedicated owners, a historic Yorkshire house has emerged from the shadows to grace the countryside once more. Edward Hartshorne of local agents Blenkin & Co is handling the landmark sale of Riseborough Hall, near Pickering, North Yorkshire, which stands high above the Vale of Pickering.

It has spectacular views to the south and east over the Yorkshire Wolds, the Howardian Hills and the North York Moors. Mr Hartshorne quotes a guide price of £3 million for the imposing stone-built house, which counts 1,000 years of history. During this time, it has been sold only six times, including to the present custodian, and was delisted in the 1950s following a fire in the Jacobean wing that left the entire building in ruins.

Thankfully, it hasn't stayed that way — of which more later.

Riseborough Hall started life as a hunting lodge in 1204 when its owner, Sir John Bulmer, was granted a coveted hunting licence by King John in recognition of his loyalty to the Crown. The Bulmers owned the lodge and the surrounding parkland for 11 generations until 1536, when the involvement of the then Sir John Bulmer and his wife, Margaret, in the Pilgrimage of Grace — a rebellion of northern Catholics against Henry VIII’s Reformation, the dissolution of the lesser monasteries and other grievances — led to the pair’s arrest and incarceration in the Tower of London. Sir John was hung, drawn and quartered at Tyburn and his wife was burnt at the stake.

The Riseborough estate was seized by the Crown and held briefly by Princess Elizabeth (soon to be Queen of England); she granted it to Sir Arthur Robinson, a London merchant, who, in 1603, built the fortified, four-storey Jacobean east wing that gave the house its Hall status.

His son, Luke, was one of Oliver Cromwell’s MPs, described as ‘a snarling northern tyke’ in Cromwellian ballads, who died in obscurity following the return of the monarchy. After his death, the Rowntree family rented the estate from the Robinsons for two generations.

Riseborough was later sold to a local ‘gentleman’, George Wynn Tweedie, who added the stone mullion bays and inserted larger windows to the Jacobean building. He also linked the two wings with a handsome Victorian stone-built house. By October 1952, however, the entire hall lay in ruins after a mysterious fire that gutted the building, leaving Mr and Mrs Tweedie to claim the insurance and move to a cottage nearby.

In the 1960s, it was left to a much-loved local doctor, Thomas Frank, to save Riseborough Hall from demolition and redevelopment by purchasing the ruins and partially restoring the Victorian wing, thereby reinstating it as a family home. Now, following a remarkable restoration undertaken by the present owner during his 20-year tenure, the hunting lodge of the High Middle Ages has been meticulously reassembled alongside the grand Victorian main house, using only master craftsmen and the finest materials.

The Jacobean wing alone, secured by a steel frame, is in need of complete renovation.

Finished thus far to an impeccable standard, Riseborough Hall, set in more than seven acres of well-wooded gardens and grounds, offers impressive accommodation on three floors, including entrance and reception halls, a library, drawing room, living room, dining hall, kitchen, breakfast room, wine store, utility, five bedrooms and three bathrooms.

Its time-honoured architectural heritage is evoked by a stained-glass window displaying the Bulmer coat of arms; a tiled backdrop to the Aga displays a drawing by the Rowntree family; a magnificent marble fireplace has been salvaged from a castle in Wales; and the dining room features a fully functioning kitchen range, entirely handmade and faithfully replicated from the original.

The house stands in the centre of its grounds and comes with a three-bay garage, splendid staff quarters and a detached four-bedroom cottage. Set amid lawned gardens, it is surrounded by largely level grounds, ideal for the creation of a helipad or tennis court, the agents suggest.

Also of note are an ancient stone well and a formal, well-stocked fishpond at the front of the house. Set behind high stone walls and accessed via a narrow country lane, Riseborough Hall enjoys great privacy and, although it may feel remote, the village of Marton is only 1½ miles away, with Pickering four miles and Malton nine miles distant.

Riseborough Hall is for sale at £3m via Blenkin & Co.

Buckinghamshire — £6.25 million

A six-bedroom home right on the banks of the Thames at Marlow, with tennis court, gym and pavilion.

There's 150ft of river frontage, wiith a beautiful stone-built mooring to make it simple to get out onto the water.

For sale with Knight Frank. See more pictures and details for this property.

Northamptonshire — £2.75 million

A 1920s house created to look like a 17th century farmhouse, created using salvaged materials from older dwellings on the site, set in a village near the F1 circuit at Silverstone.

It's been updated in recent years too, becoming a fine mix of old and new: leaded windows and beamed ceilings meet a cinema room, games room, gym and a glorious outdoor pool.

For sale with Michael Graham. See more pictures and details for this property.

Oxfordshire — £5.45 million

An 18th-century farmhouse near Henley-on-Thames, with 6,000sq ft of space and five bedrooms.

The place is as immaculate at is beautiful, having been completely refurbished, rewired, re-plumbed and fitted with underfloor heating and ground source heat pumps.

For sale with Pereds. See more pictures and details for this property.

East Sussex — £5.5 million

201 acres of East Sussex, with a superb eight-bedroom house at the heart, located within easy reach of the main A21 between Tunbridge Wells and Hastings.

The views are magnificent, and modern additions to this early 20th century house — including the swish kitchen-diner — have only enhanced the appeal.

For sale with Strutt & Parker. See more pictures and details for this property.

Cumbria — £1.75 million

The views of the Fusedale Valley and Ullswater are simply incredible at this five-bedroom house not far from Penrith.

The house itself might be secondary to the location, but it's a fine, five-bedroom home with plenty of character — and there's even high-speed broadband here to make it an ideal Working From Lake District home.

For sale with Blenkin & Co. See more pictures and details for this property.

Leicestershire — £1.15 million

In the curiously-named village of Thorpe Arnold, this five-bedroom detached country house is charming.

Recently refurbished, it's a home that mixes clean, modern look with period architecture and plenty of space — not least in the form of the music room, which houses a grand piano.

For sale with Bentons. See more pictures and details for this property.

Devon — £695,000

A picture-perfect thatched cottage in a wonderfully secluded rural spot, at the price of a flat in south-west London. This could very well be the one you've been waiting for.

For sale with Stags. See more pictures and details for this property

It feels like only yesterday (mainly because it was yesterday) that we were musing about great country houses, and how those which have escaped listed building status offer so much more flexibility for owners to update, improve and refresh without worrying about a long list of regulations.

So, naturally, the Universe came along today and presented before us a house which is listed, Grade II* at that, and which has still had everything you could ever want by way of updating, improvement and, er, refreshment. That house is Patrick Brompton Hall, in one of the prettiest parts of North Yorkshire, and it's for sale at £2.5 million.

That sum buys a 10-bedroom home which is a blend of charming, traditional and sumptuous — something all the more remarkable when you consider that it's been in the same family since 1958. Many such estates that have been passed down can get a little tired (you simply stop seeing crumbling plaster and tarnished walls when you've grown up with them), but plenty of work has been done to keep this superb Queen Anne country house in fine condition.

For evidence of that you need look no further than the entrance hall, painted in a semi-glossy black with white highlights on the woodwork that makes for a wonderfully dramatic space.

The garden room, with it's gorgeous curved bay opening out onto a terrace, is another showstopping space, a huge, bright space on a scale that suggests all sorts of uses. The dining room is also large, swallowing a ten-seater table easily.

Some of the spaces present a far more traditional look. The kitchen, with its fire engine red Aga, might do with a little updating, for example, but it's more up to date than you might think: the Aga runs off LPG, while the house is heated by a biomass boiler.

The same could be said of the snug, a traditional room currently filled with quirkily mismatched furniture and rugs. It's laid out as a cosy, fun room for conversation where you'd never have to worry about dogs on the sofa or the odd glass of wine getting spilt, but it's been updated with a club fender and log burner.

The 10 bedrooms are split between the first and second floors, accessed via a landing with dark walls and golden carpet that plays off the look and feel of the hallway below.

There's far more to the place as well, from the swimming pool, pavilion (used as a home office) and greenhouse, to a wine cellar, stable block and four cottages which have since 2014 been used as holiday lets.

There's one more thing to mention about Patrick Brompton Hall: the rather strange name. You've probably assumed (as we had) that the hall must have been named after some local figure, so it was something of a surprise to hear that it's actually the name of the local village: Patrick Brompton.

The origins of this strange moniker are a little murky, and pre-date the Domesday Book, but the village website takes a stab at explaining how the common Anglo Saxon place name Brompton had the name of the patron saint of the local church added, to distinguish it from the other Bromptons around Yorkshire. It's a nice touch, though: like cats called Keith or dogs called Susan, there should be more people's names for towns.

Patrick Brompton Hall is for sale via Savills at £2.5 million — see more details.

Mathematician, clergyman, academic, trailblazing photographer… Charles Dodgson was a man of many parts. Yet for all he did in his life, he’d have long since been forgotten by history were it not for a handful of children’s books he wrote in the second half of the 19^th century under one of the most famous pen names in literary history: Lewis Carroll.

Dodgson — the fourth in a long line of Charles Dodgsons — was a lecturer in mathematics and an ordained deacon at Oxford University, and as such wrote his non-academic works under the pseudonym. Initially these pieces amounted to a few poems, but in 1865 he published Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, arguably the most famous children’s book of all time.

And so, as we all love a home with a literary connection, the appearance of one of the writer's childhood homes on the market is exciting — particularly as it's a place with dashes of flair and imagination that seem as if they could have come from a Lewis Carroll book.

The Old Hall — which is for sale at £1.6 million via Savills — sits almost in the shadow of Ripon Cathedral, where Carroll's father, Charles Dodgson Sr, was a cannon for several years from 1852. It was the official residence that went with the role between 1841 and 1858, according to the agents.

Few clergymen have homes so grand these days. This is an exquisite, Grade II*-listed home with six bedrooms, five reception rooms and four bathrooms, and it's a gem of early Georgian architecture, with the highlight being the magnificent curving staircase that dates to 1738.

Not all of the house is so old, but much of it is full of unusual touches which will make a visitor declare curiouser and curiouser. An archway from sitting room through to the kitchen, for example, has been partially filled in as a miniature library, with a bust placed prominently overhead.

The dining room, meanwhile, has a trompe l'oeil ceiling that's a recreation of one of the most famous paintings ever created: the detail of God and Adam touching fingers the adorns the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. The eagle-eyed will note that over the fireplace is a colourised version of one of Sir John Teniel's iconic illustrations for the earliest editions of Alice in Wonderland.

The unusual, almost disconcerting details continue upstairs, with the ceiling on the upstairs landing being a gilt-covered plasterwork ceiling featuring the Judgement of Paris, the moment from classical mythology which saw the young prince choose the most beautiful of the goddesses Hera, Athena and Aphrodite.

To the side, an ornate carved doorway leading through to a room whose walls are adorned with pine wainscotting, and whose floor features a chessboard rug — ideal for any budding Queen of Hearts to demand her subjects play an impromptu game.

Curiouser and curiouser indeed, and it gets all the more so as you enter a bathroom with a corner mirror that wildly distorts and reflects those who use the bath, or the shower that sits above it.

None of this gets in the way of what is a beautiful and immaculately presented family home; the touches of whimsy — many of which are original, as featured in the house's listing document — seem to offer some insights in to the more fantastical elements of his later writings.

That said, it is debatable how much time Lewis Carroll would ever have spent living in this house: he was a 20-year-old undergraduate at Oxford at the time his father became cannon at Ripon, and after graduating in 1854 was based at Christ Church college for the rest of his life.

On the other hand, the Ripon Museum's website note that the misericords that are one of the building's most famous features include 'a carved griffin chasing a rabbit down a hole'.

It's not hard to imagine that just a few years later, the young academic drew upon those images of Ripon when spinning tales for the daughter of his friend Henry Liddell. The daughter's name? Alice, of course.

The Old Hall in Ripon is for sale via Savills at £1.6 million — see more details and pictures.

Cheshire has long been one of the wealthiest counties in England, and there are no signs of an exodus of money. Thus, encourage by a recent flurry of sales at the upper end of the Cheshire country-house market, Charlie Kannreuther of Savills in Chester seeks ‘offers over £8 million’ for Georgian, Grade II*-listed Stretton Hall.

The house is located in the hamlet of Stretton, 2½ miles from Malpas, which is a greatly sought-after part of south Cheshire, bounded by the Chester-Whitchurch road to the east, the Wrexham-Nantwich road to the north, the River Dee to the west and the county border with Shropshire to the south.

‘Today’s active buyers in Cheshire tend to be people who have already made their money and are looking for outstanding houses that reflect the lifestyle they enjoy,’ Mr Kannreuther says.

‘Georgian houses are relatively rare in Cheshire and Stretton Hall is one of the finest in south Cheshire, a quintessential English country house, which stands prominently in the landscape with dramatic westerly views to the Welsh Hills,’ he adds.

Set in some 48 acres of gardens, woodland and paddocks, Stretton Hall stands on high ground at the end of a straight lime avenue and offers more than 11,000sq ft of ‘exceptional’ accommodation, including eight reception rooms, five bedroom suites and three further bedrooms and bathrooms.

Highlights include the elegant reception hall with its screen of scagliola columns; the main drawing room linked to the dining room by substantial double doors; the pink drawing room with its dramatic Venetian window; and the delightful oak-floored morning room.

The impressive family kitchen/diner has Chalon kitchen units, beyond which is a spectacular back hall with rows of stone columns, a vaulted ceiling and double doors leading to a large garden room.

A grand mahogany staircase leads to the upstairs bedrooms. It's really quite something, and the agent's claim in the listing — calling this 'one of the finest houses in Cheshire' — is hard to deny.

Secondary accommodation is provided in the converted coach house, the two-bedroom Stables Flat and the two-bedroom Stretton Hall Cottage, which is currently let on an Assured Shorthold Tenancy.

Mature gardens, split into garden rooms, and grounds have evolved over the generations and provide a wonderful backdrop. They include various Italian and terrace gardens, areas of topiary, a large walled garden, a pond and a tennis court.

The equestrian facilities are second to none, with a series of railed paddocks with field shelters and an all-weather outdoor school. The stabling isn't just for horses: as well as two newer stabling buildings, it incorporates the original 17th-century stable block which has been extended to house a helicopter.

According to an article in Cheshire Life in April 1950, Stretton was owned by the Mainwarings of Ightfield, Shropshire, in the early 16th century, when most of the estate was acquired from Sir George Mainwaring and his wife, Anne, by Cheshire landowners Richard Wright, Arthur Starkey and Thomas Barnston.

The estate was later divided, with most of the land passing to the Leche family of Carden, with Wright retaining the Stretton estate. In the early 18th century, the Revd Thomas Leche, rector of Tilston, acquired Stretton by marrying the heiress Catherine Wright. Their son, John, died childless, leaving Stretton to his cousin, Maj John Leche, a younger brother of William Leche of Carden. When he, too, died childless in 1815, the land passed to his nephew, William’s son John, thereby uniting the neighbouring estates.

In his book Cheshire Country Houses (1995), the present Stretton Hall is described by the architect and architectural historian Peter De Figueiredo as ‘a chaste symmetrical Georgian brick house erected in 1763 for John Leche, son of the rector of Tilston. It has a central block of two storeys over a basement and two single storey wings. There is a touch of grandeur in the entrance hall with its screen of scagliola columns but the fine neo-Classical fireplace is a later replacement’.

Little is known of the previous building, beyond a description of ‘a respectable mansion situated in well wooded grounds’. Since the stabling of an earlier 17th-century building is still standing today and is of Tudor workmanship, the present hall must be at least the third building on the site, given that references exist of a manor there long before the Tudor era. The Georgian building may be roughly dated both by the style of construction and by a Leche family letter of 1765, which mentions ‘a fine new mansion nearing completion at Stretton’.

Following John Leche’s death, Stretton became a secondary home on the Carden estate. In 1912, the Jacobean Carden Hall was destroyed by fire, after which the then Sir John Leche moved to Stretton Hall and created the gardens with their radiating avenues and yew hedges.

Stretton Hall is for sale via Savills at £8 million — see more details.

Mr Kannreuther is also handling the sale of Grade II-listed Stretton Old Hall in Tilston Road, Stretton, a gentrified former farmhouse that, according to its listing, dates from the late 17th century. Built of brown brick under a grey slate roof with a two-storey 17th-century porch and a 1½-storey wing of two windows, it was re-fronted in the early 19th century.

He quotes a guide price of £2.965m for what is now a beautifully renovated main house with a garden cottage, extensive outbuildings set in a little under eight acres of grassland and Mediterranean-style gardens created by the owners from a near-blank canvas some 12 years ago.

Featured on Gardeners World in 2018, the owners won Channel 4’s Garden of the Year competition in 2022. The main house offers four bright and cheerful reception rooms, a study, six bedrooms and four bathrooms.

Stretton Old Hall is for sale via Savills — see more pictures and details.

In north Cheshire, there are more millionaires to the acre than anywhere else in the UK, bar London, with no sign of a major exodus. On the contrary, reveals Crispin Harris of Jackson-Stops in fashionable Alderley Edge, near Wilmslow, who has seen a recent surge in demand for houses valued at £5m-plus.

Jackson-Stops are joint agent with Knutsford-based Stuart Rushton & Co in the sale of landmark, Grade II*-listed Whirley Hall in Whirley Lane, Over Alderley, for which offers ‘in excess of £10m’ are sought.

Whirley Hall stands in five acres of mature landscaped gardens, surrounded by two cottages, numerous outbuildings and a further 56 acres of manicured parkland. The house was renovated, reinvented and extended between 2012 and 2014 by the current owners, with all brickwork, windows and fine plasterwork meticulously restored, a new brick-built kitchen/dayroom built and a timber orangery/breakfast room added in 2020.

There's also a swimming pool that looks as if it's been borrowed from a top-end hotel.

The pool is part of a transformative addition: the contemporary, glass-walled leisure wing, which as well as the 10m heated pool houses a spa, steam room, gym and changing room. It was designed to blend with the topography of its rural surroundings.

A stone terrace with a clipped box parterre connects the old with the new part of the house.

The pristine, 9,016sq ft main house offers luxurious accommodation on four floors, including seven reception rooms: front and rear entrance halls, kitchen/family room, library, dining room, drawing room and study.

There are plenty of places to lay your head, too: eight bedrooms and nine bathrooms, plus guest and staff cottages if you've a need for more sleeping space.

Outbuildings include covered parking for four cars and a steel-frame agricultural barn. The beautifully landscaped gardens feature topiary, a Grade II-listed obelisk, an all-weather tennis court, an orchard and an enchanting woodland walk.

According to its Historic England listing, Whirley Hall, built of Flemish bond orange brick with buff-sandstone dressings under a Kerridge stone-slate roof, dates from about 1670 and was an addition to an earlier timber-frame manor that was later demolished.

The Hall was extended and altered in the 18th century and again in the 1950s, when the single-storey wings were added to either side. It has been home to some of Cheshire’s leading industrialists, among them the Birtles, Hibberts, Lord Stanley of Alderley and Sir William Mather.

Whirley Hall is for sale at £10 million — see more details and pictures.

The idea of living underground has not traditionally been an attractive one. However, a cursory glance at the frontpage of a newspaper these days has certainly made it seem more appealing than it used to be. Not only may it provide some shelter from the aggressive machinations of various worldwide dictators, but living in a hole in the ground is also probably quite energy efficient.

I had always assumed living underground would involve some kind of nuclear missile silo, much like the Fallout videogames or whatever it is the American prepping community seem to be up to. I had not imagined a place like Underhill near Holmfirth, because it is not a nuclear-missile silo but rather a very lovely family home, and also because I didn’t think we did that kind of thing in the UK. But then again we are a nation of eccentrics, so I should have known better.

Underhill is for sale with Fine and Country for offers in the region of £1.35 million. It is underground, for the most part, and it offers four bedrooms, three bathrooms and three reception rooms. There is a swimming pool right in the middle of it, which is quite cool, but I imagine also a bit tricky if you have young kids. I don’t have young kids, so I don’t care.

Underhill is the work of ‘visionary architect’ Arthur Quarmby, who first conceived of the idea in 1969 and completed it in 1975. It is Britain’s first modern earth-sheltered home and is described by agents as a ‘masterclass in geotecture’. Blending seamlessly with the surrounding Peak District landscape, it is without a doubt one of the more unusual homes I have seen in nine years of working at Country Life, and I’ve seen one that looks like a pirate ship.

The swimming pool is the focal point of the home, occupying as it does the main central living space. Surrounding it is a living area, entrance hall, music room, ‘the cave’, and the four bedrooms are spun off in appendages. In total, the property offers 3,929sq ft of living space in total. From the pictures, it seems well lit, no doubt as a result of the many skylights throughout and the large sliding glass doors that face south-east.

The house is in remarkably great condition, with plenty of modern conveniences and fittings throughout. It feels odd to suggest that an underground home from the 1970s is ‘turnkey’, but here we are.

Outside, the gardens of Underhill extend to an acre in total, and I suppose includes the roof of the actual house. Large lawned areas (such as the roof) are supplemented by a rose garden, vegetable patch, shepherds hut and a paddock. There is also a double garage with a studio.

Underhill is for sale with Fine & Country for £1.35 million. For more information and pictures, click here

Guernsey — £20,000,000

This newly-built mansion in a prime spot in Guernsey has seven acres, 17,000sq ft and its own private lake.

Not only is it an extraordinary property, it's one of the best locations on the island, with a wonderful beach, a superb golf course and the charming open spaces of L'Ancresse Common pretty much on the doorstep.

For sale with Savills. See more pictures and details for this property.

Hampshire — £5,750,000

An 11,500sq ft house with magnificent views, full of character — particularly with the stained glass cupola above the sweeping staircase. Yet it's deceptively new: just 30 years old, and is for sale for the first time.

The main house is in a lot with 38 acres of land, but a further 80 or so acres are available as a separate lot.

For sale with Knight Frank. See more pictures and details for this property.

Northamptonshire — £900,000

A huge opportunity at this gorgeous 18th century farmhouse with a wonderful rural location, but in need of updating inside.

For sale with Michael Graham. See more pictures and details for this property.

Dorset — £3,000,000

In the hills above Lyme Regis, a wonderfully-renovated thatched house set in charming grounds.

There are five bedrooms, a wine cellar and a separate coach house among the many selling points.

For sale with Strutt & Parker. See more pictures and details for this property.

East Riding of Yorkshire — £2,500,000

One of the most outstanding country houses in East Yorkshire with eight bedrooms, coach House, swimming pool, tennis court and immaculate gardens.

For sale with Blenkin & Co. See more pictures and details for this property.

West Sussex — £2,000,000

A substantial six-bedroom property with open-plan living room and kitchen, balcony, large gardens, summerhouse and parking for several cars.

For sale with Charles Wycherlye. See more pictures and details for this property.

Gloucestershire — £1,900,000

An elegant Cotswolds mill house, beautifully presented with a two-bedroom cottage, situated in the pretty hamlet of The Vatch.

For sale with Knight Frank. See more pictures and details for this property.

East Sussex — £1,650,000

A handsome property with traditional farmhouse style façade and modern features including cinema room and climate-controlled wine cellar.

For sale with Hobbs Parker. See more pictures and details for this property.

Devon — £1,650,000

An 18th-century farmhouse set in the Blackdown Hills, offering rare seclusion and easy access to the Jurassic Coast, Exeter and Taunton.

For sale with Stags. See more pictures and details for this property.

Cornwall — £1,595,000

A character coastal five-bedroom luxury home with gardens and outbuildings, close to Watergate Bay. Currently a successful holiday let.

For sale with ChartsEdge. See more pictures and details for this property.

Kent — £1,500,000

A traditional, Grade II-listed five-bedroom country house including period features, annexe and double cart barn with planning permission to convert, set in just under an acre of grounds.

For sale with Fine & Country. See more pictures and details for this property.

Cumbria — £850,000

Quirky, charming and offering an idyllic country life: ride in the morning, hit the beach in the afternoon, then enjoy sundowners on the deck.

For sale with EXP UK. See more pictures and details for this property.

East Sussex — £795,000

A beautifully presented detached four-bedroom home with gated entrance, large driveway, double garage and mature gardens of 0.3 acres.

For sale with Wood & Pilcher. See more pictures and details for this property.

Kent — £700,000

Dating back to the 16th century, this Grade II listed period four-bedroom home blends its rich heritage with contemporary comforts.

For sale with Sandersons. See more pictures and details for this property.

Suffolk — £625,000

A picturesque period cottage with new kitchen and landscaped gardens, in a tucked away village setting close to Snape and the Suffolk Heritage Coast.

For sale with Jackson Stops. See more pictures and details for this property.

Highland — £448,000

A delightful category B-listed detached dwelling with a walled garden, located in a conservation village on the Black Isle.

For sale with Galbraith. See more pictures and details for this property.

Derbyshire — £1,750,000

An exceptional country residence with a beautifully presented four-bedroom detached farmhouse, annexes, equestrian facilities and 10.9 acres.

For sale with Bennett Samways. See more pictures and details for this property.

Surrey — £900,000

A well-presented three-bedroom character cottage with detached studio annexe, car port and large garden, located in the centre of the village.

For sale with Terra Cotta. See more pictures and details for this property.

Derbyshire — £875,000

A four-bedroom home with detached garden room, large workshop and ample parking set in approx. 3.8 acres of gardens, a paddock and wooded area.

For sale with John German. See more pictures and details for this property.

County Durham is one of the very nicest places to be in England, as I found out on a recent visit, and it would be, in my eyes, a rather lovely place to live. If you also fancy living in Co Durham, then perhaps look no further than Blagraves, the oldest residence in Barnard Castle, which is with Inigo for £485,000.

The second oldest building in the town, Blagraves is a Grade I-listed four-bedroom home with a commercial space on its ground floor that used to serve as an antiques shop, café and gallery. The riverside cottage right by the Tees comes complete with a charming courtyard garden, a spacious cellar that used to be a brewery and have a well, and minstrel figures which were added in the 20th century to the building’s front.

Constructed at some point before 1482, it was previously owned by Richard III, before it became the Boar’s Head Inn where Oliver Cromwell paid a visit in the 17th century — and perhaps got drunk on mead, or the heady glow of concocting grand plans of civil unrest. For this it gained a blue plaque. In 1725 it was bought by a fishmonger called William Tomlinson for £125 and one shilling — a lot shy of what it will sell for today. He was responsible for adding plenty of 17th- and 18th-century features. During the latter era, the attic of the house was used as a clandestine meeting point for the followers of the leader of the Methodist movement, John Wesley. At the risk of sounding a bit like the latest CMAT song, it went on to be a ropemaker's, baker's and shoemaker's. Curiously, post Second World War, it became a museum with the intriguing title of ‘House of Mystery’.

Lying in the town's antiques district, Blagrave not only contains history in itself, but is surrounded by it. Having been restored in line with English Heritage guidance after being given Grade-I listed status in the 50s, it contains a variety of heritage features, including: 17th-century bay windows, an 18th-century staircase and period fireplaces.

On one of the county’s characteristically sloping streets, I picture Blagrave as an artist’s studio, with accommodation upstairs. With planning approval to create a studio annexe pending, I have wistful fantasies of a painter working away in the annexe while a potter’s workshop is in full swing below, wonky clay vases adorning the site where Cromwell once sipped from a tankard and dreamt of glorious, bloody revolution.

Blagrave is on the market with Inigo, more information can be found on their website.

Just the other day in the office we were musing (and writing) about how a beautiful staircase adds to much to the charm of a house. So, naturally, almost every property I've looked at in the last few days seems to have an incredible staircase at its heart.

You've probably had the same phenomenon. Buy a seemingly obscure car, and then you start seeing them everywhere, following you down the A303 or pulling out in front of you on side roads and so on. Or you get a new coat, and then it seems that every third person on the street seems to have the exact same one.

It's not just you: psychologists have studied this and call it the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon, or the 'frequency illusion'. It happens all the times with cars, clothes, food... and, if you work at Country Life, grand sweeping staircases in country houses.

All of which is a roundabout way of saying how much we love the stairs at Burn Hall, in Durham, which is on the market at £2.75 million via Anderson & Garland.

The staircase is the centrepiece of a wonderfully grand hallway in a house designed in 1821 by the beautifully-named Ignatius Bonomi. The Durham-based architect — son of an Italian architect, Joseph Bonomi, who'd moved to England as a young man — created some of the most striking buildings in the north-east, including Lambton Castle.

While Lambton was conceived as a whimsical 19th century take on the Norman castle, Burn Hall is squarely a classic country house, albeit with a slightly unusual look thanks to the striped stone cladding — something which probably shows Bonomi's continental influences.

The overall effect is very striking indeed, and Burn Hall has a reputation as one of the finest country houses in the north-east of England. The agent has even found a quote from Queen Victoria, apparently, who is reputed to have called it 'the finest-looking estate between the Humber and the Tweed'. Quite the endorsement.

As it stands today, Burn Hall looks every inch the country residence that it was for the Salvin family, who originally commissioned it: period furniture, art and decoration abound throughout:

That said, there are plenty of more modern touches too, especially in the bathrooms and the kitchen, which have a fine blend of old and new — all down to the present owners, who have spent 10 years lavishing love and attention on the house to return it to its historic appearance.

The work that has gone on must have been enormously extensive, incidentally, because for most of the 20th century Burn Hall was actually a seminary set up by the Saint Joseph’s Missionary Society of Mill Hill. We can't imagine there were quite so many beautiful paintings, or quite so much charming period furniture, when the place was peopled by trainee priests.

We do like to imagine, however, that those young Men of God did at least have the exquisite snooker room to give them some time off from contemplating a life of religious service.

As well as the main house, the Burn Hall Estate also includes over 17 acres, a quadruple garage, lawns, woodland, parkland and even fishing rights on the River Browney. There is plenty more nearby, too: Durham city centre and station are both about four miles away.

Burn Hall Estate is for sale at £2.75 million — see more pictures and details.

Northamptonshire — £2,000,000

A classic Georgian house hewn from coursed limestone, with simply delightful formal gardens which wrap around house.

For sale with Michael Graham. See more pictures and details for this property.

Argyll & Bute — £1,475,000

A house with the ultimate dining room backdrop? Breathtaking views at this four-bedroom Highland lodge in Glen Creran.

For sale with Knight Frank. See more pictures and details for this property.

Tyne and Wear — £20,000,000

The finest estate in Newcastle? Without doubt: this incredible home in six acres has 12 bedrooms, exquisite period detail and is truly something to behold.

For sale with Sanderson Young. See more pictures and details for this property.

Wiltshire — £2,750,000

This 11-bedroom house with separate coach house and lodge cottage is a gorgeous home with views across to the Bowood Estate.

For sale with Strutt & Parker. See more pictures and details for this property.

Gloucestershire — £2,500,000

An exceptional Grade II-listed country home with a magnificent tree lined drive and extensive grounds, located just outside Cirencester.

For sale with Knight Frank. See more pictures and details for this property.

North Yorkshire — £1,750,000

Superb Georgian house with outstanding south-facing landscaped gardens, privately situated in one of the region’s finest villages.

For sale with Blenkin & Co. See more pictures and details for this property.

Surrey — £1,650,000

A striking, spacious and immaculately presented four bedroom house, located a short walk to a village near Guildford.

For sale with Terra Cotta. See more pictures and details for this property.

Kent — £1,250,000

Charming period barn conversion with beautiful interior, galleried dining hall and separate annexe, in delightful gardens, orchard and woodland.

For sale with Hobbs Parker. See more pictures and details for this property.

East Sussex — £1,200,000

A lovely garden wraps around this four-bedroom, four-bedroom home near Crowborough.

For sale with Wood & Pilcher. See more pictures and details for this property.

Leicestershire — £1,150,000

An unusual Grade II-listed traditional detached house, with three bedrooms and a paddock to the rear.

For sale with Bentons. See more pictures and details for this property.

Devon — £1,125,000

A grand and impressive six-bedroom Victorian villa with plenty of character and period features. It comes with a self-contained annexe — ideal for multi-generational living.

For sale with Charts Edge. See more pictures and details for this property.

East Sussex — £1,100,000

A detached Grade II-listed country house with four bedrooms, exceptional views, double driveway, garage and large mature garden.

For sale with Charles Wycherley. See more pictures and details for this property.

Gloucestershire — £950,000

A detached Cotswold stone period house with a wealth of period features and countryside views, located in a quaint village setting.

For sale with Hayman Joyce. See more pictures and details for this property.

Devon — £760,000

A gorgeous period house with a couple of acres of mature gardens and grounds, in a peaceful valley location.

For sale with Stags. See more pictures and details for this property.

Somerset — £670,000

A smart and excellently refurbished period property with detached studio/gym, garage and workshop, set within half an acre of gardens.

For sale with Red Deer Country. See more pictures and details for this property.

Somerset — £550,000

A mini-estate of an acre, with a Grade II-listed former coach house at its heart.

For sale with Sandersons. See more pictures and details for this property.

North Yorkshire — £385,000

An attractive stone-built cottage in the Yorkshire Dales, beautifully and sympathetically presented throughout.

For sale with GSC Grays. See more pictures and details for this property.

Cumbria — £340,000

A delightful three-bedroom characterful cottage in the heart of the beautiful village of Dent within the Yorkshire Dales.

For sale with Cobble Country. See more pictures and details for this property..

For sale for the first time in more than 100 years, at a guide price of £25 million through the Richmond office of land and rural property agents GSC Grays and Malton-based Rounthwaite & Woodhead, the historic, 1,103-acre Kirkham estate, some six miles from Malton and 14 miles from York, encapsulates the very best that North Yorkshire has to offer.

Located at the eastern edge of the Howardian Hills, a richly varied National Landscape of Jurassic limestone, high-grade farmland and wooded undulating countryside between the Yorkshire Wolds, the North York Moors and the Vale of York, the estate is largely bounded by the majestic River Derwent, which cuts through the deep winding valley of the Kirkham Gorge.

It was here, on the banks of the Derwent, that Walter Espec, lord of the manor of Helmsley, founded the Augustinian Kirkham Priory in 1122. At the Dissolution, Kirkham Priory was surrendered to the Crown and the site sold to a courtier, Henry Knevett. Stone from the ruins was reputedly used for the construction of nearby Howsham Hall in the early 1600s.

Rediscovery of the priory began in the 19th century, when Sir William St John Hope, a leading authority on medieval monasticism, excavated the east end of the church, by which time the ruins were overgrown with ivy and the cloister laid out as a tennis court.

After the First World War, custody of the ruins was transferred to the Office of Works, a forerunner of English Heritage. During the Second World War, Kirkham Priory was used by the military in training for the D-Day landings. Today, the picturesque abbey ruins, including the spectacular late-medieval gateway, listed Grade I, are still part of the Kirkham estate, although managed by English Heritage, which coordinates public access and is responsible for the maintenance, insurance and security of the site.

In the mid 1920s, Edward Allen Brotherton, 1st and last Baron Brotherton, a pioneering industrialist who developed his Wakefield-based company into one of the largest private chemical companies in the country, bought the Kirkham estate and moved to Kirkham Hall, a striking Italianate house built for the Willoughby family in 1838–39 by Yorkshire architect John Harper. Sir Edward died at the hall in October 1930, leaving the business and the Kirkham estate to his nephew, Charles Frederick Ratcliffe, who changed his name to Ratcliffe-Brotherton the following year.

In 1938, Ratcliffe-Brotherton married Lurline Elliot-Pyle. A year later, their daughter, Anne, was born, followed by their son, David, in 1941. Life at Kirkham revolved around hunting and racing and, after the war, Lurline Brotherton teamed up with trainer Bobby Renton to become one of the most successful owners of her era. Her ambition was to win the Grand National, which she did in 1950 when her horse, Freebooter, an Aintree specialist, carried 11st 11lb to victory, with Monaveen, jointly owned by the then Queen and Princess Elizabeth, finishing third. Brotherton was leading jumps owner that season.

She died in 1994, leaving the Kirkham estate to her daughter, Anne Henson. Henson, who died in October 2023, loved the family estate, where she spent the happiest years of her life, regularly entertaining her many friends to parties, poker and bridge nights at Kirkham Hall.

According to selling agent John Coleman, it was Mrs Henson’s wish that the estate, which includes a model farming operation of some 845 acres, more than 215 acres of managed woodland, 11 houses and cottages and three miles of single-bank fishing on the Derwent, be sold as a whole, because, he says, ‘she wanted someone who could afford to live there and love it as she did’.

The focal point of the estate is Grade II-listed Kirkham Hall, which faces south-west and looks down over meadows and fishponds to the river in the valley below. The house retains much of its original interior, including an elegant stone staircase and galleried landing, ornate fireplaces, wide corridors and generous proportions throughout.

Approached along a gravel drive lined with copper beech trees, the entrance leads to a spectacular reception hall, lit by a large half-window. The house offers more than 13,900sq ft of accommodation on three floors, with, on the ground floor, four fine reception rooms, a kitchen, breakfast room, cellar, butler’s pantry and office. Four main first-floor bedrooms and four bathrooms are positioned at each corner of the house, whereas the second floor, currently used for storage, could be converted to further guest or children’s bedrooms.

Former staff quarters linked to a large lower-ground floor offer considerable scope for change and a separate one-bedroom apartment at the back of the house could be easily incorporated into the main building, the agents suggest.

The Kirkham Estate is for sale with GSC Grays and Rounthwaite & Woodhead for £25 million.

Surrounded by rolling hills, lush green fields and winding rivers, the pretty village of Womersley, with its exquisite, 12th-century church of St Martin, provides a timeless setting for illustrious, Grade II*-listed Womersley Hall, which stands in 38 acres of historic gardens, parkland and woodland at the southern tip of North Yorkshire, six miles from Pontefract and 13 miles from Doncaster.

Once part of the 4,688-acre Womersley Park estate, the Hall dates from 1680, when Tobiah Harvey, a London barrister, purchased the manor and began to build the house that would become the centre of a grand family estate.

In the 18th century, three generations of Harveys significantly shaped Womersley Hall and its parkland. In the 1760s, Tobiah’s grandson, Stanhope Harvey, added a southern wing, diverted the medieval village’s main street to enhance the estate’s privacy and transformed the surrounding area into a designed landscape.

In 1797, Frances Harvey married the 3rd Baron Hawke, a descendant of Admiral Sir Edward Hawke, who defeated the French navy at the Battle of Quiberon Bay in 1759. The 3rd Baron invested heavily in the estate, enclosing Womersley Common and planting the Belt Plantation. However, financial mismanagement, including failed canal and tramway ventures, led to the auctioning of the hall’s contents to settle debts by 1820.

The 4th Baron Hawke restored stability to the estate, but his untimely death in 1869 left his teenage daughter, Frances Cassandra Harvey Hawke, as the estate’s heir. Unable to inherit the title, she nevertheless managed the estate effectively, modernising the property and supporting the local community during and after the First World War. Her death in 1921 marked the end of the Harvey Hawke era at Womersley Hall. Her grandson, Michael, 6th Earl of Rosse, inherited the estate, but the cost of maintaining such a large country house eventually proved too great a burden for the family to bear.

The 15,900sq ft house was in a parlous state of disrepair when the present owners, Stuart and Ruth Evison, bought Womersley Hall some 20 years ago and embarked on a meticulous, 10-year renovation of the house, its courtyard of outbuildings, walled gardens and parkland.

Externally, the hall’s symmetrical Georgian architecture makes a bold and elegant statement and, inside, the house is a celebration of immaculate craftsmanship, with every original feature lovingly preserved. Now, following the owners’ decision to downsize, this pristine Georgian gem is for sale through Annabel Blackett of Strutt & Parker’s country department at a guide price of £5m.

The main house offers impressive accommodation on two main floors, including a grand reception hall/dining room; a magnificent drawing room with a panelled ceiling adorned with ornate cornices and friezes; a tranquil morning room with a grand bay window; a breathtaking staircase hall with a spectacular, 17th-century stained glass window; a library with original bookcases believed to be the work of Robert Adam; plus a billiard room, two kitchens, four en-suite bedrooms, six further bedrooms and three bath/shower rooms.

Two self-contained apartments, three cottages, the Fig & Olive coffee shop and various estate lettings provide a useful annual rent-roll of about £100,000.

Womersley Hall is for sale for £5 million with Strutt & Parker. For more information and pictures, click here.

The many industrialists of the north had many flaws, but they did have a habit of building very nice houses in the late Victorian and early Edwardian eras. I am not sure what I would do with that much money, but it probably wouldn’t be ‘build a big house in the Peak National Park’. I’ve seen enough Grand Designs to know how stressful that is.

I might, however, buy a ‘big house in the Peak National Park’ that someone else has already built, such as Bents House. It’s for sale with Carter Jonas for £2.75 million. It has six bedrooms, five bathrooms and is very large. It comes with three acres of gardens and grounds.

athrooms and is very large. It comes with three acres of gardens and grounds.

Back to the industrialists. Bents House was built by the civil engineer Charles Boot in 1930. Charles was the son of Henry Boot, who made his fortunes in construction. After building Bents House, Charles purchased somewhere called Heatherden Hall in 1934, which he then decided would be better used as a film studio. You may know it now as Pinewood Studios.

We have much to thank Charles for, not least Bents House, which was built as lavishly as the style of the day could take — this really is a monument to Edwardian excess. But it's tied to the history and landscape of the area as well: it's thought that much of the local stone used in construction was sourced from Derwent Hall when the latter was demolished to make way for the Ladybower Dam.

Glorious architectural details abound, notably the stone mullioned windows, lead gutters and fall pipes, and original stone fireplaces. The oak panelling was taken from Pinewood Studios and HMS Mauretania, and let us pause and reflect on the glory of the plasterwork in the kitchen.

The main property is set over three floors and features a vast living/kitchen/dining room, an orangery, another dining room, drawing room, sitting room and another living room. There’s also a wine cellar.

Within the three acres, which includes beautifully manicured and landscaped gardens that are only improved by the surrounding Peaks landscape, you will find an annexe that features two further bedrooms and a gym.

A look at the photographs show that this is a house of a grand scale, befitting the era in which it was built, but with plenty of modern touches that make life comfortable. Well done Mr Boot.

Bents House is for sale with Carter Jonas for £2.75 million. For more information and pictures, click here

When looking at houses online, which is a significant part of my day, I have to ask myself lots of questions. These include, but are not limited to, questions such as: ‘why would the reader of Country Life dot co dot uk like to read about this house?’ or ‘are the pictures exciting or interesting enough to grab the attention of the passing scroller?’ or ‘why have they painted the room that colour?’.

Morton House raises and answers a lot of those questions. But one question arises from the listing that I have yet to answer, and that is, why is there a samurai sword in the bathroom? What dangers await on Chilton moor in Co Durham? However, ours is not to reason why, so we will move on.

Morton House is for sale with Fine and Country for £1.8 million and, as well as containing a samurai sword, also offers eight bedrooms over three floors of a Grade II-listed building. It also has a very cool wine cellar. Perhaps that is why there is a samurai sword.

Set in 6.4 acres of gardens and grounds, the property has been extensively refurbished in recent years to provide modern convenience with its inherent period charm. Within those ivy-clad stone walls is a house of contemporary elegance, benefiting from seven bathrooms and five reception rooms. It also has two kitchens.

I am a big fan of the styling here, which is both period and modern in equal measure. I like the general colour themes and styling of the reception rooms, none more so than in the drawing room and in the music room (after all, who doesn’t love a music room).

Special mention too to the delightfully large kitchen/breakfast/family room and the absolutely enormous master bedroom suite on the first floor, which offers an en-suite bathroom and dressing room.

The gardens and grounds are a mix of lawned areas, raised beds and mature woodland. There is also a tranquil courtyard, for some al fresco entertaining should you so desire. Durham, a UNESCO World Heritage site, is just six miles to the south.

Morton House is for sale with Fine and Country for £1.8 million. For more information and pictures, click here

A few years ago, somebody wrote into the Today programme on BBC Radio 4 to complain. ‘Your presenters,’ they grumbled, ‘continually refer to the time as being “almost exactly 7 o’clock”, despite the fact that the adjectives “almost” and “exactly” are, by definition, mutually exclusive.’

The presenters agreed that it was a fair point, but also agreed that it was a pleasant enough mistake to make — especially so early in the morning — and that they wouldn’t be changing their habit any time soon.

None of this has anything to do with country houses, or course; but it does have something to do with the way that we fall into easy, simple and cosy uses of the English language. And that in turn brings us to the word ‘unique’, which in the world of property gets bandied around all over the place. If something is unique, that’s it — it’s one of a kind. Linguistically and logically, it can’t be ‘highly unique’, ‘strikingly unique’ or any other kind of modified unique.

All that said, and with thanks to Today’s presenters for giving us licence to break those rules of logic and language, this morning's property really is, well, incredibly unique. It’s super-unique. Dare we even say that it’s uniquely unique? And since we’re running away with ourselves now, tearing up rules and dictionary pages with giddy abandon, let’s just double down and affirm that The Silos — for sale via Savills at £4.25m — is the uniquest house we’ve seen in years. [Oh boy; my spellchecker really didn’t like that one.]

We haven't even touched on the fact that you’d barely use the word ‘house’ to describe a building like The Silos, but regardless of its label this really is a quite astonishing home. It’s the brainchild of the award-winning architectural practice Bramhall Blenkharn Leonard, who transformed a series of redundant grain silos in three acres of Yorkshire into the glass and metal creations you see before you on this page.

It’s modern, spacious, whimsical, and yet entirely liveable, with an open-plan, free-flowing layout to take you between the four bedrooms, four bathrooms and three living spaces. There are curves and glass everywhere; even the home gym has a curved treadmill, for goodness sake.

Tthe staircase, meanwhile, curves with such sinuous grace that we were initially convinced it must be a slide. (Obviously, that would have been even better; hopefully Bramahll Blenkarn Leonard are taking notes for their next big project.)

We can’t tell precisely how all the rooms fit together, mainly because the ‘floorplan’ page on the Savills website simply says ‘awaiting image’; no doubt some fresh-faced young estate agent is beavering away trying to figure out how you draw and connect a series of circles using software designed for producing rectangles.

The rest of the detail the agents provide is fully-fleshed out though, from the name of the local joiner who fitted the bespoke kitchen, to details of the floating stove (by ‘GyroFocus’, apparently) which is a dazzling centrepiece for the main living area.

That fire, incidentally, is almost certainly just going to be for show. The house has a pair of ground-source heat pumps and a 44,000 kWh photovoltaic solar panel system, which apparently generates over £1,000 a month worth of electricity, allowing you to cover your own usage and sell the surplus back to the National Grid.

These combine to give the house an EPC rating of 124, which does two things. First, it establishes that the EPC isn't, as I previously assumed, a score out of 100; and secondly, it becomes by far the highest EPC rating I've seen in eight and a half years of writing about property, Uniquely high, in fact — just as you'd expect.

The Silos in Malton, North Yorkshire, is for sale at £4.25 million via Savills — see more details and pictures.

It is easy, at the age of 32, to consider oneself a grownup. There are many grownup things I do. I open letters that are addressed to me often. These days, they are demands for money, rather than when I was a kid, when they contained money. I go to work, to make money, to help with the letters. Everything can be a bit serious, quite a lot of the time.

What’s interesting, with all this grown-up behaviour, is how quickly I can be yanked back to more childish endeavours. A certain smell can incite a mild psychosis of youth; or an image of a treehouse. Nothing makes you want to be a kid again quite like a good treehouse. I am constantly wishing I was in a treehouse, hiding from my problems. If I lived at Springfield House, in Northumberland, I would spend a lot of time in the treehouse there. It is for sale with Finest Properties for £5.75 million.

The treehouse, designed and built by the same firm that designed and built the treehouse at Alnwick Garden, is made up of two turrets with two floors each. There is a bridge that joins them both.

And that's it.

Well, almost. I should add that accompanying the treehouse is 2.8 acres of gardens and grounds, as well as a six-bedroom home, known as Springfield House.

Springfield House itself was built in 1874, and is set over two floors. It comes with, and there’s no better way to put this, all the trimmings. The interiors have recently been subject to a meticulous redesign under the watchful eye of Fiona Barratt-Campbell, with an emphasis on ‘texture and craftsmanship’. I could write many words about how nice they are, but we have pictures, so you can just see for yourself.

The aforementioned trimmings include, but are not limited to, a study, wine store, gym, cinema room, and bar. If you get bored of the treehouse, there is also an outdoor kitchen, all-weather tennis court and hot tub. Or you could just go for a nice walk around the manicured gardens.

The property itself is located near Corbridge, which sits on the River Tyne in the Tyne Valley. There are plenty of amenities to be found there, such as shops, restaurants, inns, doctor and dentist surgeries and a garage. The larger market town of Hexham is also nearby.

But that’s all very grown-up. Just think of the treehouse.

Springfield House is for sale with Finest Properties for £5.75 million. For more information and pictures, click here.

It’s five years since the Covid-19 lockdown, and thus almost five years since Barnard Castle earned a place in the national consciousness, thanks to Dominic Cummings and his [checks notes] decision ‘to test his eyesight’ by visiting this small town in Country Durham town. In fairness to Mr Cummings, we can see why he chose Barnard’s Castle over Specsavers: this charming and historic settlement of just over 5,000 people is a sight for sore eyes. As indeed is the idyllic Victorian country house which is our focus today, in a village called Cotherstone that’s a few minutes outside the town.

Victorian architecture is popular for good reason — all large windows, high ceilings, grand fireplaces, and decorative details — and Hagg House is a classic example. This five-bedroom house is for sale for £950,000.

Dating back to the 1850s, it has evidently been refurbished recently by someone with a very good eye. The living areas are ‘spacious and beautifully appointed, distinguished by thoughtfully curated decor and premium details throughout,’ according to the selling agent, Finest Properties — and judging by the pictures, that feels a pretty fair assessment.

The reception rooms at the front of Hagg House look practically box-fresh. They feature bespoke shelving, decorative fire surrounds, elegant panelling, and on-trend furnishings.

Like many homes, the open-plan kitchen appears to be the beating heart of Hagg House. It’s spacious, flooded with light, and offers views of the pretty garden. It doesn’t just look good though. It’s well-equipped too, with a Rangemaster induction hob, integrated Bosch fridge freezer, large central island, and a walk-in pantry.

Next to the kitchen is a utility room with a washing machine, tumble dryer and lots of all-important storage.

While dark colours make a strong appearance downstairs, more earthy, muted tones are used upstairs.

All five bedrooms have views of the property’s neat, formal gardens. In fact, the two main bedrooms have dual aspects and ensuite bathrooms.

Outside, the gardens include formal sections, a pond with a bridge, wildflower meadow, cottage garden with an orchard, and outdoor dining areas. They are all packed into nearly two acres, which extend to the River Balder.

In the midst of all this is a charming Grade II-listed folly, known as Monk’s House. There is planning permission in place to restore it.

If that’s not enough to whet your appetite, there’s also a paddock with 26 solar panels, which connect to a hybrid gas/air-source heat pump system.

A double garage provides ‘ample space for parking and storage, with a workshop area at the rear’, the selling agent adds.

Located on the doorstep of the North Pennines National Landscape, Hagg House is surrounded by open fields and green spaces.

Hagg House is for sale with Finest Properties for £950,000. For more information and pictures, click here.

Some 54 acres of gardens, grounds, woodland and paddocks surround Whixley Hall, in the village of Whixley, seven miles from Boroughbridge and 10 miles from York; a further 41 acres of parkland is available separately.

Grade II listed, on account of its impressive facade, one chapter of its history saw it bequeathed as ‘an almshouse for 12 elderly gentlemen’.

And though the redbrick building dates back to the mid-to-late 17th century — an engraving in the hallway reads 'Christopher Tancred's seat 1698' — the stone slate roof only dates back to the 20th one.

Nowadays, it’s ‘a large house, but not too large, with a room for every occasion and six good-sized bedrooms served by five bathrooms and a self-contained one-bedroomed apartment,’ say agents.

Two large attic rooms could become bedrooms, too, and further accommodation comprises the three-bedroom The Dower House, under a pantile roof, and two-bedroom Way Cottage which has its own small garden.

Modern additions include a bio mass boiler and craftsman-made secondary glazing which have greatly enhanced the property's energy efficiency.

The formal gardens are well maintained, with neat lawns, clipped box, specimen trees, parterre, kitchen garden and sizeable vegetable garden behind the stables. High brick walls means ensure that the space is wonderfully private.

Beyond the gardens, to the north and west, there are a number of grassy paddocks and woodland shelter belts that stretch to about 55 acres. There are a further 41 acres of parkland to the south of a minor road, available by separate negotiation.

For sale via Savills — click here to see more details and pictures.

Britain is full of fabulous castles, and we at Country Life love them — particularly our Architectural Editor John Goodall, the man who literally wrote the book on castles (he even called it 'Castles').

Some are grand and impressive; some are crumbling ruins; and some look just like the sort of fantasy creations you saw in picture books about the Knights of the Round Table. Augill Castle is one of latter — and the good news is that it's looking for a new owner, with an asking price of a reasonable-sounding £2 million.

It's particularly reasonable-sounding because — as Cosmo Linzee Gordon explained a while ago — many castles have winds howling through the corridors and water pouring through the roof. Sometimes even when it's not raining.

Augill is different; it's a place that's in good nick. Very good nick indeed; in fact, it's currently an award-winning boutique hotel near Kirkby Stephen that can be hired out for weddings and other events. As you might have guessed, this isn't a medieval castle that was built for warfare or conquest, but rather a Victorian Gothic folly. The only boiling oil you'll find in this castle is carefully managed by the catering team in the well-equipped kitchens.

While it's currently a business, Augill Castle would absolutely make a dream country house, subject to the necessary permissions, as it's large, but not so big that you and your family would feel ridiculous kicking around in a 400-room palace.

There are seven en-suite bedrooms in the main house and a range of formal and informal reception rooms, including a Music Room — a space which, in its hospitality guise, is used as a 46-cover restaurant) with an Arts-and-Crafts fireplace.

The library leads out onto a terrace and the hotel’s bar is located in the conservatory. Five separate garden suites and estate houses provide a further six bedrooms. Grounds, including a tennis court, parking for 30 cars and a playground, extend to 10 acres.

Augill Castle is for sale via Knight Frank at £2 million — see more details and pictures.

The popular image of the Brontë family — the world-famous novelists Charlotte, Emily and Anne, their impressive father Patrick, and their rather less famous brother Branwell — is one that's indelibly linked to Haworth, the surrounding moors, and Haworth Parsonage itself where the three girls grew up. (Also Branwell.)

The famous parsonage wasn't the original family home, however. After graduating from Cambridge in 1806, the Irish-born clergyman and writer Patrick Brontë had several different postings within the Church of England, living in Essex and Shropshire before eventually ending up in Yorkshire. He became a curate based at the Church of St Peter in Hartshead, near Liversedge, in 1811; and whilst there lived at the chillingly-named Lousy Farm. During this stint he met Maria Branwell, who he fell in love with and married on 29 December, 1812. And Lousy Farm, where they first lived as husband and wife, is now for sale via Auction House West Yorkshire.

The farm is now entirely dilapidated, which is the bad news. The good news, for literary fans looking to snap up a piece of Brontë history, is that it's in the February 5 auction with a guide price of just £380,000, to include the buildings and almost eight acres of land. Considering that this is in the heart of West Yorkshire, between Leeds and Huddersfield, that's a lot of land for the price.

Then again, it's clear that a lot of money — a lot — will have to be spent on the property to return it to any sort of useful state.

There have been suggestions in the past that Lousy Farm — also known over the years as Lousy Thorn Farm, and more recently renamed Thornbush Farm — could become a Brontë-themed visitor centre, and plans for this were reportedly lodged a couple of years ago.

It might be harder than it first seems, however, since the farmhouse is Grade II-listed. On the plus side the site pictures show some evidence of work that has begun. Buyers will have to do their own due diligence to see how far it has come along, and how much more might need doing.

If that doesn't dampen your enthusiasm, we should also note that there's a question as to how long the Brontës spent here; they'd certainly moved on long before the famous writers were born, but Patrick and Maria might only have been in the property for a matter of a few months. Some evidence suggests that not long after their wedding, Patrick and Maria moved to a terraced house in nearby Hightown; the house in question even has a plaque celebrating the birth of the first two Brontë sisters, Maria and Elizabeth, both of whom sadly died before reaching their teens.

Not all sources agree, however, and Historic England's listing does nothing to clear the matter up:

So there you have it. It's a place where Patrick Brontë definitely lived, for at least a year or so, but nobody really knows how long for. He left in 1815 at the latest, some time before Charlotte (1816), Emily (1818) and Anne Brontë (1820) were born. (And also Branwell Brontë, who was born in 1817.) Still, such is the draw of this most famous of literary families that we're sure there will be plenty of interest. We'll await what happens at the auction eagerly.

Thornbush Farm — aka Lousy Farm — is for sale via Auction House West Yorkshire on February 5. See more details here.

Regular Country Life readers will no doubt be accustomed to seeing some pretty magnificent properties splashed across the magazine’s glossy pages and website. Vast estates, historic homes, and architectural gems, that sort of thing.

But even by those standards the £21 million Ripley Castle Estate — its with links to the Wars of the Roses, the coronation of James I of England, the Gunpowder Plot, and Oliver Cromwell — takes some beating.

Ripley Castle has been a landmark on the edge of the Yorkshire Dales National Park since the early 1300s, and has been home to the Ingilby family ever since its creation.

Now, though, the historic country estate has been put up for sale for the very first time in its history, with a £21m price tag.

The ancient castle is the jewel in the 445-acre estate, which encompasses parkland, ornamental gardens, and agricultural land.

Mark Granger, of Carter Jonas, which is marketing the estate, says: ‘The Ripley Castle Estate presents prospective buyers with an exceptional opportunity.

‘Not just a once-in-lifetime chance, but truly a once-in-a-700-year opportunity to purchase an estate that encompasses historical significance, architectural splendour and beauty.’

The Grade I-listed castle has played a role in some gripping historical occasions. James VI stayed at the castle en route to his coronation as James I of England.

And Oliver Cromwell apparently demanded a bed there after the Battle of Maston Moor.

Sir Thomas Ingilby, the owner, explains: ‘During this time, 'Trooper Jane' Ingilby, who fought in the battle, allowed him to stay but guarded him in the library throughout the night with two pistols, protecting both her virtue and her brother, who was hidden in the Knight’s Chamber.

‘These significant moments leap off the pages of history and are reflected in various elements throughout the castle.’

It’ll come as no surprise that the castle is dripping in historical features. The three-storey Old Tower features oak flooring originally sourced from The HMS Rose, an 18th century frigate, and a priest hole that was only discovered in 1963. And the Knight’s Chamber’s ‘Wagon Roof’ design is understood to be one of just three surviving examples.

Ripley Castle's reception hall, inner hall, oval drawing room, and second, larger drawing room with sweeping views of the lakes and the deer park are sure to catch your eye too. Look out for the grand cantilever staircase beneath a stunning armorial stained-glass window.

But let’s not forget this is also a family home — albeit a highly unusual one. What is described as the Castle Apartment includes three reception rooms, 11 bedrooms, and six bathrooms. And the medieval arched Gatehouse, completed in 1450, is a one-bedroom apartment.

The four acres of gardens and grounds are home to several listed pavilions, including The Garden Room and The Orangery, listed walled gardens and a kitchen garden.

There’s also the estate offices and east wing, which have been operated as a wedding and events venue. Plus, a gift shop, coffee shop, tea room, and a barn occupied by studios.

Other features of the estate include a hotel, village store and adjoining residential property, sporting rights, woodland, pasture and game cover, and a village cricket ground. Phew.

Sir Thomas says: ‘Ripley Castle is not only an iconic estate, but it has also been a wonderful family home. It is a welcoming and magical place. Castles and living in one often belong to fairy tales, and Ripley Castle exemplifies the essence of such stories. However, without relying on make-believe, it stands on its own.’

One last note: if you fancy the castle but not all the land, Ripley Castle Estate is available as a whole or in separate lots.

Ripley Castle Estate is for sale at £21 million — see more details and pictures.

If you’ve arrived at this website, and on this page, you’d probably agree that the idea of living in a big country house with incredible gardens and a spectacular setting is one of life’s great goals.

Ideas, though, are one thing. Realities can be a little different, and it has to be said that while spectacular settings look after themselves, huge houses and incredible gardens take a bit of work. Quite a bit of work indeed.

There is a solution which pops up from time to time, though, which makes the burden of sweeping grounds and private drives a bit more manageable: go for a home that is a chunk of what was originally a bigger country house.

Exactly such a home is on the market at the moment right now in the form of The East Wing at Withinlee, on the market at £1.395m in one of the most sought-after spots in England: the Cheshire village of Prestbury.

While you don’t get the entire house to yourself, The East Wing is plenty big enough for all but the biggest households. It’s a 4,300sq ft, six-bedroom home with far-reaching views over the neighbouring countryside from an elevated position.

Inside, the décor is undeniably dated, but the house is in a good state of repair, with the highlight of the ground floor probably the 23ft drawing room with huge bay window. There’s also a study, dining room and a further sitting, with four bedrooms on the first floor and two more bedrooms on the second floor.

A substantial conservatory extends off a long kitchen/breakfast room that overlooks an area of lawn, from where steps lead past a series of flower beds to an attractive circular parterre split into eight segments.

The setting is just as special as you could hope for. The house stands has about 1½ acres of south-facing landscaped gardens, accessed via long drive whose upkeep is shared with the neighbours. And if you want more space to roam? The National Trust-owned Alderley Edge woodland is nearby, and ideal for walks.

Some buyers, of course, will always prefer their own little corner of the world, away from others. But for those seeking an easier way to enjoy country house life, homes like this have a huge amount to offer.

The East Wing is for sale via Jackson-Stops at £1.395 million — see more details and pictures.

Credit: Strutt and Parker

Best country houses for sale this week

An irresistible West Country cottage and a magnificent Cumbrian country house make our pick of the finest country houses for

The best property bargain in Britain?

Eight bedrooms, seven bathrooms, four storeys, marble floors, off-road parking, and a decoration scheme which will make your jaw drop — and all for £750,000?

When you figure all that in, it's no wonder that Nuah Heights — in the small Lancashire town of Accrington — made its way to the top spot in the list of most-viewed properties on property portal Rightmove for 2024 so far. It's not the sort of place we often write about but we're very glad to do so today, because this really is quite an incredible amount of property for the money.

The agents, Keenans, call it 'a stunning home, finished to perfection with every last detail thought of', and — well — we'd recommend a look at their site to soak it all in. Amazing stuff.

As for Accrington itself? Honestly, I think the last time I heard it mentioned was in the (utterly iconic) Ian Rush milk advert from the 1980s, which anyone over the age of, ooh, probably about 42 will probably be able to recite word-for-word when they watch this clip:

At some point we'll have to pay a visit to see what the place is like, but it's now 13 minutes past six and my dinner in the oven, so we'll have to make do with pointing out that Zoopla calls Accrington 'an exceptional place to live', and Visit Lancashire calls it a 'hidden gem bursting with history, culture and natural beauty'. In the interests of balance we ought to point out that a few years ago the Lancashire Telegraph rather unsportingly dubbed it 'the most dangerous medium-sized town in Lancashire', but of course such local crime figures might just be to do with the fact that people in the town feel that it's safe to report things. And, getting back to the good stuff, it appears that they sometimes park a Spitfire outside the Town Hall, and that must be a good thing for any place to live.

Quiz of the Day

• 1) What term describes an angle of less than 90˚?
• 2) The Tudor rose features the colours of which two royal houses?
• 3) Which farmer is a regular presenter on the TV series Countryfile?
• 4) Which line is coloured pink on a London Underground map?
• 5) What is a male badger called?

Answers down below

Darlington, you were wonderful last night

Our picture of the day today? Low Dinsdale, Darlington, County Durham.

Quotations from the bright side of life

'No winter lasts forever; no spring skips its turn.' So said the American writer and naturalist Hal Borland. It might be cold, it might be dark, but it won't be forever.

'The best job in the world'

That's how Country Life's boss, Mark Hedges, described his role as Editor-in-Chief when he came on to the podcast exactly a year ago. From breaking priceless antiques at iconic country houses to giving the people what they want (which is very often more stuff about dogs), it's a great listen. Listen to Mark here, then subscribe to our podcast subscribe to the Country Life Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Audible/Amazon or wherever you get your podcasts.

I've been adding this to the Christmas gift guide for three years, and still nobody has taken the hint

The Barisieur tea & coffee alarm clock is just one of the joys in our latest Christmas gift guide for men. We also have a gift guide for ladies, and we'll be bringing more ideas to you in the coming week.

That's it — we're back on Monday

QUIZ ANSWERS

1) Acute

2) Lancaster and York

3) Adam Henson

4) Hammersmith & City

5) A boar

Devon — £4,950,000

Set in 114 acres of rolling parkland, lush woodland, pristine gardens and serene water features, Coombe Trenchard is an oasis in nature.

An Arts-and-Crafts masterpiece by Walter Sarel, the property boasts eight bedrooms, a self-contained apartment, outbuildings and five reception rooms.

For sale with Knight Frank. See more pictures and details for this property.

Hertfordshire — £2,000,000

Norton Mill House is a, erm, former mill that has been remodelled and extended into a six bedroom home with more than 4,500sq ft of space.

The interiors have been extensively refurbished, combining the period parts of the property with the finest modern luxuries you could desire. There's also a nice pond.

For sale with Michael Graham. See more pictures and details for this property.

Devon — £3,500,000

Built in 1682, Larkbeare House was originally the home of merchant John Charles Bowring. You will struggle to find a larger or more lovely house in central Exeter.

With 14 bedrooms and five acres of grounds, the property also borders the River Exe.

For sale with Strutt and Parker. See more pictures and details for this property.

Cheshire — £15,000,000

Always important to include at least one house worth £15 million or more. So here we have Edgewood, a magnificent and highly sophisticated five-bedroom home in Alderley Edge.

Set over three floors, the gardens were designed by Barnes Walker and the property sits in about 1.2 acres. A contemporary build, it is ruthlessly energy efficient.

For sale with Savills. See more pictures and details for this property.

North Yorkshire — £2,000,000

An 18th century house with far barn, stabling and land, enjoying an elevated position offering far-reaching views on the edge of the Yorkshire Dales National Park.

For sale with Blenkin & Co. See more pictures and details for this property.

Somerset — £1,100,000

An elegant four-bedroom Grade II listed Georgian home with one-bedroom annexe, mature gardens and swimming pool, located in Wedmore village.

For sale with Cooper and Tanner. See more pictures and details for this property.

Surrey — £1,800,000

Beautiful Art Deco property with historical charm and breathtaking views over Caterham Valley, located just 30 minutes from London.

For sale with EXP UK. See more pictures and details for this property.

Gloucestershire — £2,500,000

A Grade II listed manor house with grand rooms, stunning features, wonderful countryside views and south and west facing gardens.

For sale with Hayman Joyce. See more pictures and details for this property.

Kent — £1,150,000

Magnificent detached property that’s recently been refurbished to an exceptional standard with established gardens and sensational sweeping driveway.

For sale with Hobbs Parker. See more pictures and details for this property.

Somerset — £1,250,000

An impressive Georgian four-bedroom family home with stunning interior decoration and period features, set within an acre of garden.

For sale with Sandersons. See more pictures and details for this property.

Hampshire — £1,150,000

A charming Grade II listed home dating back to 1653 with many original features and uninterrupted views, in an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.

For sale with Spencers. See more pictures and details for this property.

Devon — £1,475,000

An exceptional not listed Victorian farmhouse with amazing views to the sea and courtyard of barns, set in 6 acres of pasture and woodland.

For sale with Stags. See more pictures and details for this property.

Spectacular Scottish castles and estates for sale

A look at the finest castles, country houses and estates for sale in Scotland today.

Oxbridge rejects rejoice, as the county of Durham has been named the most affordable county in England to buy a home, according to data published by My Home Move Conveyancing. The data looked at the average house price in each English country before dividing it by the average annual income. The results paint a predictable picture. If you live in the north of England, houses are cheaper. If you live in London, good luck.

The main number we are looking at here is called the affordability ratio. For example, for England as a whole, the average house price is £305,879, while the average annual salary is £35,955. The national affordability ratio is 8.5, meaning the average home costs 8.5 times the average salary. This is what we might describe as ‘not good’, considering that mortgage lenders traditionally offer a loan of about 4-5 times your average salary. If you had an average salary, and wanted to buy an average house, you would somehow need to find about half of the rest of the asking price. Perhaps behind the sofa? We’ll never know.

Durham’s affordability ratio currently stands at 4.3, making it (using this method) the most affordable county to purchase a home in the UK. The north of England makes up the rest of the top-10, with Tyne and Wear, Lancashire, Cumbria, South Yorkshire, other bits of Yorkshire and Northumberland all present. Shall we look at some nice pictures of those places? Places you could probably afford to live? Yes, let's.

I am being mean to London, which is unfair, considering A) I live there and B) it’s where all the jobs are basically and C) it’s not even the most expensive county on this list. That would be Oxfordshire, which has a ratio of 11.4. In second place is Devon, with 11.1, followed by London with 11. Various other bits of the south (your Sussexes, your Dorsets, your Isles of Wight, your Surreys) round out the top 10. 

I think to many people, the results of this data/analysis are hardly a surprise. It is, however, still quite jarring to see just how heavily correlated the price of property is in the country to latitude. It’s not even distance to London. Have you ever tried to take the train from Devon to London? It takes forever. Newcastle is closer, when compared to time spent on a railway.

So there you have it. Yet another reason to move north, if you needed it. Happy Monday.

James Fisher is the deputy digital editor of countrylife.co.uk

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Here at Country Life we try to throw a spotlight on the most beautiful, interesting, quirky and charming houses for sale in Britain. Homes with wonderful settings and impressive architecture are always a joy to explore, yet it's fair to say that the rooms which lie within aren't always as noteworthy as the rest of the house.

Today, however, we have a home which would happily earn a place both in the property section and the interiors section of the website: Manor House, a few miles from Harrogate, which is for sale at £2.95m via Strutt & Parker.

The agents describe it as 'one of the most stunning houses in Nidderdale', and we're very much inclined to take their word for it — partly because they've almost certainly seen more of the rest of Nidderdale's homes than we have (which in all honesty wouldn't be too hard), and partly because... well, just look at the place.

See what we mean? Stunning is a word that was once upon a time banned by the Country Life style guide, but whether it still is or not (and we've not checked), it seems fitting here.

This charming, Grade II-listed Manor House in Crow Hill Lane, High Birstwith, which stands in 1½ acres of beautifully landscaped gardens on the edge of the village, six miles from the centre of Harrogate and 15½ miles from Leeds-Bradford airport.

The delightful small manor house was originally built in about 1837 by the Hare-Gill family, who were prominent local landowners during the 19th century, one of whom, John Hare-Gill, implemented innovative farming techniques that significantly improved the crop yields and livestock management within what is now known as the Nidderdale National Landscape.

(Did we mention that it has some sort of barrel-vaulted cellar room? No? Well, here it is.)

In the late 1900s, Manor House was home to the late Robert Aagaard, whose love of antique furniture led him to train as a furnituremaker, first of all in the Cotswolds and later in Harrogate, where he had his own showrooms. He also operated a factory at Knaresborough, making period fireplaces and decorations for conservation projects.

(Time for another photo.)

A specialist consultant to the National Trust, Aagaard renovated the four-bedroom main house, restored chimneypieces and cornices and added the two-bedroom guest cottage that sits across the gravelled courtyard to the north.

(Let's sneak one more in.)

Both houses have since been meticulously refurbished by the present owners and together provide more than 6,500sq ft of well-proportioned living space, surrounded by high garden walls and beech hedges that ensure privacy without detracting from the panoramic views over Nidderdale.

Manor House and its cottage are for sale at £2.95m — see more details and pictures.

Additional reporting: Penny Churchill

Credit: Strutt and Parker

Best country houses for sale this week

An irresistible West Country cottage and a magnificent Cumbrian country house make our pick of the finest country houses for

Historic, Grade I-listed Corby Castle stands at the heart of an immaculate, 711-acre estate bounded by the picturesque villages of Great Corby and Wetheral in Cumbria’s north-east corner.

The majestic River Eden forms the western and southern boundary, with woodland to the north and east, while the border city of Carlisle is six miles away to the west. This extraordinary property, one of Britain's greatest private residential and sporting estates, is for sale at £15 million through Savills.

According to its Historic England listing, the Manor of Corby was granted to Hubert de Vallibus by Henry II and passed to Andrew de Harcia, Earl of Carlisle, before being given to Sir Richard Salkeld by Edward III in 1336.

In 1605, Lord William Howard, third son of the 4th Duke of Norfolk, bought part of the Corby estate, followed by the remainder in 1624 for his second son, Francis. The estate remained in the Howard family until 1994, when it was acquired by the Ballyedmond family of Northern Ireland.

Built around the core of a medieval tower house, Corby Castle was remodelled for Henry Howard between 1812 and 1814 by the Scottish architect Peter Nicholson, who gave the building its present rectangular plan and neo-Classical façades.

The imposing, 30,364sq ft house stands on high ground to the north of the estate, overlooking the banks and cliffs of the River Eden and surrounded by magnificent gardens and pleasure grounds, including a wildly romantic riverside Green Walk developed by Thomas Howard between 1709 and 1739.

The castle grounds, highlights of which include a spectacular cascade, a charming tempietto, grottos and sculptures, were much admired by Thomas’s fellow lovers of romantic landscapes, among them the watercolourist William Gilpin, writer Sir Walter Scott and the renowned Scottish garden designer John Claudius Loudon, who described them as ‘singularly grand and picturesque’.

Impeccably renovated and modernised during the tenure of the current owners, Corby Castle is entered through imposing, Grade I-listed gates flanked by red-sandstone walls.

A Greek Doric porch, surmounted by the Howard family’s signature Corby lion, leads through panelled wooden doors to the dramatic Grecian East Hall and the principal reception rooms, each of which has its own unique cornicing and is in immaculate condition — something that is rarely found in a Grade I-listed mansion of this age and provenance, selling agent Alex Lawson observes.

The elegant drawing room leads through arched glass doors into the dual-aspect Summer Room and adjoins the Library, a glorious room with beautifully fitted ornate bookshelves, silk wallpaper and three south-facing, full-length windows that flood the room with natural light; they also provide access to the southern terrace overlooking the Eden.

The marble-floored West Hall, reached via steps from the west terrace, leads into the impressive Great Hall, currently used as a formal dining room. To the north of the castle, a modern family kitchen leads through to the Morning Room, the Shoot Room and a small family room.

Beyond the handsome main staircase is the first floor and the colourful Picture Gallery, another versatile entertaining space, off which are located two sumptuous principal bedroom suites and three other suites.

The second floor, a mirror-image of the first, houses the Games Room, three further suites and a study, with additional bedroom suites on each half-landing. As one might expect, Corby boasts myriad staff and service rooms, including a staff wing with a commercial kitchen designed to cope well with large house parties.

The main focus of sport at Corby Castle is its world-class pheasant shooting, thanks to an ongoing programme of woodland management, strategically placed game covers and efficient vermin control by its team of gamekeepers. The topography of the ground, with its warm, south-facing slopes, extensive woodland cover and steep cliff faces, has created 17 challenging drives that test the finest shots. A number of ponds to the east of the estate attract good numbers of duck, with salmon and trout fishing on the River Eden.

In addition to its traditional parkland, the Corby Castle estate comprises 387 acres of ring-fenced arable farmland, which surrounds the house and pleasure grounds to the south.

The estate also offers an extensive, well-managed property portfolio, including not only a traditional estate courtyard and two farmsteads, but also a substantial collection of 17 high-quality secondary houses and cottages capable of providing extra guest or staff accommodation or diversified revenue streams.

Corby Castle is for sale at £15 million via Savills — see more details and pictures.

It is the opinion of the Country Life Property Desk (CLPD) that houses with plants growing all over them and with long sweeping drives are Cool and Good. Even better if they come with seven bedrooms and almost 70 acres of land. 

To Cheshire then, where Savills have for sale, for the sum of £6.65 million, the glorious Boden Hall, which has all the above, and much more. Approached down a long tree-lined drive, as all good things often are, the property sits in a private parkland setting with a view over a two-acre lake, island and boathouse.

The good news doesn’t stop there. While being an ‘excellent example of the architecture of the period’, per the agents (and indeed, ourselves), it is unlisted and has been extended over the years. 

However, this substantial home of more than 10,000sq ft still retains plenty of its original features, including window shutters, architraves and cornicing. As the photos accompanying this article will reveal, the interiors are quite something.

Observe, if you will, the elegant entrance hall, with its beautiful fireplace and intricate plasterwork. Behold the glorious wallpaper of the Bird Room. Dislike that wallpaper? Why not indulge yourself in the green of the dining room. I do not know who lives here, but gosh I would like to sit and talk to them about their taste (it’s excellent).

Outside, things are much the same. Extensive gardens provide a wonderful setting for the house and have been designed to feature a number of rooms, vistas and other points of interest. A rose garden with an exquisite Victorian glasshouse is to the rear, as well as a walled kitchen garden, while the south garden is framed by rhododendron, yew hedging and specimen Portuguese laurel.

In the vast grounds you’ll also find a saltwater swimming pool and poolhouse, a tennis court, squash court, kennels, modern machinery shed and six (6!) cottages, which are currently let on assured shorthold tenancies. Two large fields are also rented to a local farmer on a short-term agreement.

Boden Hall is for sale with Savills for £6.65 million. For more information and pictures, click here

Credit: Janna Dixon photography/Lillicrap Chilcott

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The vast, Grade I-listed Jacobean Dorfold Hall, just outside the market town of Nantwich in Cheshire, was built, so the story goes, for a visit by James I. Completed in 1621, the property and its surrounding estate of 101 acres have been in the home of the Roundell family ever since, making a few detours along the way down the female line.

Dorfold Hall is available as a whole, for £11.4 million, or in two separate lots, the latter made up of the Showground, a large-scale event space, which was, for 70 years, home to the Nantwich Show and is valued at £650,000. ‘Serving as both a cherished family home and a spectacular venue for weddings and corporate events, it is a best-in-class example of what can be achieved by combining creativity with meticulous attention to detail,’ says Savills selling agent Louisa Batterbury.

Many of the original 17th-century interiors have been beautifully preserved, such as the ornate plaster ceiling in the drawing room, commissioned in 1621 to celebrate the unification of England and Scotland. Changes over the centuries have included a remodelling of the ground floor by architect Samuel Wyatt in 1771. Later, in 1862, William Nesfield was commissioned to rearrange the landscape. During the Second World War, the house was used by Canadian troops and sheltered children evacuated from the bombing of Liverpool.

The current custodians, Charles and Candice Roundell, began taking over the running of the estate from 2010 and moved in a few years later when, in their own words, it was in a state of disrepair and facing a rather gloomy future. The couple have since invested significant energy re-shaping the 400-year-old property for 21st-century living. One initiative included a ground-source heat-pump system, one of the first to be installed in a historic house after Castle Howard in North Yorkshire. This combines both ground- and water-source energy from under a nearby field and lake and services properties across the estate.

Yet more significant has been the resurrection of a former stable yard, demolished shortly after the Second World War, which is now used as a venue for weddings and a wide range of events. Following historic research by the architect Zoë Polya-Vitry, planning permission was granted for a new structure clad in zinc, which reflected the scale of the original building and was conceived as a series of sculptural pitched roofs.

L’Écurie (‘stable’) is made up of a large hall overlooking the lake, a kitchen and a converted tack room orientated around a paved courtyard. It was completed in 2021 and was recognised with the RIBA North West Award 2023 and the RIBA North West Building of the Year award. It plays a pivotal role as a revenue source for the estate; the Olympic gymnast Beth Tweddle is among many to have celebrated their wedding at Dorfold.

Interior decorator Edward Bulmer worked with the Roundells on design and colour schemes throughout the hall. Meanwhile, specialist lighting from T. M. Lighting highlights some of the intricate interior architecture. Covering more than 15,000sq ft and arranged over three floors, Dorfold Hall has five reception rooms and 10 bedrooms in all, five on each side of the hall. Those on the west are currently used as accommodation for wedding parties.

Three cottages have been converted into holiday lets, although they could, of course, be used as ancillary accommodation or for staff. The latest was once occupied by the estate’s blacksmith and, in an example of the level of detailing involved in its restoration, double-glazed bronze casement windows have been installed with the outer panes in period glass to give the requisite irregular reflection. There is further scope, and planning permission in place, to do more restoration work on other properties on the estate.

The primary garden is enclosed by a low sandstone wall and planted with hundreds of David Austin roses and perennials. Further walled gardens lie to the west of the hall, one of which includes a tennis court. The Roundells restored the lake after it was dredged and restocked with fish during the installation of the renewable heating system.

With twin boys at school down south and Mr Roundell’s business interests in London, the family have decided to put the estate on the market. ‘We have put an enormous amount of effort into bringing Dorfold into a new era, but we’ve reached the point now that we’ve done all we can,’ explains Mrs Roundell. ‘It’s time for someone else to start a new chapter, which could either be taking the house back into family use or making more of the commercial aspects.’

Dorfold Hall is for sale for £11.4 million with Savills. For more information and pictures, click here

Credit: Strutt and Parker

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There are monarchs that will remain forever etched in the psyche of this nation, for one reason or another. William the Conqueror, so named after all his conquering. Henry VIII, for the wives. Charles I, for losing the monarchy and Charles II, for getting it back. George III, for his madness. Even Elizabeth II, for being around for a jolly long time.

Sometimes, however, you hear of a monarch for what feels like the first ever time. For example, William IV. Without looking it up, can you tell me anything about him? Anything at all? Well, I can give you one little factoid for free, which is that one of his daughters, Amelia, lived in Rudby Hall in North Yorkshire, which is for sale with Savills for £2.5 million. Every day a school day here at Country Life.

Completed in 1838 to a design by the architect Anthony Salvin, Rudby Hall is ‘one of the most significant country houses’ in the county, say the agents, and it also underwent a ‘ground up’ restoration in the 1980s, which saw improvements to the Westmorland slate roof and stone work, as well as upgrading of the heating, plumbing and electrics. 

Approached via a sweeping driveway, the property offers some 13 bedrooms and bathrooms in total. You will, quite frankly, never see a house in your life with as many bathrooms as this one. Every time you go to the shops to buy bleach, you’ll no doubt be setting off an alarm at MI6. They say 13 is an unlucky number, and it certainly is for whoever has to clean all those loos.

Set over four floors, it is on the ground floor where you will find the four reception rooms, which open up off the main reception hall. Despite the substantial renovations conducted by recent owners, the property retains many of its exceptional original features, especially in the ground floor reception rooms, such as ornamental fireplaces, plasterwork and cornices.

If all that wasn’t enough, the gardens and grounds extend to about seven acres, and are predominantly parkland and laid to lawn designed by Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown. On the west side of the house, a sheltered stone-paved terrace fronts the kitchen and, beyond, level terraced lawns are protected by the wall of the original kitchen garden, which is covered in climbing roses.

Set within the hamlet of Skutterskelefe (trying saying that after a gin and tonic), the property is less than a mile from the village of Hutton Rudby, which features all the amenities (pub, church, primary school, cricket club, taxidermist) you could wish for. 

Rudby Hall is for sale with Savills for £2.5 million. For more information and to see more pictures, click here

Credit: Strutt and Parker

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