'Few architectural styles get the pulse racing quite like Scots Baronial,' wrote James Fisher of Borthwick Hall when it came to the market three years ago. 'I can feel my blood quickening as I type.'

As well it might have done. This landmark Scottish Baronial mansion is set in just under 12 acres of formal gardens, grounds and paddocks in a secluded woodland valley to the south of Heriot village, 18½ miles from Edinburgh city centre. Today, it's up for sale once more, with Andrew Thomson of Savills in Edinburgh quoting a guide price of £2.25 milliion for this Category C-listed home — and to say the place has changed over those three years is putting it mildly indeed. More on that later.

Borthwick Hall was built in 1852 by the prolific Scottish architect John Henderson, who, although best known for his Gothic Revival church architecture, designed a relatively small number of villas and estates that blended practicality with picturesque elements.

With its harled walls, bartizaned tower, crow-stepped gables, corbelled turrets and fine interiors with timber-panelled rooms and ceilings inspired by 16th-century motifs, Borthwick Hall is a supreme example of both the practical and the picturesque.

It was always a fine house on the inside as well as outside (you can see the full article from 2023 here) but it's now become an exotic and striking family home, full of the sort of colour schemes, design elements and little touches you'd expect of a boutique hotel. This comparison of then-and-now gives a nice idea about the extent of the work.

Beautifully renovated by its current owner, the house offers more than 11,000sq ft of impressive living space, with beautifully preserved original features.

The grand spaces at Borthwick include a dramatic double-height reception hall and a fine staircase that demonstrates exquisite timber craftsmanship.

It has all the rooms you'd expect to find in a house this size — drawing room, study, dining room, huge family kitchen — but also many extras, from the music room and the cinema room to a huge garden room that houses a hot tub in one corner.

There are seven bedrooms in total, one of which is set up as a separate flat, with spiral staircase from living area to a bedroom mezzanine above. It makes this house a fine choice for multi-generational living, or for those wanting self-contained guest space.

And you'll be likely to have plenty of guests, come to think of it, since Borthwick is in a wonderful location that's peaceful, rural, and accessible. It is a 10-mile journey north-east as the crow flies from Eddleston to the quiet, small village of Heriot at the foot of the Moorfoot Hills, which run in a north-easterly direction from Peebles to Tynehead in Midlothian.

According to Thomson, commuting from the area to the Scottish capital has been much enhanced following the reopening of the Borders Railway in September 2015, with stations at nearby Gorebridge, Newtongrange and Eskbank providing regular services to Edinburgh Waverley, a journey time of less than half an hour.

Buying in prime central London has long been stereotyped as being reserved for those named in the Panama Papers. Yet a market slowdown over the past 10 years has changed the narrative and make-up of those buying here. Opportunists are now finding deals they could not have dreamt of in Zones 1 and 2 since before the late 1990s. ‘Transactions have really picked up in the past six months,’ confirms Richard Gutteridge, head of prime central London at Savills. ‘All the agents I know had a really busy summer.’

Who is buying the dip? The Renters’ Rights Act, which came into force earlier this year, did away with Section 21 and imposed a limit on annual rent increases, has spooked the investor market. Today’s buyers are not empire-builders in the classical sense. ‘My brother and I bought a three-bedroom flat in Shepherd’s Bush, of more than 1,000sq ft, from a 92-year-old lady who had retired to a convent, saving £185,000 on the initial market price and eventually getting the flat for £415,000,’ says Arnaud Plantenga, 29, who works in tech sales. As with many first-time buyers, Plantenga took out a mortgage to pay for the flat. Others in his position will often rent out a spare room to help pay this off. The process took two years.

For today’s young professionals, properties that haven’t changed hands in a while (‘my place hadn’t been touched since the 1980s,’ Plantenga notes) are the golden ticket. There are many such homes in prime central London — where sellers largely form part of an ageing population — which often are in need of upgrades, giving buyers more bargaining power. These aren’t fixer-uppers per se, but slightly tired properties that the modern yuppy is happy to do up slowly. Using the sluggishness of the market and snail-like speed of conveyancing to their advantage, the current class of buyers is made up not so much of sharks as serpents, unafraid to bide their time as they keep an eye on the prize.

‘The market is weighed down by inefficient conveyancing,’ says Rupert des Forges, a proprietary partner at Knight Frank, ‘and the high-street mortgage industry has got slower since covid. Time is a deal-killer.’ To some, however, it is a strategic advantage. Buyers are finding sellers more willing to accept low-ball offers. ‘I managed to shave £45,000 off the asking price of a two-bedroom flat with a garden in Islington,’ reports corporate lawyer Chris Selwyn, 28. ‘I saw it online mere minutes after it had gone up, visited it within the week and made an offer that was almost immediately accepted.’ Desperate times for sellers prove propitious.

A former insurance broker tells of a 1,400sq ft maisonette he bought a few years ago in Chelsea that went on the market for £2.1 million, but eventually sold for £450,000 less. How did he do it? ‘I found the previous owners’ names through the Land Registry and then learnt via social media that they were going through a divorce,’ he says, on condition of anonymity.

Unsurprisingly in a sluggish market, many sellers choose to list their homes off-market, eager to avoid any price reduction from being made public. ‘Two-thirds of deals on properties worth £3 million to £15 million are happening off-market,’ says buying agent Lucie Hirst. ‘We live in a culture of uncertainty,’ agrees Frances McDonald, associate director of residential research at Savills. Until the market reclaims ‘more confidence’, many are set to benefit from the downturn.

When might things turn around? Most of the agents spoken to said the catalyst would be the elimination of stamp duty. ‘When you add this to all the legal fees, conveyancing fees and cost of removal, it usually comes up to 20% of the total purchasing cost, which is why so many rent instead,’ says des Forges. Another one to note is the introduction of mansion tax in April 2028, targeting homes valued at £2 million and above. ‘It won’t do much,’ des Forges says of the policy. Labour hopes it will raise a mere £400 million, which is the cost of running the National Health Service for all of 17 hours.

It is this very uncertainty, however, that is making some people more bullish. Many are banking on a change of government, in 2029 or earlier, to do away with mansion tax — something the two biggest opposition parties are against — as with other Labour measures such as the land value tax, which Andy Burnham has refused to rule out. (The latter is a levy on the value of the home, designed to replace stamp duty.)

There is a reason those shorting the market are doing so mostly in prime central London: an area that would be most severely affected by the very policies some bet won’t come into being. A few of Labour’s promises, instead, are welcome. ‘One reason my brother and I managed to get our flat for so little is because we bought it on a very short lease,’ says Plantenga, ‘because Labour said it would overhaul leaseholds and move flats into commonhold ownership.’ It’s a case of rolling the dice and seeing where it lands.

The scenic Scottish Borders is an area of grand country houses and estates, gently rolling countryside, fertile farmland, productive forestry, steep river valleys and picturesque towns and villages. It is bounded to the south by the majestic, 97-mile-long River Tweed, one of Britain’s great salmon rivers, which flows from west to east across the region and forms the historic boundary between Scotland and England.

One of the most magical country estates in this landscape — and a place that ticks most, if not all of those boxes — is the 3,460-acre Portmore estate in the upland valley of Eddleston Water, a landscape dominated by the straight, narrow channel of the watercourse that flows through high-sided valleys on its way south to join the Tweed at Peebles, the county town.

Rated of ‘outstanding architectural and archaeological value’ by Historic Scotland, Portmore truly has it all: a Category A-listed Scottish Baronial mansion, spectacular gardens and grounds, seven estate houses, farmland, hill ground and woodland, all within easy commuting distance of Edinburgh, which is 18 miles to the north.

Recently relaunched onto the market through Christopher Dewe of Knight Frank’s country department and Emma Chalmers of Galbraith, the estate is for sale for offers over £15 million for the whole.

Offers over £8 million are sought for Lots 1 and 2, some 1,200 acres in all, comprising Portmore House with its gardens, parkland, hill ground, forestry and Portmore Loch, a 105-acre Victorian reservoir managed by Scottish Water, to the south of which lie the remains of a Neolithic fort and settlement, the Northshield Rings, a Scheduled Ancient Monument deemed of national significance.

Offers over £5 million are sought for Lot 1 alone, comprising Portmore House with its gardens, designed landscape, hill ground and amenity woodland, some 300 acres in all.

The original Portmore estate was established in the early 18th century by the Earls of Portmore and acquired in the late 18th century by Alexander Mackenzie, whose son Colin, a close friend of Sir Walter Scott, established Portmore’s parkland, woodland and designed landscape.

In 1850, his son, William Forbes Mackenzie, had Portmore House, an imposing red sandstone mansion, built by the eminent country-house architect, David Bryce, in his signature Scottish Baronial style.

Following a fire, the whole interior was remodelled and a family wing added to the north end by Bryce’s younger brother, John, in 1883. Further substantial remodelling took place following another fire in 1986.

Today, Portmore House offers more than 17,200sq ft of well-proportioned accommodation on three main floors, including several wonderfully elegant reception rooms, a family-friendly kitchen and various domestic offices on the ground floor.

There's also a library, as you'd expect of a house whose floorplan could have been pulled from a Cluedo board, and an organ room that's almost 40 foot long. The organ, naturally, is included.

A grand principal bedroom suite, two en-suite bedrooms, seven further bedrooms and five further bathrooms are located on the first floor, with yet another bedroom on the second floor.

And if a mere 11 bedrooms isn't enough? You'll find seven more on the lower ground floor, along with a billiard room, a playroom, guest annexe, wine cellars and caretaker’s flat.

According to Historic Scotland, ‘the overall trend at Portmore from the late 20th century onwards has been one of repair and restoration. The original Victorian terraced lawns have been tidied up, and a central pond added. The walled garden has undergone a radical transformation, while the glasshouse looks like the sort of thing you'd find up the A703 at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh.

Designed by the present owners during their 40-year tenure, the garden now forms the main attraction for open days organised under the Scotland’s Gardens Scheme’.

In 1933, two of the most well-respected architects working in Britain came together to start a practice together. Erich Mendelsohn, a German Jew who had recently fled the Nazi regime and moved to London, went in to business with Serge Chermayeff, a Russian-born architect and designer whose family had left his homeland for good after the Russian Revolution.

Art Deco was, at the time, beginning to give way to Modernism, and the pair created several buildings that are among the most celebrated of the 1930s. The Grade I-listed De La Warr Pavilion, on the sea front in Bexhill, East Sussex, is arguably the most famous, but they also built a couple of private homes: Cohen House, in Chelsea, and Shrubs Wood, in the Buckinghamshire village of Chalfont St Giles. Both blazed new trails, helped set the template for the International Modern style which had a huge influence on architecture for the next half a century, and one of them — Shrubs Wood — is now up for sale at £3.95 million.

Shrubs Wood was built in 1933-1934, and is Grade II*-listed . If it looks familiar, there's a good reason: it's been used for the filming of many high-profile TV shows when the need has arisen for a house that fits the 1930s aesthetic. Agatha Christie adaptations are a case in point: several episodes of Poirot used the house as a location, Miss Marple has visited a few times, and this is one of the places where they asked themselves why they didn't ask Evans.

Its monolithic reinforced concrete construction allowed for huge rooms, uninterrupted floor space, grand picture windows and perhaps most beautifully of all, a quadrant curve staircase.

Laid out on a largely rectangular floorplan, there’s 3,735sq ft of internal space, with separate living room, dining room and a large kitchen, while the cellar space below has a wine cellar, a boiler room and storage areas, as well as access to the garage.

If the furniture in these pictures strikes you as particularly well-suited to the architecture, that’s no accident: much of it is original furniture created specifically for the house by its two eminent designers. The fact that it’s still here is extraordinary, and contributes to that Grade II*-listing status.

There are six bedrooms, all of which are on the first floor, with five of them sharing two family bathrooms. Most are fairly small, but the master bedroom is anything but: this is a proper suite, with two dressing rooms and a large en-suite bathroom as well as the sleeping area itself.

The house was originally known as Nimmo House, but was renamed by the impresario and Savoy hotel heiress Bridget D’Oyly Carte, who moved here in 1949 and made a wonderful home of the place - and in particular turned the five acres into wonderful gardens that are important enough to be locally listed.

The Buckinghamshire Gardens Trust has carried out a lot of research into the house and grounds, which can be read on their website (PDF link).

It’s a wonderful home, full of history and architectural interest as well as a beautiful building in its own right. What’s more, it’s eminently commutable: the stations of Gerrard’s Cross and Chalfont & Latimer are both just a few minutes’ drive, from where you can be in central London in under 20 minutes.

The caveats? You’ll probably want a specialist surveyor, since reinforced concrete of this vintage can have issues. Additionally, there’s no EPC rating listed on the details, and as a listed building we believe that the house is exempt - again, you’ll need to get your surveyors and solicitors to clarify details with the agents, but do bear in mind that concrete buildings don’t usually retain heat like brick or timber. Bills could be high.

Assuming none of that puts you off, this is a real find: a graceful home full of light and original features. Mendelsohn and Chermayeff only designed two homes together before going their separate ways, and Shrubs Wood makes that seem like a real pity.

In Wiltshire, a few miles from Gillingham and Warminster's train stations, lies a house so beautiful it looks like something out of a Disney film.

The property was originally built between 1920 and 1922, on Duchy of Cornwall land, for the daughter of a shipping magnate — who happened to be friends with Edward VII. The house you see today, however, is much changed.

It was almost completely rebuilt between 1999 and 2004, which is when the Millennium Tower and vine-clad loggia were added. In 2015 Country Life wrote about the restoration project of the Grade II-listed home, carried out by David and Mary Thomas. Mary recalled the home as being ‘a mean miserable little house’, when the couple purchased it in 1997 — something which is hard to believe when you look at the property today.

Mere Down House was ‘made of silvery local stone under a Cornish slate roof,’ our reporter wrote. The Thomas’s were inspired by late-17th and early-18th-century English domestic architecture, as well as French and Italian influences, when redesigning the house. The architect Jonathan Harker described their approach as ‘wonderfully anarchic’ and said it combined ‘all the very best of old and new’.

Now on the market with Strutt & Parker, for £3.2 million, it comes with five bedrooms, five bathrooms and five reception rooms, in a total of 4,129 square feet. As well as a lot of undeniably striking architectural beauty, the new owner will also inherit an Aga, a gym, which could also be used as a games room, a boot room and a full-height, baize-lined safe. And, as if that wasn’t enough, a library, tower study and downstairs cloakroom.

Some of our favourite features, however, are the antique marble floor in the entrance hall, the wide, polished French oak boards in the sitting room, and a well-fitted larder.

Outside, there's a swimming pool, greenhouse, cutting garden, fruit trees, potting shed and workshop, as well as amazing views of the Wiltshire and Dorset countryside that extend far beyond the property itself. The house would, quite obviously, suit a lover of the great outdoors.

Mere Down Houses on the market with Strutt & Parker — see more details.

Oxfordshire — £11.95 million

If you're going to centre your property on anything, it might as well be a 17th-century palazzo in unspoilt Oxfordshire. How handy, then, to have Newington House, which fits the bill perfectly.

Offering 10 bedrooms and 42 acres of land, there is plenty here for the discerning Home Counties enthusiast. The interiors are elegant and period, featuring panelling, intricate door casings, and classical French wallpaper murals, complemented by fine wooden parquet flooring and exquisitely carved marble fireplaces.

Outside, there are equestrian facilities, landscaped gardens, woodland, paddocks, lake, swimming pool, tennis court, walled garden, croquet lawn, rose garden and greenhouse. All in all, absolute paradise.

For sale via Savills — see more details and pictures.

Cumbria — £8.5 million

Few parts of the UK are as picturesque as the Lake District, and few parts of the Lake District are as perfect as Holbeck Ghyll. How do I know that? Because I once stayed there.

The property is a characterful and charming country-house hotel, offering a package of eight acres, 24 bedroom suites in the main house, and five further cottages, annexes and lodges. The icing on the cake, if any was needed, are the searing views of Windermere.

For sale via Strutt & Parker — see more details and pictures.

Cheshire — £3.35 million

Knightswood has a cinema room that measures 27ft by 19ft — striking proportions therefore to match the rest of this very 21st-century, 8,200sq ft home that is set in 19½ acres of Cheshire countryside with far-reaching south-westerly views.

Built in 2020, natural light floods in through the myriad windows, not least in the impressive open-plan entertaining spaces. Knightswood is also a haven for those who live and breathe horses as there is both a bespoke stable block and a manège. Its eco credentials are impressive, too: heating is provided by a ground-source heat pump and it has an EPC rating of 81.

The driveway runs to about an eighth of a mile — plenty of time for visitors to become suitably impressed before they reach the door. Outdoor enthusiasts will surely love the gardens, the swimming pool built into a terrace, woodland, a private lake and ponds.

For sale via Gascoigne Halman — see more details.

West Lothian — £3.7 million

Michelangelo meets modern-day artistry in the Category B, six-bedroom Ormiston Castle in Kirknewton, a Scots Baronial property that dates from 1851 and was designed by David Bryce for Archibald Wilkie. Now brought firmly up to date thanks to a multi-million-pound renovation programme, a couple of the High Renaissance Italian’s masterpieces from the Sistine Chapel are reproduced on the ceiling of the 1930s Art Deco-style cinema, which also has star-constellation fibre optics and immersive surround sound.

The castle, sited on the outskirts of Edinburgh, has six reception rooms and is run as a hospitality business, with significant income-generating potential. The grounds, which include woodland, run to 15 acres and include fenced paddocks for horses, which can also be housed in the stable block.

For sale via Strutt & Parker — see more details.

Hampshire — £2.5 million

Fabulous and yet functional, the beautifully renovated Dragon House makes an impression from the get-go. Built in the late 16th century, this Grade II*-listed six/seven-bedroom, four-storey home is steeped in history, being one of Peterfield’s most eminent landmark properties. Newly renovated, the changes have ensured the integration of modern twists with historic features, including plenty of exposed timber beams.

The cosy, comfortable cinema room adds an extra layer of luxury, bringing the big-screen experience straight into the new owners’ living space and meaning no need for trips to Cineworld. Although this house with three to five reception rooms is located in the heart of the historic town — and only a seven-minute walk from the main-line railway station — its half-an-acre of walled gardens offer a hub for privacy. Dragon Cottage is self-contained, but adjoins the main house.

For sale via Knight Frank — see more details.

East Sussex — excess £3 million

Grade II-listed Bedford House on Brighton’s beautiful Marine Parade, within the East Cliff conservation area, has seen a plethora of stars pass through its front door, not least big-screen performers Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh. Another, actress Margaret Leighton, even has a suite named after her.

Thought to have been built for the Duke of Bedford, this six-bedroom property with four reception rooms became home to the painter Cecil D’Oyly John, playwright Sir Terence Rattigan (Leighton’s great friend) and later comedian Tony Hancock’s theatrical agent brother, Roger. It was the latter who created the first cinema room.

‘The star of the show at Bedford House is the fantastic cinema room. It is Art Deco inspired with exceptional attention to detail,’ says property agent Matthew Higgins of today’s room. The main entrance has a sweeping staircase that Rattigan installed in the 1960s to impress his famous guests.

For sale via Fine & Country — see more details.

Surrey — £3.75 million

‘For me, Wood Rising offers the perfect balance between a modern home, featuring excellent amenities such as a cinema room, gym and luxury fittings, and traditional English architecture,’ says agent Charles Broadbent-Combe. He is talking about the recently refurbished six-bedroom property situated on the Wentworth Estate, where the triple-height galleried entrance and dining hall, complete with exposed beams, has attributes that are likely to prompt gasps of admiration from visitors.

In fact, timber has been used to great effect throughout this property, not only lending warmth to many rooms, but giving a sense of time past. Eight reception rooms mean that this could be a true party place, with the drawing room the perfect spot for mixing and mingling before the French doors are thrown open for summer soirées on the terrace. The garden runs to about three-quarters of an acre. Virginia Water’s shops and railway station are about half a mile away.

For sale via Savills — see more details.

This article first appeared in the October 28, 2026, issue of Country Life. For more information on how to subscribe, click here.

It's the stuff of dreams: a beautiful, historic, five-storey castle for sale in Scotland with a £120,000 price tag.

Baltersan Castle dates to the 16th century; a tower house built on an L-plan in the Ayrshire village of Carrick, a place which has historic links to Robert the Bruce, who was Earl of Carrick long before he became Scotland's freedom-fighting king.

The castle was built two and a half centuries after Robert died: it was erected in 1584, commissioned by John Kennedy of Pennyglen and his wife, Margaret Cathcart. It's a building full of architectural interest, and a rare survivor — very few tower houses from the era are still standing, and even fewer that, like Baltersan, has a wealth of sophisticated architectural touches. For all that, you won't be surprised to hear that the castle is designated Category A by Historic Scotland.

And what of those flourishes in the building? The agents, Galbraith, have done a fine job listing them: there's a secret chamber, a number of discreet keek-holes, fine moulded stonework, intricate doorways and fireplaces, carved stone waterspouts, gun loops, iron grilles, heraldic stonework and much more.

It's a fascinating place — but it's also, plainly, a wreck. The walls are still standing to more or less their original height, but the floors themselves have long gone. Baltersan is believed to have been lived in and used until the second half of the 18th century — Robert Burns is said to have visited at one point — since when it's gradually fallen into the state that it's now being sold in.

Even in ruin it has continued to inspired. John Keats and Robert Louis Stephenson are both said to have visitied, while the iconic architect and designed Charles Rennie Mackintosh came to the castle and sketched many of its details. The resulting drawings are held in The Mackintosh Collection in the Hunterian Art Gallery in Glasgow.

Baltersan was owned by a man named James Brown for more than three decades, and he made many efforts to save the castle. Planning permission applications to save the building, restore it, and turn it into a guesthouse have been made, granted and lapsed; Galbraith note that the last approval was granted by South Ayrshire Council in 2007. Whoever takes it on will have to go through the process again, though past approvals are invariably a good sign, particularly for those embarking on a sympathetic restoration effort.

The problem, of course, is that such projects require huge resources. Brown was still looking for investment when he ended up selling to current owner Angelo Ovidi in 2024, and after being unable to bring his own £2 million restoration plans to fruition, Ovidi too is now passing on the baton.

'Baltersan has inspired architectural and artistic interest over several generations,' he says.

'I fell in love with the castle, its setting and its history when I first met James [Brown] and have been passionate about its restoration ever since. My hope is that new owners will recognise its unique character and significance, breathe new life into the property and allow it to stand proud once again.'

What awaits those new owners, then? We asked Tim Moulding, one of the most well-respected country house building and renovation experts in Britain. Amazingly, Moulding's family have been in the building business since Baltersan Castle was still standing more or less intact — Moulding & Co was founded in 1798.

'There is something wonderfully romantic about rescuing a ruined Scottish castle, but the reality is that you're not buying a house in need of renovation. You're taking on a major conservation and reconstruction project,' he says. 'The purchase price is likely to be the least significant part of the investment.'

The first steps in the project are to establish the structural integrity of the surviving masonry, since 'a building that has stood without a roof for centuries will have suffered prolonged exposure to the elements. You need to understand the condition of what's left before contemplating how to rebuild what's missing.'

Even as you undertake that work, the equally important job of finding the right people needs to be tackled: 'the successful restoration of a building like this depends upon assembling the right team from the outset, particularly a conservation architect, structural engineer and contractor with genuine experience of historic masonry and traditional craftsmanship,' says Tim.

As for cost? The £2 million budget Ovidi had in mind is probably in the right ballpark, but depending on the final plans it could easily surpass that. 'Projects of this nature are notoriously difficult to cost accurately, and a generous contingency is absolutely essential,' adds Moulding.

'I would be very surprised if a comprehensive restoration to a high residential standard didn't run into several million pounds.

'Ultimately, this is unlikely to be a conventional property investment. It requires someone with the passion, patience and financial resources to become a custodian of an important piece of architectural history. For the right person, the rewards could be extraordinary.'

Ah, yes — the rewards. Saving Baltersan would be a wonderful thing to do, and it would leave the next owner with a castle to be proud of. There's something else to bear in mind too: the castle is set amid unspoilt countryside, but isn't so remote as to make getting there a problem. This is the heart of South Ayrshire, close to the market town of Maybole and the world-famous golf links at Turnberry, an hour or so from Glasgow, and less than half that to the airport at Prestwick. On the down side? There's little land included — only around half an acre — but there is an access track noted on the agent's details.

'Baltersan is much more than a romantic castle ruin. It is a story, a place and a piece of Scotland’s heritage,' says Natalie Fotheringham of Galbraith in Ayr, handling the sale.

'The surviving fabric and extensive research archive provide an unusually clear understanding of the original house, while its commanding setting and historic grounds add to its appeal.

'For a new owner, the opportunity is therefore not simply to rebuild a castle but to safeguard and restore one of Ayrshire’s most significant historic buildings and create the next chapter in its history.'

Where was it?

Near Towcester, in Northamptonshire.

A quick description

We built the house from scratch. Living in London with small children, we wanted to move to the countryside for two reasons: so that they could grow up running through fields and so I could do more interesting work than putting up fences (I was a landscape contractor at the time).

How did you find the plot?

We went to stay with my parents-in-law. They mentioned that the farmyard next door was for sale, so we took a look. It was a concrete courtyard with tumble-down barns, but we thought we could do something with it, and the idea of having grandparents close by appealed.

What did you build?

We took down the existing structures to re-use the bricks and the roof slates — although no sooner had we assembled the slates than they were all stolen. The house was L-shaped and had six bedrooms, all sitting within the original courtyard.

Any mistakes?

We ended up with a house that was too big for our budget, which enforced some economising, such as the number of radiators installed. Until we could afford to fix that, we had to run from the Aga to an electric blanket at night during the winter.

Favourite aspect?

The fact that we could walk through a gap in the garden wall to [my wife] Celestria’s parents’ house and the woods. We loved the garden, too.

Best memory of living there?

We managed to finish the house, including removing the ducklings that had settled in the unoccupied end, just before the birth of our youngest child.

What happened to it?

We sold when all the children left home and we moved to Oxfordshire.

James Alexander-Sinclair is an award-winning garden designer. He co-presents a podcast 'The James & Joe Garden Show' with broadcaster Joe Swift, which is available on Apple Podcasts and Spotify

One of the quirks of working at Country Life, and there are many, is meeting interesting people who have strange hobbies. People like to collect things, from peacocks to Peugeot pepper grinders, they like to write and then e-mail you manuscripts for fiction books that you never intend to read, and they like to take photos. Plenty of people, as it turns out, like to take photos of front doors.

Doors, as it turns out, are more interesting than you might think. I found this out when I interviewed a door fancier on the Country Life podcast. Stanley Kubrick was also obsessed with doors, as Jon Ronson discovered when he visited the director’s estate and found hundreds of boxes of pictures of doors that he collected while filming Eyes Wide Shut.

But perhaps the most famous door, at least in London, of the late 1990s and early 2000s is the blue door that houses William Thacker, the affable and clumsy bookshop owner played by Hugh Grant in Notting Hill. That blue door (well, not that blue door) is for sale now with Sotheby’s International Realty, for £7.5 million.

That blue door can be found on Westbourne Park Road in (unsurprisingly) Notting Hill. It was the home of the film’s writer Richard Curtis. Supposedly, when it was chosen for the film by production designer Stuart Craig, he wasn’t aware that Curtis lived there (which seems like an astounding coincidence). The actual original door was sold at Christie’s for charity, but the current owners of the home have simply painted the new door in the original famous colour.

All very interesting, but not as interesting as the actual house itself. Behind said door a small vestibule then leads to a courtyard and patio garden, on the other side of which is a three bedroom house of some 2,700 square feet.

Most of the property manifests itself in the large dual height kitchen/dining/living room, which extends to almost 50 feet in length. The space rises to a dramatic vaulted ceiling, and also comes with a first-floor galleried landing that wraps around 75% of the perimeter. The mezzanine contains the study, and the principal bedroom and en-suite bathroom, while two further bedrooms and three bathrooms occupy the ground floor. As if all that wasn’t enough, the property also features a roof terrace space, in case the front courtyard garden doesn’t take your fancy.

Westbourne Park Road is one of the prime locations in Notting Hill, itself a prime location in London. Combine the storied history of the front door, the location and the unique layout of the home, and there’s no doubt that this home is worthy of any bookseller or film star.

The house with the blue door from 'Notting Hill' is for sale with Sotheby's International Realty for £7.5 million. For more information and pictures, click here.

London is a city of 10,000 railway arches. The engineers who created them — Isambard Kingdom Brunel, Robert Stephenson, James Greathead and many more — originally envisioned them being used as storage spaces and maintenance areas, but it didn't take long for them to become thriving business spots. They became workshops, cafés, breweries, jellied eel sellers, high-end wine merchants, garages, gyms and many more things. 190 years on from the opening of the first viaduct in London, the arches that sit beneath the railways of the metropolis are as vibrant and varied as ever. Particularly if you head down to the Bermondsey Beer Mile.

One thing they have very rarely become, though, is housing — and that makes this eyecatching property in South London all the more unusual. Archway Studios, as its called, is for sale through The Modern House at £1.1 million.

Since its completion in 2012, this has been the family home of the architect Didier Ryan and his wife Candice Lake, a photographer and model — but even they didn't originally expect it to be the place that they'd start a family.

'The original idea was to create a live-work space for my architectural practice and my wife’s photography business,' Ryan says.

'As our family grew, the balance shifted towards residential use, and we eventually secured planning permission to use the building as our family home. The design was always intended to be flexible and generous, allowing work and family life to coexist naturally.'

As the pictures show, the design is triumphant: striking, beautiful, clever, surprising. The project has won awards. including being named 'London House of the Year' in the 2013 NLA Awards, with NLA chair Peter Murray saying that the 'judges were wowed by the incredible space and highly crafted feel' of the house.

Ryan and his wife had been attracted to the area — in between Elephant & Castle and Camberwell — because of its industrial heritage, history and identity, 'and the the potential to give former industrial buildings a new lease of life,' Ryan says. 'The railway arch offered a unique opportunity to create something quite different from a conventional house.'

Unconventional is spot on: the house is built around a huge central space, about 35 feet by 22 feet, lit from above by the glass ceiling at one end, and heading in to the arch itself on the other. The light that comes through is a highlight of the building: 'One of the greatest pleasures has been the changing quality of light throughout the day and across the seasons,' Ryan says, 'as daylight pours through the skylight, atrium and triple-height, south-facing window, creating a constantly shifting interplay of light and shadow.'

The two bedrooms sit off to one corner, one on the ground floor and one on the first floor, while there's also a second floor study. There are two bathrooms, a laundry space, storage tucked away in seemingly every nook, and — above all — a wild abundance of staircases, mezzanines and huge windows which makes the place look not unlike an Escher drawing brought to life.

It's unconventional, but it clearly works — and the family are only moving on as they've relocated from Britain to Australia.

'My favourite part of the finished house is the kitchen,' Ryan says.

'It looks into the living area beneath the vast atrium, with views towards the trees and sky and wonderful natural daylight. It became the social heart of the house, where we cooked big meals and gathered with friends around an oversized dining table.'

All well and good, but there's one very obvious question to ask of a house built into an Industrial Revolution-era railway arch: what happens when a train goes past?

'The house has a special energy, shaped by its distinctive architecture and relationship with the railway,' Ryan says. 'Rather than conceal its industrial origins, we chose to celebrate them, connecting the home to the pulse and movement of London.' In other words, yes, you do hear them — bit not as loudly as you might fear.

'The building is carefully engineered for acoustic comfort,' he adds. 'The faint sound of passing trains remains perceptible and provides a subtle connection to its unique setting. Our aim was to embrace the site’s constraints and transform them into opportunities to create something both beautiful and deeply liveable.'

Though it's 'the right time to move on', the sellers have clearly loved the place: 'What began as a search for the perfect pocket of inner London evolved into an architectural vision and, ultimately, a much-loved family home where we raised our children, entertained friends and enjoyed a truly distinctive part of the city.'

With a marginally reduced supply of farmland for sale on the open market between January and September this year — 138,545 acres compared with 147,760 acres for the equivalent period in 2025 — it is ‘steady as she goes’ in the market for UK farms, according to Alex Lawson, head of rural agency at Savills. He attributes the resilience of the marketplace to sustained demand from lifestyle purchasers, buyers with rollover funds to invest and local farmers seeking to extend their existing holdings.

All three buyer groups will find much to their liking at Home Farm, Upper Basildon, near Reading, Berkshire, a wonderfully private, 455-acre residential and farming estate centred around a handsome 16th-century farmhouse within the North Wessex Downs National Landscape and yet only an hour’s train ride from central London.

For sale for the first time in more than 40 years through Louisa Over of Savills farms and estates, Home Farm is offered either as a whole, at a guide price of £10.97 million, or in four lots.

Lot 1a, Home Farmhouse with the converted granary, two-bedroom Garden Cottage, outbuildings and 98 acres of land, is for sale with a guide price of £7.4m; lot 1b, 114½ acres of rolling arable land and woodland adjoining lot 1a, is priced at £1.15m; lot 2, 146 acres of productive arable land and woodland to the east of Upper Basildon, is on offer at £1.45m; and lot 3, 97 acres north-west of Mead Lane, is offered at £970,000.

The focal point of the estate is the picturesque farmstead comprising the charming farmhouse, approached via a wonderfully dramatic driveway that's like a smaller version of Northern Ireland's famous 'Dark Hedges', made famous in the Game of Thrones adaptation.

The main farmhouse, which is unlisted, provides 6,727sq ft of well-proportioned living space on three floors, including entrance and reception halls and three main reception rooms.

There's also a study, conservatory and garden room, kitchen and dining annexe.

You'll find eight bedrooms and five bathrooms, and should you need more space there's further accommodation is available in the pretty stone, two-bedroom Garden Cottage.

In 2020, the owners converted the Grade II-listed, 17th-century former granary into an impressive 2,518sq ft, four-bedroom guest house with a vast, open-plan kitchen and dining area. Roof-mounted solar panels provide electricity and heating.

Delightful gardens and grounds include formal and kitchen gardens, planted borders, an arboretum and a tiered garden with an open-fronted summer house and terrace for entertaining.

Amenities include an outdoor swimming pool and tennis court.

Oxfordshire — £5.95 million

In a village not far from Oxford, this fascinating house consists of a series of ancient stone barns converted and upgraded in rare style.

The pool and walled garden are one highlight, but the piece de resistance is the living space with curving staircase that looks like something out of a glossy 1980s TV series.

For sale via Savills — see more details and pictures.

Shropshire — £850,000

An old mill near Oswestry has become a gorgeously quirky country home.

It has four bedrooms, 3,500sq ft of space, wonderful views, and bags of charm.

For sale via Daniel James — see more details and pictures.

Berkshire — £8.5 million

This Grade II-listed country house dates back 300 years, that's had recent improvements overseen by Hugh Petter of Adam Architecture, has 10 bedrooms, 37 acres of land, and is supremely pretty.

One wing is currently rented out, and brings in over £100,000 a year.

For sale via Knight Frank — see more details and pictures.

Northamptonshire — £4.5 million

This working farm with almost 270 acres of land has a fine farmhouse at its heart, huge potential, and extensive outbuildings.

For sale via Michael Graham — see more details and pictures.

Somerset — £1.95 million

The huge family room at the centre of this house near Shepton Mallet encapsulates its charm and appeal — it's a lovely, traditional, cosy six-bedroom country house.

For sale via Strutt & Parker — see more details and pictures.

The tiny hamlet of Billesley in Warwickshire is in the heart of Shakespeare country. Located about a mile from the stone village of Wilmcote, and four miles west of Stratford-upon-Avon, it's a tiny place now — with just 39 residents as of the 2021 census — but this was once a thriving medieval settlement. The Black Death, and the recurring plague years that followed, changed everything: by 1428, the village church, All Saints, had just four parishioners left.

By the 16th century things had picked up, and, in the reign of Elizabeth I, Billesley Manor was built. It's still standing, albeit now a hotel; as is the church, a Norman relic that's Grade I-listed, redundant, yet still beautiful. The church's great history goes beyond its age: local tradition holds that Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway here, and that one of the couple's grandchildren also tied the knot at All Saints. It's not a fact widely accepted by scholars (Temple Grafton is thought to be more likely), but there's no evidence exists to prove either claim.

Amid all this, buyers will be captivated by the launch onto the market of unlisted Upper Billesley, a fascinating country-house complex set in 180 acres of arable and pastureland, parkland, paddocks and woodland in the Warwickshire hamlet of Billesley. Christopher Dewe of Knight Frank’s country department quotes a guide price of £6.5 million.

Upper Billesley, isn't an Elizabethan manor, but it's been turned in to one as it's evolved over the centuries. What was once a modest farmstead is, today, a pleasantly rambling country house that offers 9,862sq ft of atmospheric living space in the main house split across three floors, including entrance and reception halls and a spectacular galleried drawing room.

There are also two dining rooms, a sitting room, study, garden room, kitchen/breakfast room, playroom and a wine cellar.

On the first floor you'll find six bedrooms, while the entire second floor is taken up by the master suite, with its separate bedroom, dressing room, split-bathroom (bath and shower one side, WC on the other) and a huge walk-in wardrobe which makes clever use of what would otherwise be a long, narrow space with restricted head height at the side.

Secondary accommodation is provided off to one side of the main property, connected via an archway and balcony, where two flats have been laid out. There's also a three-bedroom garden cottage.

Much improved by the current owners in the course of the past 40 years, Upper Billesley House sits at the end of a lovely, tree-lined drive in the middle of gently undulating land, surrounded by mature woodland that ensures maximum privacy and tranquillity.

The beautifully laid out gardens are a source of inspiration, the centrepiece a formal parterre rose garden in the shape of a Union Flag.

There's also and herbaceous borders providing a rich tapestry of colour and texture throughout the seasons. A highlight is a 1½-acre lake created by the owners on the east side of the farm.

Amenities include an outdoor swimming pool, a tennis court, a stable yard with four loose boxes, extensive garaging, a massive function barn and a multi-purpose farm barn. In total there's over 32,000sq ft of space.

The pasture is farmed in hand, with the arable land contracted out to a local farmer. The land is registered in a Countryside Stewardship Scheme until January 2027 and recently entered the Sustainable Farming Incentive.

For sale via Knight Frank at £6.5 million — see more details.

At the tender age of 17, Paul Jackson Pollock — better known now just as Jackson Pollock — moved to New York City to study, with his brother, under Thomas Hart Benton (an artist at the forefront of the American Regionalist movement).

Pollock had a nomadic childhood, bouncing from Wyoming to San Diego, to Arizona to Chico in California, and was expelled from at least two schools. Then again, which culture-defining artist wasn’t? Think Salvador Dalí, Lucien Freud and Nic Fiddian-Green. Raw creative talent can rarely be contained between four walls.

Pollock, however, did live between the top four walls of 46, Carmine Street, in New York’s West Village, while he was honing his craft. Now, it is for sale with Compass for $1.99 million (about £1.45 million).

The Federal-style townhouse — which boasts two centuries of history, more than double the average New York City home — was built in 1827. A milliner sold hats and bonnets from the lower floors in the 1850s. Artists, including Pollock, moved in in the 1930s, and the building was landmarked as part of the Greenwich Village Historic District in 2010.

Underneath the 14-feet, vaulted ceilings there’s an open kitchen-cum-living room with a decorative fireplace, one en-suite bedroom with a walk-in wardrobe, a separate bathroom and a loft. The fact that 46 has some extra inches on the buildings and trees around it means light can pour in from the skylights at all times of day — perfect for budding and established artists. The condo’s whitewashed brick walls might scream bohemian, but there’s also very necessary split-system air conditioning, new kitchen appliances and plenty of hidden storage. Plus, communal outdoor space, with a grill. Think counterculture, but make it comfy.

Pollock’s breakthrough came about a decade after his stint at 46 when the gallerist and art collector Peggy Guggenheim commissioned a painting for her New York townhouse. When art critic Clement Greenberg saw the 20-feet-wide work of art (Mural, 1943), he remarked that ‘Jackson was the greatest painter this country has produced.’

A leading figure of Abstract Expressionism and undisputed master of the ‘drip technique’, Pollock measured himself against Pablo Picasso, whose work he admired and was desperate to surpass. You could argue that this year, 70 and 53 years after their respective deaths, Pollock achieved such a thing — at least if money is the metric. In May 2026, his Number 7A (1948) sold at Christie’s in New York for $181.185 million (£135.3 million); in May 2025, Picasso’s Les Femmes d’Alger (Version ‘O’) (1955) sold at the same auction house for $179.4 million (£116.4 million at the time). They are the most expensive works by both artists to sell at auction.

Pollock resented the way celebrity, critics and the art market threatened to take control of his identity and his work, and rejected his iconic drip paintings, while they were at the height of fashion, in favour of the so-called ‘black pourings’: ‘Austere compositions,’ according to Christie’s, ‘in black enamel on unprimed canvas.’

In 1945, Pollock and his wife, fellow artist Lee Krasner, moved to a modest farmhouse in Springs, a hamlet in East Hampton, where the relative isolation gave him space to work. Today, the house and studio — still splattered with paint — is a National Historic Landmark. The only thing better than a trip to see it, of course, is living in the same space that Pollock once occupied when on the precipice of greatness.

46, Carmine Street is for sale through Compass — see more details.

The University of Oxford’s dreaming spires are more ecologically sound in their slumber thanks to a £43 million student-housing development comprised of three new Passivhaus buildings and the low-carbon retrofit of a grand Victorian villa for St Edmund Hall.

The world’s oldest surviving academic society for housing and educating undergraduates, St Edmund Hall appointed London-based architect Wright & Wright (which recently completed an award-winning renovation project at Lambeth Palace) to increase capacity at Norham Gardens from 56 to 127 bedrooms, at the same time as boosting sustainability.

This means that the college (alumni include Sir Keir Starmer and Monty Python’s Terry Jones), which is targeting net-zero energy use by 2030, can now house every undergraduate in affordable, purpose-designed living spaces, allowing private rental accommodation to return to the local market. Norham Gardens, a tree-lined residential road that runs alongside the northern edge of University Parks, is part of the North Oxford Victorian Suburb Conservation Area (NOVSCA), an Arts-and-Crafts district that was one of the UK’s first conservation areas back in 1968.

The three new buildings, which incorporate traditional local characteristics, such as gables, chimneys, dormers and ornamental ironwork, were built in full adherence to Passivhaus standards (see 'What is Passivhaus?' below), with the effect of reducing operational energy demand by up to 70% compared with standard new-build benchmarks.

The retrofit — of an 1874 villa designed by local Gothic Revivalist architect Frederick Codd — used breathable natural materials, including wood-fibre insulation, cork and lime-based insulating plaster, as well as biosolar roofs and conservation-appropriate glazing, in accordance with Passivhaus’s guiding principles.

Together with the creation of new gardens and outdoor common rooms — involving the planting of rare and climate-resilient trees and wildflowers — the project has delivered an 88% biodiversity net gain. ‘It’s a great win for all. Even the local wildlife has benefited. We’ve put in log stacks and installed swift and bat boxes in the brick façades,’ Ronan Morris, a partner at Wright & Wright, tells Country Life. He adds that the project offers lessons for owners of all kinds of historic buildings, and not only those occupied by collegians and chiropterans (bats), in retrofitting their own homes to be more sustainable, as well as preserving charm and character.

‘With historical homes, the traditional problems are being leaky and losing heat quickly, but when you try to rectify that, you can create unintended consequences,' adds Morris.

'For instance, if you don’t insulate correctly, you risk trapping moisture within the walls, so you need to go about it the right way and that means understanding what it’s made from. Is it stone? Is it brick? Which way is the house orientated? Are you getting a lot of wind-driven rain on one side? You may need to consult a specialist conservation architect, but there is a lot of good retrofit guidance available from organisations such as Historic England and the Passivhaus Trust.’

Morris also advises looking at the roof — one of the main areas of heat-loss — with insulation here helping to reduce bills. ‘Then come the windows and doors and there are lots of great, historically appropriate products out there, including triple glazing, which are coming onto the market now,’ he continues.

‘The industry is finally catching up with the idea that, to meet our climate targets, we’re going to need to build in other ways, and that’s going to require a different approach to historic properties, too. Buildings are living, breathing things, not merely historical artefacts, and we have to make them fit for people and the planet.’

What is Passivhaus?

Passivhaus is an international low-energy, high-comfort building standard that originated in Germany. Designed to deliver exceptional energy efficiency, comfort and durability, the first concept house was completed in Darmstadt in 1991 and there have since been tens of thousands of Passivhaus-certified homes registered throughout the world. Its UK affiliate, the Passivhaus Trust, has set itself a target of 10% of all new homes in the UK being built to Passivhaus standard within the next 10 years.

Spokesperson Chayley Collis says: ‘The building physics behind Passivhaus apply to any building, whether new-build or retrofit. With an existing building, you can’t change the building’s orientation, structure, shape or amount of glazing. The Passivhaus standard, therefore, includes a retrofit standard called EnerPHit that takes these limitations into account and relaxes some criteria to reflect this.

However, it is still a very demanding standard and will typically result in a building that out-performs a new-build property, both in terms of energy and comfort.’ Passivhaus projects must adhere to key principles that include high-performance windows and insulation, an air-tight layer to minimise heat loss and efficient mechanical ventilation with heat recovery (MVHR).

It takes energy, determination and clarity of purpose to create the perfect small country estate, qualities demonstrated in spades by the owner of the spectacular Vineyards Farm at Claverton, near Bath, Somerset, which comes to the market with a guide price of £9 million through the London office of John D. Wood & Co.

As selling agent Claire Carter reveals, it all started with the purchase in 2013 by the owner, an international lawyer with a passion for history, of a rundown 17th-century farmstead on a slope above the historic village of Claverton, two miles east of Bath at the southern end of the Cotswolds National Landscape.

Inspired by the setting of the 15-acre holding, originally a vineyard dating back to ancient times, he demolished the existing farmstead and set out to create what Ms Carter describes as ‘the nearest thing to a Napa Valley winery’, complete with its own vineyard that has just produced 550 bottles of a very drinkable Chardonnay and boasts its own helipad.

Protected by mature woodland, with not a single other building in sight, Vineyards Farm enjoys glorious views over the rolling Somerset hills, yet is minutes away from the World Heritage city of Bath.

The agents describe the principal house as ‘nothing short of breathtaking’, from the dramatic entrance hall crowned by soaring oak beams and framed by reclaimed stone, to the beautifully proportioned reception rooms and the state-of-the-art kitchen.

Four palatial bedroom suites have vaulted ceilings, exposed timbers and luxuriously appointed bathrooms.

Outside, the Dairy is arranged as two beautifully designed cottages, which can function independently or as a substantial secondary dwelling.

The magnificent new, 4,000sq ft barn offers limitless potential, with enough underground space to provide garaging for up to seven vehicles.

The grounds, which are laid out as an artistic mix of sweeping lawns, enchanting woodland and a series of terraces, create an ever-changing landscape of colour and texture.

A sheltered contemporary swimming pool enjoys a wonderfully private outlook over the surrounding hills.

Vineyards Farm is for sale through John D. Wood & Co at £9 million — see more details.

Normans Hall has curb appeal — and plenty of it. The black-and-white stucco and timber façade lends storybook charm and is a feast for the eyes; and it's currently on the market at £6.95 million via Jackson-Stops.

The house's origins date back to 1620 and a story that includes the ownership of the Leigh family of Adlington Hall, and an east wing built in 1921 for H. B. Crook to the designs of Henry Boddington III.

The lucky purchaser of this Grade II-listed property will be buying a place with a fascinating history — but they'll also be getting a thoroughly 21st century home. Walking through the front door isn’t like stepping back four centuries to the time of James I: this is a property that has been extensively renovated.

It's been done sensitively, with modernity and subtle shades woven through its five bedrooms and five reception rooms, where exposed timber beams ensure a nod to the past.

The natural light that pours into the kitchen helps to highlight the quality of the bespoke walnut units.

The bedrooms and bathrooms aren't numerous for a house of almost 9,000sq ft — there are five of the former and four of the latter — but they are worthy of special mention, in particular the master suite. Not only does it have the largest dressing room we've seen in a long time, it also has a magnificent bathroom with his-and-hers polished copper bathtubs.

Gardens wrap around and there is also a fruit orchard, a meadow and woodlands, all of which run to about 11 acres.

It's a lovely, secluded plot, ringed by mature trees, and taking in a fine mix of formal planting, lawns and more natural areas.

Within the grounds you'll also find a thatched 'breeze house', and a former ice house — both of which offer plenty of potential for whatever use you can think of. There's also a garage for six cars, more accommodation in the garage annexe, and plans are in place for some other extra: a glazed corridor to link house and garage, and a proposed leisure suite.

Located in the village of Prestbury, which forms a point of Cheshire’s Golden Triangle, along with Wilmslow and Alderley Edge. The area has been given all sorts of fun nicknames over the years — 'The Knightsbridge of the North' is a favourite — and there's no denying that it's an area that's been a magnet for the great and the good.

In other words, don't be surprised if you find yourself rubbing shoulders with the very famous — having a business magnate over the road, or a Premier League footballer living next door. Everyone from the Beckhams and the Rooneys to Paddy McGuinness and, er, Alan Turing have lived in this lovely part of Cheshire.

'Mine was the peacock room,' wrote Rupert Uloth in Country Life in 1995. 'I could have had the Turnbull and Asser room, its walls covered in striped shirt material, or even the Wedgwood room, in blue and white. The Nina Campbell suite, on three levels, is the one to go for If you really want to spoil yourself.'

Rupert was writing about one of the most extraordinary buildings in the Midlands: Stapleford Park, a Grade I-listed country house of some 36,000 square feet set in 54 acres near Melton Mowbray, Leicestershire. Back in 1995, Stapleford Park was run as a country-house hotel, the brainchild of an American entrepreneur called Bob Payton. It was just the latest chapter in the story of an iconic country pile. The next chapter is about to begin, for the hotel's last guests checked out in 2024, and the whole place is now for sale with Strutt & Parker at £18 million.

This will be the first time that Stapleford has changed hands in 40 years, but that actually counts as a pretty quick turnover by the house's former standards. Before Payton took over it had been owned by the Gretton family, who'd made a fortune in brewing beer, and bought the place to use as a lavish country house for entertaining guests. The Grettons had owned it since 1894, having picked it up a few years after the Sherard family — also known as the Earls of Harborough — had died out.

As for the Sherards? They had been here since 1402.

The Sherards built a house here in about 1500, but — according to Giles Worsley's article in Country Life in 1988 — the oldest parts of the building as it currently stands date to the work done in 1633.

Further changes were made in the 18th century — when Capability Brown was brought in to landscape the surroundings — before Gretton used the fortune he'd made at the iconic Bass beer brand to employ the architect J. T. Micklethwaite. The brief was simple: turn Stapleford into a magnificent and luxurious country home.

Gretton died before his vision could be completed and his heirs eventually turned it into a visitor attraction, with miniature railway (still running today) and a wild animal enclosure (long gone). Not until Payton's purchase, and £4 million of further investment, did it become the palatial house that Gretton had imagined.

That is more or less the state that you'll find Stapleford in today, for in essence this magnificent house — which is about as close as you'll find to Leicestershire's answer to Versailles — isn't really a country house in the traditional sense.

There is a wellness centre, for example, with seven treatment rooms, a pavilion with changing rooms, four tennis courts and more. As well as the bedrooms — all 48 of them in the main house — there are four cottages within the 54 acres.

The big question here is 'what happens next?' It'd certainly be possible to get Stapleford Park up and running in the hospitality industry once more, but the potential is there for many other options.

‘Although the blueprint is here to revive a country-house-hotel business, or create an exclusive country members club, it’s not beyond the realms of possibility to restore the house to a private dwelling, should there be the appetite,’ says Mark Rimell, director of Strutt & Parker’s National Country House Department.

He's right: all it needs is a new owner with the vision to make that happen. And the deep pockets to allow them to do so.

Stapleford Park is for sale through Strutt & Parker — see more details.

Here at Country Life we don't write about all properties, but we do write about a pretty wide variety. Sometimes it's a sprawling estate, sometimes it's a Victorian glasshouse, and sometimes it's a medieval relic with a hot tub.

Once in a while, though, we cover country homes that can best be described as metal boxes. It doesn't happen much, but it does happen — and today is one of those days, as we take a look at Druim Na Cracaig, a magnificently bonkers property that's in one of the most remote places in the UK mainland. It's for sale through Savills at £750,000.

If, for some reason, the pictures on this page won't load for you, it's a dinky little home that looks like a cross between a submarine, a UFO and an Airstream caravan, all situated in as wonderful a Scottish country setting as you could imagine. It's on an unspoilt hillside that overlooks the Sound of Mull, where the only thing that can interrupt your Highland idyll is the view of the ferries plying their way from Oban to the Outer Hebrides.

It's about as far from the typical Scottish manse as you could imagine, yet it's become something of a smash on the holiday rental market, with the agents describing it as 'one of the most sought-after and wish-listed Airbnb properties in the United Kingdom.' It's not a place you would — or perhaps even could — live permanently, but for a few days getting away from it all, it's hard to imagine somewhere that offers a better blend of whimsy and natural beauty.

All that success prompted the owners of this wacky little home to build two more similar places, both of which are included in the listing. The original home has been dubbed 'Airship 002' (despite there only being one of them, so far as we can see), with the other two buildings called 'The Captain's Cabin' and 'The PilotHouse'. No, that's not a typo: PilotHouse is presented as a single word with a capital H in the middle. If I could figure out how to type a 'shrug' emoji, I would have added one here.

Dubious grammar aside, the other two places to stay here, while not as eyecatching as the original Airship 002, are just as fun, and better suited to larger groups. The PilotHouse looks like a corrugated metal pencil sharpener, while The Captain's Cabin looks to our eyes as if an ancient croft building — it's actually an chapel where the owners live at the moment — decided to wear a giant metal top hat.

They're being sold as a trio, and with a suggestion that they'd attract holiday rental income of around £100,000 a year. Clearly keeping all that metal polished and shiny would cost a fair bit, but it still seems like there's a decent business to be run here. A very decent business.

'Together, the properties represent an exceptional lifestyle and business opportunity, combining award-worthy design, established trading success and an unforgettable setting on Scotland's west coast,' say Savills. 'The sale offers the rare chance to acquire one of the country's most distinctive hospitality enterprises, with a proven reputation and significant ongoing appeal to domestic and international visitors alike.'

Obviously, you could ignore the letting possibilities completely, and live in these wacky little homes yourself. But for those looking to run this unusual trio of places while living nearby, the owners are also selling a pair of more traditional Highland homes, the four-bedroom Tigh Darach, at £525,000, and the three-bedroom Tigh Na Mara, at £425,000.

It's always exciting when a windmill comes up for sale. So much so that we always write about them when they do, and thus the thought came to me this morning that if I had a pound for every story I've written about a windmill for sale, I'd have enough money to buy a windmill next time one comes up for sale.

I had a look back through the Country Life property archive, and it turns out that this would be a bit of an exaggeration. I'd actually have three pounds. Even if you add in windmill stories that our other property writers have done since I started here, it'd still only be about £12.

That said, each one of those windmills was an absolute classic (as you can see here, here and here), which is something they have in common with the latest windmill to come up for sale: Sutton Windmill, near Stalham in Norfolk. Sowerbys quote £1.5 million for this beautiful place.

As a connoisseur of windmills for sale, the first thing that struck me about Sutton Mill is its sheer size. This is one of the tallest surviving windmills in Britain, if not the tallest: nearby Moulton Mill is usually cited as the tallest, but Historic England records Moulton's height at eight storeys, and Sutton Mill's height at nine storeys.

Either way, it's a true local landmark. Stalham is in one of the flattest parts of Britain — this is the heart of the Norfolk Broads National Park — and this fine building, with its proud white sails, means you need never fear getting lost on a post-lunch walk.

Historic England's listing also gives its original construction date of 1789, though it was rebuilt in 1859 following a fire, and repaired again after a lightning strike in 1940 that stopped it working for good.

The milling business's loss turned out to be the property market's gain: the windmill's restoration began in the late 1970s, and it's been continually improved and updated since then. The current owners have carried out a significant restoration project, which included converting the neighbouring granary into the main body of the home.

And the home is really something: six bedrooms, 7,000 square feet of space and full of original features, from wonderful old timber beams to huge inglenook fireplaces and exposed brickwork.

The sense of space is at its height in the huge kitchen / dining / sitting room, which at almost 90 feet long (that's 27 metres for any Gen Z readers) is one of the biggest rooms we've seen in Country Life all year.

There's also a gym, playroom, another sitting room, a second kitchen and a utility room on the ground floor, three bedrooms on the first floor, three more on the second floor, plus two more smaller spaces that could also be used as bedrooms. And all that's before we've mentioned all the floors of the windmill's tower itself, all of which are accessible.

Should you need even more space, there's a charming three-bedroom holiday cottage in the grounds as well. And for those who don't need extra space, Sowerbys have had a quote from a holiday rentals agency suggesting that the cottage could bring in well over £50,000 a year.

They also ran the same sums for the main house itself, suggesting that rental income for the granary could be around £120,000 a year. You don't need to be Hannah Fry to work out that an annual return of £170,000 is quite the projected return on a £1.5 million purchase price, even after the costs of running it as a rental business are taken into account. Obviously, it'd be a shame to own a property this beautiful and not live in it yourself... but it's useful to know that this could be a wonderful lifestyle business waiting to happen.

Sutton Mill is for sale via Sowerbys at £1.5 million — see more details.

Cheshire — £17.5 million

Agents call this 'one of Cheshire's finest houses'. What it lacks in age (it was built in 2015) it makes up for in grandeur as a modern 'Georgian' mansion in sprawling parkland.

Seven bedrooms, a magnificent indoor pool and enormous living spaces.

Even the garage is really quite something. What a place.

For sale via Savills — see more details and pictures.

Northamptonshire — £2 million

Six bedrooms, six bathrooms and five reception rooms at this recently-built country home in the Notswolds. Just under two acres of land, a triple garage and a village location add to the appeal.

For sale via Michael Graham — see more details and pictures.

Hampshire — £2.6 million

Surrounded by fields and woodland, this house comes with almost 20 acres of the South Downs National Park to call your own.

There's a pond, an indoor pool and six bedrooms, plus plenty of Edwardian charm.

For sale via Strutt & Parker — see more details and pictures.

West Sussex — £13.25 million

Absolutely breathtaking, this eight-bedroom masterpiece sits in 11.6 acres on the slopes of Blackdown, in the South Downs National Park near Haslemere.

Designed by Ian Adam-Smith, it has a wine cellar, cinema room, swimming pool and gardens to die for. Idyllic.

For sale via Knight Frank — see more details and pictures.

Somerset — £1 million

A medieval farmhouse with its own orchard? This is the stuff of country house dreams.

For sale via Roderick Thomas via OnTheMarket — see more details and pictures.

Derbyshire — £1.575 million

This gorgeous Queen Anne House, built in 1703, is a joy, with seven bedrooms, grand reception rooms and fine gardens.

For sale via John German via OnTheMarket — see more details and pictures.

The coast of North Devon is beautiful. It has wide, sandy beaches, charming villages and beautiful, unspoilt countryside on the doorstep, in the form of the Exmoor National Park.

It's also home to one of the most unsual properties for sale in Britain today: The Manor House in Lynmouth. It's set in a seaside village that's tucked away amid slopes steep enough to earn the area the nickname 'Little Switzerland'. And while it's a pretty place, it's not exorbitantly expensive by most standards; a four-bed semi-detached home costs £350,000, for example, and for £500,000 you could own a guest house.

Not everything on this stretch of coastline is quite so affordable. Just around the headland from Lynmouth you'll find Glenthorne, one of the most striking homes in the West Country, for sale at £6.5 million and located in a place dubbed 'the most beautiful spot on Earth' by its former owner.

That makes it all the more incredible, then, that local estate agents Stags are listing The Manor House at just £350,000. So what's the catch? Is there a catch?

Well, yes: of course there's a catch.

The Manor House comes with a separate coach house, two cottages, an acre of land, outbuildings and more — but it also comes with a vast amount of work to do, a leasehold agreement, and a ground rent of £30,000 a year. There are just under 110 years of the 120-year lease remaining, and as the listing states, 'the tenant is obliged to carry out considerable renovations'.

That's putting it mildly.

As the pictures show, those renovations have started in parts of the property, and some rooms appear to have been finished up — but others are still largely building sites. This is a huge project to take on, returning a place that has been run both as a hotel and a care home to profitable use.

It could become a hotel once more, but the agents add that it could as easily become a restaurant, wedding venue, wellness centre or anything else, subject to planning and permission. And while £30,000 a year is a lot, a successful business would potentially be able to recoup that amount and then some.

One thing is for sure: the new buyer will need a great team in place — architect, builder, lawyer and more — before they even think about submitting a bid. The phrase caveat emptor has rarely seemed more appropriate.

With the housing market running slowly, prices wobbly, and interest rates causing headaches for anyone either buying or remortgaging, there's no surprise that The Manor House in Lynmouth is far from the only interesting fixer-upper on the market right now.

There's another great example in Margate, the Kent seaside town that has seen huge gentrification in recent years, not least thanks to local girl Tracey Emin. Here, you'll find a three-storey, six-bedroom townhouse for sale via auction with a starting price of just £135,000.

As well as the work that needs doing, there's also a lot to get your head around — both in terms of the space, as well as the effort required. The house is on an angled plot, and several of the rooms, as shown in pictures and floorplans, are parallelograms rather than rectangles. It might be quirky, but in a town now full of modern art it seems fitting. And if it doesn't bother you, this seems an incredibly reasonable price for a house close to the Old Town, the beach and the station.

Slightly more expensive, but just as much in need of TLC, is this farmhouse on the wild north-east coast of Scotland, half-way between Brora and Wick.

Listed at 'offers over £160,000', it has a gorgeous setting overlooking the North Sea, and it's enormous, with seven bedrooms.

That's the good news. The pictures make the bad news pretty clear.

Still, the potential is massive, and the house is also just off the main NC500 tourist route around the coast. The route's popularity has brought traffic and people to places not used to either, and that has caused friction. But it's also created huge opportunities to do new things with buildings in amazing settings such as this one.

For brave buyers willing to look part the problems and take on a big project, it'll be a tempting prospect.

The Manor House and Estate in Lynmouth is for sale via Stags.

The house on Charlotte Square, Margate, is for sale via Miles & Barr.

Shantry Farm in Latheron is for sale via Yvonne Fitzgerald.

Here at Country Life, our roots are very much in Britain, but we still appreciate the finest things that the rest of the world has to offer.

Quite often, this revolves around the swankiest spots in New York, heartbreakingly pretty coastal retreats in Italy or, er, flying donkeys in France. But once in a while our friends just across the North Sea in Norway become the focus for our tales, from exotic libraries and life aboard converted minesweepers to a ski lodge so perfect that it temporarily granted my colleague James Fisher the gift of clairvoyance.

And right now, Norway is back in our sights because there's a property for sale that fits rather neatly into that 'finest things around the world' bracket. It's a mountain villa that's called, with typical Scandinavian understatement, Gulsviksetervegen 1476.

The house is located on a mountain called Høgevarde, in the Hallingdal valley a couple of hours' drive north of Oslo. And as you'll no doubt have seen already from the pictures, it's pretty breathtaking, inside and out. As you'd very much expect for 74 million Norwegian kroner — the equivalent of just under £6 million.

The villa was a four-year labour-of-love for the owner, who visited Høgevarde in 2009 and decided he absolutely had to build a home here. Four years of planning, architectural headaches and construction followed, and now it stands proud as a six-bedroom villa that fits perfectly into this unspoilt landscape.

It's not hard to see how the vendor fell in love with the place. There's an edge-of-the-world vibe amid these mountains that makes it feel like a set from Lord of the Rings, with grassland and woodland, peaks and lakes, and wide open skies.

Every effort has been made to make the most of those views, with picture windows, strategically-placed terraces and more.

The agent, Lars Jakob Aarak, calls it 'much more than a conventional mountain retreat,' and the facilities here really back that up. The space that combines gym, spa bath and sauna, for example, is the stuff of high-end hotels. And I particularly love that fact that the wine cellar is in one corner, so you can soak in the tub while glancing across to mentally pick out your next bottle of the weekend.

As well as the main house there's also an annexe, barn and garage, which seems to be set up as a sort of workshop for getting your outdoor gear ready for a fresh adventure in the mountains.

As beautiful as it is, there's one key element: the price. Though there's plenty of space — more than 5,500sq ft — the plot of 2,249sq m equates to little more than half an acre.

The same sort of purchase price in Scotland would buy you this magnificent highland retreat with almost 12,000 acres. It's not just us making the comparison: an article about the lodge in Norway's biggest newspaper, Dagens Næringsliv, led on the fact that this is a record price being sought for a Norwegian mountain home.

Aarak's answer is that this is not any old house, but instead a home 'where timeless craftsmanship meets magnificent nature', and, 'an ambitious personal vision, brought to life through substantial dedication, architectural planning, craftsmanship, carefully considered materials and extraordinary attention to detail'.

For sale through PrivatMeglerern — see the details in English here, and the sales listing here.

'When Christine played Songbird, grown men would weep. I did every night,' said John McVie of Christine McVie, his ex-wife and Fleetwood Mac bandmate, of one of the best-loved hits written by Christine while she was part of one of the greatest bands of the 1970s and 1980s.

McVie didn't even 'write' it in a conventional sense: 'I woke up in the middle of the night and the song was there in my brain, chords lyrics melody, everything,' she once explained. Turning what was in her head into the song took her half an hour — and the hardest bit was staying up all night waiting for the studio to open, as she had nothing at home to record it on to.

'I've never been able to figure out how I did that,' she said. 'I don't know where that came from. I wished it would happen more often, but it hasn't.'

Songbird lives on today, thought not just as the original, and Eva Cassidy's classic cover version — it's also the name of one of the cottages at The Quaives, the 17th century home in Kent that was McVie's home for 25 years, and which is now up for sale at £3 million through Harding Green.

McVie, like so many of the best rock stars, left LA and bought this English country house in 1990, located in the village of Wickhambreaux, not far from Canterbury. She lived and worked here happily for 25 years, refurbishing the place completely, and to this day her care of the house shines through.

Fleetwood Mac are one of the most successful bands of all time (and Rumours is the eight-best-selling album ever recorded), and McVie clearly had the luxury of saving the house without worrying about costs. We won't go in to how much she made, but here's a picture stepping out of Fleetwood Mac's private jet in 1975.

The present owners — who came here when McVie relocated to Belgravia in 2015 — have also done a fine job, keeping the place up and upgrading. Not the least of the additions is a yoga studio in one of the barns, currently run as a business (the house is also used to host events).

Set in 18 acres, this seven-bedroom, Grade II-listed home is full of character, with exposed timbers, panelled walls, casement windows and handsome fireplaces throughout. The reception rooms are cosy and relaxed — in the words of Harding Green's Mellony Morgan, 'a succession of spaces for both entertaining and relaxed family life.'

It's huge, too, with more than 6,000sq ft over three floors. The ground floor, arranged in a U-shape, has a drawing room, sitting room, family room, dining room and a huge kitchen-breakfast room.

The master suite, with its dressing room and en suite bathroom, is on the first floor, as are three further bedrooms and two family bathrooms. Three more bedrooms and two more bathrooms are on the vaulted second floor above.

The cottages and other outbuildings amount to 5,000sq ft of extra space, bringing The Quaives' total to more than 11,000sq ft. But the grounds are perhaps just as much of a draw for buyers: there are formal gardens and terraces, woodland and a lake.

In short, it's a picture of bucolic bliss that's about as far as is possible to imagine from the hard-living peak of Fleetwood Mac's heyday. Mick Fleetwood started the band in the 1960s with John McVie — the Fleetwood and the Mac — but there was a revolving door for band members until the line-up settled down with the McVies and Fleetwood plus Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks from the mid-1970s until well into the 1990s.

Those peak years saw them based in Los Angeles in the 1970s and 1980s where they wrote, recorded and toured — as well as negotiating endless parties, the machinations of the music business (they were one of the few big bands of the era to manage themselves) as well as blizzards of cocaine and rivers of champagne.

The timing of McVie's purchase of The Quaives isn't accidental: by the time the band recorded the 1987 album Tango in the Night (for which McVie wrote the biggest hit, Everywhere) several of her bandmates were in various forms of recovery. Indeed, Nicks missed many of the album's recording sessions as she had checked in to the Betty Ford Clinic.

McVie came out relatively unscathed (throwing a cake off a balcony was about as wild as it got), though she had just as much of a share in the band's complicated on-again-off-again relationships as any of them. One of the songs McVie wrote for Rumours, called You Make Loving Fun, was written about an affair she was having with one of the band's technicians. She was still with John McVie at the time, and apparently told him she'd written it about the dog.

As well as the music and the house she left behind, the greatest tribute to McVie is that she kept on such good terms with the bandmates throughout the years that followed. The outpouring of love and grief from her bandmates after McVie died from a stroke is incredibly touching to read.

The Quaives is for sale through Harding Green — contact the agent for more details.

Where was it?
In a village on the edge of Cornbury Park estate in Oxfordshire

A quick description.
It must have been one of Charlbury’s oldest cottages, built of Cotswold stone with a slate roof. I’m 6ft 3in and the main bedroom door was only about 5ft high. There were two further tiny bedrooms, a large attic, which was used as an office or spare room, and a small garage that I sometimes used as a sculpting workshop.

How did you find it?
Through an estate agent in Chipping Norton.

What made you buy it?
It was quite a lot of house for the money and was conveniently close to a friend who had a barn that I rented as a studio for my work.

Best memory of living there?
Two of our three daughters were born when we lived there and the house had a really good vibe, which both my wife, Laura, and I could feel from day one. I also owe it a favour. One night, a tree fell down in the garden during a storm and the cost of having it chopped up for firewood prompted me to buy a chainsaw — the ultimate boy’s toy.

Anything unusual?
Our dog, Pepper, would regularly wee at night if left alone in the kitchen, which had steps down to the cellar. It turned out that the cellar had once been used as the village morgue.

Why did you sell?
It was always intended to be a stepping stone and was never going to be big enough for our whole family. I also really wanted somewhere I could actually stand up in. We eventually found a derelict barn in Cropredy near Banbury, a bit closer to the foundry in which I used to cast my work. The property had trees growing out of a shed and an ancient Land Rover rusting in the yard, but when I walked to the perimeter and put up a snipe, I knew that it would be our next home.

Hamish Mackie is an award-winning wildlife sculptor known for working in bronze, silver and any other castable metal using the lost-wax casting method. Find out more at the Hamish Mackie website.

This feature originally appeared in the October 14, 2026, print edition of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.

Rupert Brooke was already well-known before the First World War, but it was war that made him famous.

His fame endures today, so much so that the fact that his childhood home is up for sale has sparked plenty of interest. And that fame, 111 years after his death, is all the more extraordinary considering that his most famous work is probably the most divisive poem written during the entire conflict.

Even those who don't recall the name will know the lines:

If I should die, think only this of me,
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is forever England.

These words, the opening lines of 'The Soldier', were part of Brooke's collection of five poems published just before Christmas 1914. They caused something of a sensation in the days when poetry cut into the collective consciousness in a way that's hard to appreciate today.

With the benefit of hindsight it's easy to see his works as misty-eyed idealism, a hopelessly naive viewpoint that contrasts with the bitter, despairing and cynical work of the poets who made it further through the War — Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon being prime examples.

At the time, though, Brooke caught the public mood of bravery, optimism, sacrifice, stoicism and duty that underpinned the early days of the Great War, when long queues were still forming at the enlistment offices, and before the true horror of what was unfolding in the fields of France and Belgium became clear. His lines were cited widely, held up as an inspirational example, and even read out at St Paul's Cathedral in the Easter service in April 1915.

Two weeks later, Brooke was dead.

Rupert Brooke's life had begun on August 3, 1887, at No 5, HIllmorton Road in Rugby, the Warwickshire town where his father, William Parker Brooke, taught Classics at Rugby School. He was the middle of three brothers, though he'd also had an older sister who died in infancy.

The house, then as now, is charming. It sits at the end of a small terrace of fine Victorian houses, in an area of large, similarly-aged villas close to the centre of the town. The school buildings are within a few moments of the front door.

With four bedrooms and three bathrooms there's plenty of space — almost 3,000sq ft of it — and the house has been kept up beautifully while retaining its character. Thus, the encaustic tiled floor in the hallway and ornate fireplaces that Brooke and his family would have known are still in place.

The town centre location and subsequent building mean that there's not much in the way of garden — just a small patch of lawn and an outdoor seating area — but there's parking for four cars at the back of the house.

Brooke spent his entire childhood in Rugby, attending first the Hillbrow prep school and then going on to Rugby as a student — excelling at rugby, cricket and, of course, poetry — before heading for Cambridge in 1906.

There, he flourished. Charming, clever, athletic and dashing — the poet WB Years dubbed him 'the handsomest man in England — life came to him easily. He became president of the Fabian society, was friends with everyone from Yeats and Churchill to Virginia Woolf to John Maynard Keynes, and had a string of romantic relationships with both men and women. He also travelled widely, his poetry, while not regarded as groundbreaking, at least earning him a reputation as one of the up-and-coming stars of the 'Georgian poets'.

Love and nature abound in those early poems, and seems to have enjoyed an idyllic life, spending time in the countryside, skinny dipping in streams and rivers (including at least once with Woolf) , and 'celebrating cozy weekends in flower-wreathed country cottages' in the words of his biographer Dorothy Eder as quoted by the Poetry Foundation. It's not hard to see where Brooke's idealised image of England came from; he lived it at the peak of his powers in his 20s.

The spell didn't last forever. A series of bad turns — especially in his love life — precipitated a mental breakdown, which prompted him to go abroad from 1912 until 1914, travelling as far as Tahiti, before returning a few months before the beginning of the war.

Brooke joined the Navy not long after the declaration, with Winston Churchill — then First Lord of the Admiralty — securing the poet a commission as an officer in the Royal Naval Division, a hastily-set-up infantry arm of the Navy. Initially deployed to help in the evacuation of Antwerp, Brooke had seen no action by the time The Soldier was written, though this and his other poems clearly suggest that he seemed only too happy to be involved. 'God be thanked who has matched us with his hour,' he wrote in a poem called Peace. 'With hand made sure, clear eye, and sharpened power, / To turn, as swimmers into cleanness leaping, / Glad from a world grown old and cold and weary.' This fatalistic idealism seems the very opposite of the wasteful and endlessly tragic war of later work such as Owen's Anthem for Doomed Youth, with its descriptions of soldiers 'who die as cattle'.

At the beginning of 1915, Churchill decided to deploy the Royal Naval Division to Gallipoli. Brooke never made it: before even reaching the Dardanelles, he was bitten by an insect, the wound turned to septicaemia, and he died aged 27 on April 23.

Churchill himself contributed to the obituary in The Times: 'This life has closed at the moment when it seemed to have reached its springtime,' he wrote. 'A voice had become audible, a note had been struck, more true, more thrilling, more able to do justice to the nobility of our youth in arms engaged in this present war, than any other... The voice has been swiftly stilled. Only the echoes and the memory remain; but they will linger.' Prophetic words.

His corner of a foreign field wasn't in France or Belgium, but on the Greek island of Skyros, where his comrades buried him before moving on to Gallipoli. But there's also in Rugby a corner of an English field that is forever Rupert Brooke's old house.

Rupert Brooke's childhood home is for sale through Knight Frank at £775,000 — see more details.

New York is one of those cities where you must always expect to see the unexpected. It’s a cliché for sure, but in the Big Apple it is a pertinent one. You cannot squeeze 8.5 million people into such a small space and not expect to see an odd assortment of things.

That strangeness breeds beauty. As mayor Zohran Mamdani correctly identified in his speech celebrating the NBA Championship winning New York Knickerbockers, this city and its residents are endlessly resilient. They find ways to make things work, in ways you wouldn’t expect. So, for the trained New Yorker, of course it makes sense to build a small New-England style cottage on top of an apartment building in Greenwich Village. Where else would you put it?

This delight is currently for sale with The Full Ask for the sum of $10.5 million. Is it the finest house in New York City? It is unlikely, but it is certainly one of the more interesting and tasteful manifestations of a penthouse that I can remember seeing for some time.

Set over two floors, the property offers a fraction over 3,000sq ft of living space, which translates into four bedrooms and two bathrooms. The majority of the home can be found on the ‘first floor’ (which is actually the sixth floor), where the current owners have created a welcoming and spacious living area ideal for entertaining.

The highlight is a vast and open dining-kitchen-living area, which occupies most of the floor. Three bedrooms are also on this floor, of which one is currently used as an office. The primary bedroom occupies the corner and offers a dual aspect, as well as a walk-in closet and en-suite bathroom. The fourth bedroom can be found in the mezzanine space between the first and second floors.

Of course, it all looks very nice, but the star of the show must certainly be the terrace and roof garden, with its corresponding ‘cottage’. The structure and ‘the meadow’ were built in 2003, to the drawings of the architect Lawrence Tobe. About 1,200sq ft of sedum sits on about seven inches of soil, underneath which are drainage and protective layers.

Sadly, Country Life isn’t the first magazine to discover the beauty of this property. The New York Times covered it in 2006, National Geographic in 2009 and it was photographed by George Steinmetz in 2015, publishing the pictures in Gothamist.

The views over downtown New York are, of course, sublime. To the south, One World Trade Center stands tall and to the north, the towers of Hudson Yards and the Empire State Building. Near neighbours include, but are not limited to, Taylor Swift.

The penthouse at 719 Greenwich Street, New York, is for sale with The Full Ask for $10.5 million. For more information and pictures, click here.

'One of the finest, if not the very best, of the small Cotswold Tudor houses,’ was the verdict of the late architectural historian and author Sir Nikolaus Pevsner of Temple Guiting Manor.

Historic England agree: Temple Guiting is one of just a couple of dozen or so houses in the Cotswolds that's Grade I-listed. For several years it's been run as one of the smartest places to stay in the country — with the early 16th century manor house and the five barns amid the 14 acres of grounds available to rent at prices starting from around £1,000 a night. Country Life's Paula Minchin tried out the latter in 2023 and absolutely loved both the house itself, and what owners Jane and Steven Collins had done with the place. 'Manor from heaven' was the headline.

It seems that there's been a change of approach at Temple Guiting, though. It was always possible to book the entire estate for a single party, but it's now been put on the rental market proper, with the agents quoting £55,650 per week.

What does that get you? The house and barns that include 15 bedrooms and 14 bathrooms, the swimming pool, the tennis court, the gardens, the yoga studio, the gym, the children's playground, the boating lake and the intriguingly-named secret cinema, which is built in to one of the two ancient dovecotes. (The other dovecote is home to a hot tub.)

And the gardens? They're the work of genius Jinny Blom, a psychologist-cum-philosopher-turned-garden designer.

There's no doubt that country life doesn't get much better than this. However, there's no doubt that this is a lot of money: the rental price works out at just under £2.9 million a year, which is enough to buy you a pretty fantastic Cotswolds home outright. Such as this gorgeous place in Hook Norton, or this one near Cheltenham. And with a bit of back and forth you might be able to pick up this one near Stroud.

So who is the target renter for a place like Temple Guiting? Quite simply, it's the cost of trying before you buy. Taking on a listed building is worlds away from spending a few hundred thousand pounds to rent one out for a month or two, and no doubt there will be some potential buyers who are calculating that, given the current shaky market conditions, renting for a while could end up saving more than it costs. As well as offering the benefit of seeing if Cotswold life is right for you.

Those taking that opportunity are, for want of a better term, the new jetset. 'The Cotswolds is now competing with the South of France and Tuscany for the international summer crowd in a way it simply wasn't 10 years ago,' says Olivia Conway, director of lettings at UK Sotheby’s International Realty.

'We are seeing American and Middle Eastern families take houses for a month or two, bringing children, grandparents and friends with them. They want privacy, space and enough going on that they can stay put. An estate like Temple Guiting, with separate houses, a pool, tennis court and lake, is made for that.

'There is also a growing "try before you buy" market among international buyers. A weekend at a Cotswolds hotel is one thing; living here for six weeks is quite another. You quickly learn which villages you actually like and whether you want complete seclusion or to be closer to the social scene.'

Temple Guiting isn't alone — there are several landmark Cotswolds homes available for rent at the moment. Kirtlington Park in Oxfordshire is also up for rent, with an even higher asking price of £60,000 a week, and the nearby Ardington House is up at £48,000 a week. That suggests that all those sums do indeed make sense for some.

'If you're considering spending several million pounds on a country house, renting first makes enormous sense,' adds Collins. 'By the end of the summer, clients often know exactly where and what they want to buy. Increasingly for UHNW buyers, the holiday house is becoming the starting point for the house hunt.'

The Temple Guiting Estate is available to rent through UK Sotheby’s International Realty — see more details.

Every so often we set about to wondering why more people don't live in Northumberland. Wide open skies, gloriously unspoilt countryside and pristine beaches give it 'all the ingredients of perfection', as Viscount Ridley put it in a piece for Country Life last year. 'Most tourists speed through Northumberland heading for Scotland — big mistake, but long may they do so.'

Northumberland's allure is made all the greater by the country houses that dot this landscape, and a wonderful example has come up in the form of Adderstone House, which is being sold by Ryan Eve of Corbridge-based Finest at a guide price of £2.95 million.

This substantial early-Victorian home is set in 10½ acres of wonderful gardens and grounds within the Northumberland coastal plain, 1½ miles from Belford village, 4½ miles from Bamburgh and 16 miles from Berwick-upon-Tweed.

The main house is a solid, stone-built affair that offers some 6,520 square feet of well organised family accommodation on three floors, including three reception rooms, a study, office and a contemporary Smallbone kitchen/diner on the down floor, with a cellar below.

The first floor has six bedrooms, two of which are en-suite while the other two share two further bathrooms.

The second floor is a converted attic that's listed as a further bedroom, but it's enormous — more than 33ft long — and could be used for all sorts of other things. What a playroom it would make...

Yet the main house is only part of the story here, because there's an annexe which has been created in complete contrast to the Victorian principal house.

Built by the current owners, it's a striking, two-bedroom lakeside home, designed with energy efficiency firmly in mind. Set low into the landscape beside the water, its sweeping profile and planted roof allow it to sit discreetly within the gardens.

Those gardens were created from scratch: this was 10 acres of virgin farmland 20 years ago before the current owners moved in. They brought in local garden designer Sean Murray, whose considerable talents are showcased in the now well-established gardens at Adderstone House.

There are mixed borders, a walled garden, orchard, woodland garden, rose walk, formal garden, dry border, boathouse folly, lakeside walk, Japanese garden — with a Tora gate — and a tea house.

In 2009, the Adderstone House team planted a small private vineyard, listed by the national winegrowers’ association as the most northerly vineyard in England. Here, 100 Rondo vines, a Northern European variety, were planted in 2009 and now yield some 150 litres of excellent juice annually.

This is pasteurised and given away (in return for a donation) when the gardens are opened to the public twice a year in aid of hospice care in north Northumberland.

Adderstone House is for sale at a guide price of £2.95 million with Finest — see more details.

Scottish Borders — £8 million to £15 million

Simply magnificent, Portmore House and its surrounding estate is a breathtaking slice of Scotland centred near Peebles. The 10-bedroom house at the heart is delightful and original. If a mere 1,227 acres isn't enough, a further 2,233 acres are available. And did we mention the organ yet?

For sale via Knight Frank — see more details and pictures.

Hertfordshire — £1.95 million

Five bedrooms and six reception rooms in this house in a private and secluded plot in Letchworth Garden City. Plenty of space at over 4,000sq ft, wonderful privacy, fine gardens and superb access to London via road and rail. That's a lot of boxes ticked.

For sale via Michael Graham — see more details and pictures.

Berkshire — £4.75 million

It's places like this that make you wonder how the clergy used to live: this fine old rectory near Newbury has eight bedrooms, a swimming pool and a party barn. Wonderful.

For sale via Strutt & Parker — see more details and pictures.

Berkshire – £10.15 million

More than 300 acres of the home counties are on offer at this extraordinary property which runs right up to the bank of the River Thames. There are two listed farmhouses, six further cottages, equestrian facilities, staff flats, an indoor pool, a party barn and much more.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the vendors are happy to split this up into three lots.

For sale via Savills — see more details and pictures.

Buckinghamshire — £750,000

Proving that you don't have to be a millionaire to live in a beautiful country home, this devastatingly pretty cottage in Thornborough has four bedrooms, a thatched roof and a gorgeous garden which (unlike some of the other homes on this page) won't need a team of full-time gardeners to look after.

For sale via Russell & Butler via OnTheMarket — see more details and pictures.

Somerset — £875,000

Rodney Stoke might sound like a boy you went to school with, but it's actually a pretty little village in Somerset where you'll find this country house for sale.

Built from stone, with over 3,000sq ft and fine views, it has space, character and the sort of rural setting that'll make you wonder why you lived in the city for so long.

For sale via Sandersons — see more details and pictures.

In 1851, the UK Census showed that 10.1 million people regularly attended church services of some kind — that's 55% of the population. Today, it's around 5% . We live in secular times, and the number of churches with dwindling congregations is a fact of life. The only recent report that claimed otherwise turned out to be based on data that was later debunked.

It's hardly surprising, then, that religious institutions have been selling their buildings off for some decades — a decision which often leads to people wringing their hands, but which is usually unarguable from the point of view of those running the Church of England, Church of Scotland and the other grand old ecclesiastical institutions.

What's more surprising is the prices that some of those buildings are being sold for. Last year eyebrows were raised at the Church of Scotland's 'property for sale' page, which included magnificent buildings such as Culross Abbey on the market for as little as £35,000.

The prices explained by the difficult questions that come with these buildings: what will you do with them? And how will you do it?

Lucy Denton wrote about this exact problem for Country Life last year, and got some fascinating answers. 'Churches have a unique buyer type who see the conversion of a historical building such as this as a project of passion,’ Tom Stewart-Moore of Knight Frank told her. 'Some buyers may be fortunate enough to have deep pockets, but others will very much have a budget to work to.

'It might seem as if the asking prices are low, but, with higher building costs, the heritage and planning implications, and, of course, the general state of repair of the building at the point of purchase, there is a lot for a buyer to think about’.

In some instances, the approaches taken by those brave buyers have led to the creation of truly beautiful homes. Take the case of Greystead Old Church in Northumberland, for example, has been beautifully done and came up for sale earlier this year.

Another example is on the market in Manchester at £325,000, where St George's on Arundel Street has been turned into 25 modern flats.

St Georges makes for an extraordinary apartment block. This 200-year-old church has quite a few original windows, beams and more preserved, particularly in the communal areas.... though as the pictures show, far more has been stripped out and replaced.

That's a solution at one end of the spectrum; many others are at the other end, where the feel is of an almost-untouched church that's simply had pews replaced with sofas and kitchen islands. The best tread the line somewhere in between; here's our pick of some of the finest converted churches on the market today.

Hampshire — £1.25 million


For 93 years, Woodlands Chapel welcomed worshippers, until, in 1982, its doors closed and it was transformed into a comfortable family home with a difference. How many homeowners, for example, can boast of having stained-glass windows that catch the sunlight and cast colour across their rooms? There is even a triptych, which forms part of the show-stopping double-height sitting room/dining room and where the former sanctuary has been turned into a raised seating area.

The nearby kitchen/breakfast room plays host to a Neptune fitted kitchen with granite worktops and whatever is prepared here can easily be carried to the terraced and paved areas outside that are perfect for alfresco dining. One of the four bedrooms is on the ground floor, although it doubles up as a study.

Woodlands Chapel is in the eponymous hamlet close to the market towns of Alresford and Petersfield and within the South Downs National Park, guaranteeing an abundance of natural beauty.

For sale via Carter Jonas — see more details and pictures.

Norfolk — £1.5 million

The Chapel near North Elmham was built with brick and flint elevations in 1883 on the former site of Norfolk County School. Although the school was intended to educate the sons of farmers and artisans, numbers were low and it closed in 1895, only 21 years after opening.

Afterwards, the nearby chapel witnessed the school becoming an orphans’ home and then Watts Naval School, until it shut in 1953. The new owner, therefore, is buying a site with a rich history, as well as a chapel with spectacular proportions that has been tastefully converted and modernised.

Perhaps the pièce de résistance is the first floor’s vaulted 70ft reception room with its stone window that leads out to a balcony where guests and family alike can gaze over the grounds, which run to just over 5¾ acres.

In all, there are four reception rooms and five bedrooms (four of which are on the ground floor). There is also two-bedroom annexe.

For sale via Strutt & Parker — see more details and pictures.

Cambridgeshire — £775,000

St Mary Magdalene’s Church dates back to the 11th century, so the new owners of what is now a Grade II*-listed conversion will certainly be buying themselves a piece of ancient history, as well as walking in the footsteps of generations of worshippers from the nearby village of Caldecote.

Victoria Short, the agent, says: ‘Church House is far more than a home of exceptional architectural importance; its breathtaking rural position and beautiful grounds create a sense of complete privacy, making it a truly special retreat.’

New arrivals will enjoy seeing the gardens with their lawns and terraces and then, once inside, the principal living areas, including the vaulted sitting and dining rooms and modern, well-appointed kitchen, which are arranged within the nave and historic core of the building.

Three bedrooms and two bathrooms are sited across two floors. Peterborough is about 11 miles away.

For sale via Savills — see more details and pictures.

Devon — £875,000

As befits a property within the surroundings of a converted Trappist monastery, the lower ground floor of Vespers in Woodleigh near Kingsbridge has been designed as a sanctuary. It contains three bedrooms, each with its own private garden terrace reached via doors that create seamless connections between indoor and outdoor living.

The impressive, light-filled 25½ft by 27½ft sitting room, which is centred around a Portland-stone fireplace, is located on the first floor, as is the open-plan kitchen/dining room, from which elegant arched doors open onto a balcony, offering those sitting there — perhaps enjoying morning coffee or evening supper — idyllic views over some of the 80 acres of landscaped grounds.

The second floor currently contains a study with mezzanine and the third an office. In the restored chapel, the new owners will enjoy exclusive access to a leisure complex that includes an indoor swimming pool, sauna and jacuzzi.

For sale via Marchand Petit — see more details and pictures.

London — £1.65 million

Who wouldn’t love to come home to The Chapel on Munster Road, SW6, after a long day in the office? Where better to perch at this quieter point of the day than in the open-plan kitchen, dining and living space beneath the glorious vaulted ceiling and exposed timber beams, glass of wine or G&T in hand? Whereas some London properties can be gloomy, The Chapel is flooded with natural light — all the better for seeing the building’s period detailing, which marries perfectly with its modern finishes.

The flexible accommodation consists of two or three bedrooms — the third lending itself to use as a study if required. ‘Every detail has been considered to deliver effortless contemporary living, from the bespoke kitchen and premium fittings to the sophisticated bathrooms and high-quality finishes throughout,’ says the agent. As this property forms part of a new development, a separate Land Registry title has yet to be issued.

For sale via Knight Frank — see more details and pictures.

Fine country houses for sale are as rare as hens’ teeth in Derbyshire and those that come onto the open market — even in tough times — can expect to find buyers beating a path to the front door.

Such a contender is historic, Grade II*-listed Bradbourne Hall, for sale for the first time in 62 years at a guide price of £3 million through the joint agents Derbyshire-based Ed Caudwell and Stuart Flint of Fisher German.

This Elizabethan/Jacobean country house is set in more than 10 acres of beautifully maintained gardens and grounds on the outskirts of the picturesque village of Bradbourne, five miles north of the market town of Ashbourne at the southern edge of the Peak District National Park.

Bradbourne Hall was built on the site of an earlier house by the Buxton family, who lived there until the 1880s. It was then let to a series of tenants before being sold in the early 1960s to a family from Leicestershire who never lived there.

The present owners acquired the hall in 1964, and the place has been much improved by the present owners, who undertook the re-roofing of the entire building some 25 years ago. That said, the decor is showing its age in many of the rooms, so some cosmetic updating will doubtless be on the cards for the new owners. Though if they don't keep the beautiful cream Aga in the kitchen, then the world will be a poorer place.

The house was built, according to its listing, on three storeys of coursed squared limestone with gritstone dressings and quoins under a slate roof.

In all, Bradbourne Hall offers 8,963sq ft of comfortable family living space on three main floors, including five reception rooms, seven bedrooms and four bathrooms. The ground floor houses a panelled reception hall, an elegant dining room, a well-fitted kitchen adjoining a large breakfast room and a charming sitting room with a stone fireplace.

The heart of the house is the magnificent first-floor panelled drawing room, which over-looks the front garden and boasts a wealth of period features. Steps lead down to the Oak Room, a large double bedroom that enjoys views over Bradbourne’s Grade I-listed village church of All Saints.

Also on this floor is the principal bedroom suite, two further double bedrooms and a family bathroom. The exposed beams and stripped floorboards are beautiful, and the effect — especially allied to a four-poster bed — gives the house a fairytale feel in places.

The second floor houses two further double bedrooms and three attic rooms, with a large playroom/family room on the third floor.

A versatile annexe, the former billiard room, serves as a family office with a further double bedroom and bathroom.

Surrounded by mature woodland, which ensures an exceptional degree of privacy, the gardens and grounds have been impeccably maintained over the years by the hall’s devoted full-time gardener.

They include abundant lawned areas, mature shrubs, a large kitchen garden and a heated outdoor pool served by a range of buildings. Outbuildings include garaging, machinery stores and stabling.

Bradbourne Hall is for sale at £3 million through based Caudwell & Co and Fisher German.

Covid threw many of us into the land of remote work, willingly or unwillingly. Some have since returned to the office, but others certainly haven’t. For a growing number of people, me included, fixed locations are now a distant memory. For the past six years I’ve been roaming around the world, working from my laptop as I go. They call us 'digital nomads'.

The world I’m referring to isn’t one of teenage backpackers in a £3 a night hostel in Laos. An increasing number of working professionals, of all ages, are seeking a different pace and flexibility to life, stepping out of the predictable routines back home and embarking on adventures across the globe.

Some flock to the tried and tested destinations in Western Europe, but increasingly these are expensive and over-saturated with tourists — to the dissatisfaction of locals. Many long-term nomads, such as myself, choose distant terrain to work and enjoy instead. Here are six of my favourite ‘offices’ from around the world.

Tbilisi, Georgia (UK Summer GMT +3, Winter GMT +4)

The Georgian capital is the perfect mix of the familiar and the unfamiliar; it’s where east meets west, ringed by mountains and packed with character and history. It’s described as ‘the Berlin of the East’ with a world-famous arts and electronic music scene and a food-and-drink offer that rivals Western European capitals, but for a fraction of the price.

A few hours’ drive from the city, you have ski resorts, excellent hiking terrain and wine country — presenting a bounty of activities for weekends. Meanwhile, Tbilisi has excellent co-working facilities, city-wide fast internet and a booming nomadic community. You can see and experience more in a week in Tbilisi than you do in a year elsewhere.

Top tip: If you go skiing at the weekend, take your laptop. I once got stuck in a mountain resort for four days after the road back to Tbilisi was hit by an avalanche.

Taghazout/Tamraght, Morocco (Winter same as UK, Summer GMT -1)

A place where winter doesn’t really exist and sunshine is guaranteed most days per year. From October to April it’s a world surfing hub, drawing thousands of ‘digital nomads’ with surfboards in tow. Although only small, the laid-back surf villages contain an array of excellent co-working spaces, speciality coffee shops, tasty eateries and yoga/fitness studios. This is mixed in with an authentic Moroccan fishing community, who are renowned for their hospitality.

When not at the beach, the Atlas Mountains are only a stone’s throw away, offering great weekend escapes to waterfalls and pretty mountain vistas. Food and staples are cheap, the internet is good and it’s hard to feel stressed when the sun and surf vibe keep you in check.

Top tip: Avoid the summer months, it can be oppressively hot. Both this blonde Manxman and his laptop have overheated on a mistimed summer visit.

Santa Catarina Island/Floripa, Brazil (Summer GMT -3, Winter GMT -4)

If your working hours are tied to a British office clock, then you need to enjoy an early start to venture west of the UK. If you do, then the island of Santa Catarina, off the Southern Brazilian coast, doesn’t get much better. It offers miles of pristine beaches, backed by rainforest and lush hills, with numerous lakes in its centre. The beautiful nature is criss-crossed by hiking trails, which lead to small coastal towns, where an ice-cold beer, in an extraordinary setting, awaits you. One side of the island also contains the city of Florianopolis and the region is popular for water sports and marine-life spotting.

It’s also well set-up for remote working, with good Wi-Fi and a culinary offer that punches well above an island of its size. The area has all the beauty and Brazilian flair of Rio, but with a much better security landscape and a more relaxed pace to proceedings.

Top tip: Starting work early, means you finish early. Without caution one can get a little over excited at the beach bars in the afternoon, to the detriment of a 6am Teams call the next day.

Almaty, Kazakhstan (Summer GMT +4, Winter GMT +5)

The coolest city in Central Asia, acting as a major hub for not only businesses and creatives in the region, but also for digital nomads. Sitting on the edge of the Tian Shian Mountains, the leafy city has towering peaks to its south, where ski lifts can be reached in less than 40 minutes & wild nature awaits.

Culturally it’s fascinating: Kazakhstan is at a crossroads of cultures, with Almaty sitting on the edge of Central Asia, but only a few hours from China and in a former Soviet nation, with a large ethnic Russian community and a culture of traditional Kazakh nomadism.

Almaty is awash with excellent cafes, restaurants and bars and has the best music scene in Central Asia. Plus, it has the region’s best-connected airport — offering great short-trip potential across the continent and further afield.

Top tip: If you do decide to stumble into an electronic music event at a nearby ski resort, don’t take the work call (speaking from experience).

Montenegro (GMT +1 year-round)

Montenegro has an idyllic Adriatic coastline, which soon climbs up to the country’s mountains and highlands (which make up 85% of the nation’s territory). Think fresh seafood by the azure sea, with rocky mountains acting as your backdrop. It’s a nature lover's paradise and another top tier spot for hiking, near to ancient coastal towns that never seem to be in a rush.

The country has been flooded with investment in recent years, leading to high-speed internet, improved accommodation and better facilities. Think Croatia, but far cheaper and with more impressive nature.

Top tip: Avoid the height of summer, when the place is swarmed by the uncomfortable presence of cruise ships, decimating the peaceful charm along its coastline.

These are challenging times, especially when it comes to restoring a Grade I-listed building described by the selling agent as being ‘in need of extensive restoration and modernisation’. This is the case with Georgian, Grade I-listed Farfield Hall at Addingham, near Ilkley, West Yorkshire, which comes to the market for the first time in 35 years, at a guide price of £2.85 million through the Harrogate office of Carter Jonas.

Built in the early 18th century in the Yorkshire Baroque style, Farfield Hall stands in 6½ acres of landscaped grounds and woodland looking south over parkland towards Ilkley Moor. With the Dales on your doorstep, the thriving village of Addingham nearby, and local landmarks like Bolton Abbey a short drive, this is a lovely part of Yorkshire to be in.

The setting, the space and the architecture are all in place, then — and despite the agent's warning about the work that must be done, there is no doubt that this is a place full of potential. It's 'an opportunity to acquire a genuine trophy property in a beautiful setting', as the listing puts it.

According to a Country Life article by Architectural Editor Lawrence Weaver (in February 1915, the design of Farfield Hall was planned by Richard Boyle, 3rd Earl of Burlington, widely known as the Architect Earl, and built to Burlington’s design for the widow of his friend George Myers, the steward of his Bolton Abbey estate.

Weaver was writing a few years after the house was bought by George Douglas, founder of Bradfield Dyers Association, an international textile conglomerate. ‘The interior has some good features, notably the staircase… it is of interest to note that the staircase ceiling is of carved wood instead of plaster. The back of the house is very plain and includes some older work from the farm that stood originally on the site.'

Much water has gone under the bridge since then but there's no doubt that Weaver, or the house's owner George Douglas, would recognise the place should they happen to walk in today. The staircase that Weaver admired, for example, is just as beautiful now as it was 111 years ago.

'The recent alterations made by Mr Douglas were done in a wise and conservative spirit,' the article goes on, explaining that, the doorway on the south front was originally the main entrance and a drive led to it; but this side has now been terraced, and the subsidiary door on the east side was made the chief entrance — a practical change.'

At that time, 'the main hall became a morning room; the dining room became the drawing room, and vice versa. Otherwise the ground-floor was practically unchanged: and the alterations upstairs were only to provide necessary bathrooms, etc. '. The house's floor space was later extended to 14,215 sq ft with the addition of a huge Art Deco-era music room, big enough to host a grand ball.

'In the gardens great improvements were made by garden designer Thomas Mawson,' Weaver continued.

'A new broad walk was made from the gate-piers westwards and took the place of a drive to the stable… the stable and outbuildings were completely remodelled internally.’ One of those, the Coach House, is listed Grade II in its own right.

Weaver's 1915 article went on to tell of many of the ups and downs of the house. Myers left a son who died young and unmarried and his daughter left no children at her death in 1742.

After passing through several hands, Farfield Hall was bought in 1805 by William, second son of John Cunliffe of Langbar and Addingham, and at the time of writing belonged to his great-nephew, Ellis Cunliffe Lister-Kay of Godmersham Park, Kent, who sold it in 1908 to Douglas.

After the Second World War, Farfield Hall was taken over by the West Riding County Council as a home for the elderly before being sold in 1990 to the current owners, who ran a family business on the ground floor and adapted the upper floors for residential use.

Selling agent Tony Wright of Carter Jonas comments: ‘Farfield Hall offers a series of grand, perfectly proportioned rooms with a wealth of period panelling and plasterwork, with the neighbouring, Grade II-listed coach house an added bonus.’

Farfield Hall is for sale through Carter Jonas at £2.85 million — see more details.

Castle Reach is aptly named: Warwick Castle is quite literally in your back yard, so close you almost feel that you can reach out and touch it. And that's just the start at a house that's priced at £4.5 million through Fine & Country.

Warwick isn't just any old pile of battlements and turrets. Our esteemed colleague John Goodall, the man who literally wrote the book on castles, described it earlier this year as 'one of the most celebrated and imposing of all English castles', and 'a theatre, where fantasy and history meet' in a pair of articles he wrote earlier this year (you can read them here and here). It's a 700-year-old masterpiece that is the stuff of fantasy, the sort of castle that's inspired everyone from Walter Scott to Hollywood directors, a picture-perfect building that's as close to the Platonic ideal of 'medieval castle' as you'll ever see. And it's also the view from the kitchen-diner of this house.

Castle Reach is much more than just a view, though: it's a new-build country house (something that we discussed just the other day).

Set over three floors, it's a six-bedroom home laid out almost on an H-shaped plan, with most of the rooms linking off to the sides from the central space.

On the ground floor, that gives you a sitting room and dining room in one wing, with cloakrooms, boot room, utility and snug on the other side of the house — and the aforementioned kitchen-breakfast-family room at the back.

The latter is vast: 34 feet wide, and 20 feet deep, with light coming in both from the French windows at the back of the house, and from a skylight above.

The first floor is home to one of the most impressive bedroom suites we've seen in a while, taking up the entire south wing with its two dressing rooms (his and hers, as they're set up at the moment) and an en-suite bathroom so big that you could probably install a grand piano next to the bathtub, should you be so minded.

On the other side of the first floor are two more bedrooms, plus a 'plant/comms room'. We're not sure what the latter is for, exactly, but it definitely feels like another nice addition for that humblebrag list.

There are three more bedrooms on the second floor, two of which are en-suite; and if you're looking for a multi-generational living set-up, it's good to know that there's a self-contained one-bedroom apartment above the detached double garage.

This run-through of all the spaces probably detracts from the big selling points of the house: the finish and the fittings in place are beautifully done, happily straddling that line between smart and cosy, from the brick-walled wine room to the hallway with sweeping staircase and a chessboard stone floor.

Finally, though, we get to the outside, where the two acres of gardens go up to, and indeed across, the River Avon that streams along beside you. A private island on the river is part of the deal (again, add it to that list) as well as woodland, lawns and river frontage... and all of it with that quite amazing backdrop: Warwick Castle, the 700-year-old masterpiece at the end of the garden.

Castle Reach is for sale through Fine & Country — see more details.

Pendennis Headland on Falmouth harbour has spent four centuries as a critical military outpost. A castle was originally built here by Henry VIII to guard against potential invasion by Spain, and it continued that role throughout the 16th century. In the Civil War, the castle — by then significantly expanded — witnessed a sad and gruesome chapter as a bitter, five-month siege saw the Royalists holed up within the walls reduced to grim and desperate measures to avoid starvation, before eventually surrendering to Cromwell's forces. Even as late as the Second World War it was a crucial gun emplacement.

Today, the headland and castle are the site of Falmouth’s coastguard station, a popular tourist attraction, and 70 acres of woods and green spaces that provide a safe haven for all manner of wildlife. It's also the setting for one of the most remarkable homes to be built in Cornwall in recent years: Pendennis House.

Situated on Castle Drive within Pendennis Headland, this 7980sq ft property is a striking mix of modern design and engineering. It's for sale through joint agents Jonathan Cunliffe and Savills, who quote a guide price of £6.95 million.

The house is set just inside the harbour entrance, and enjoys fabulous views of St Anthony lighthouse, St Mawes Castle, the Carrick Roads and Falmouth Bay.

Even getting to the front door is something of an event. The house is entered via a steel bridge walkway, which leads to a double-height reception/dining area.

That in turn opens out onto a large terrace that extends the length of the building.

Behind the hall, a huge, open-plan kitchen/breakfast room is glazed on both sides to make the most of the ever-changing harbour and sea views.

Two good double bedrooms on the ground floor share a large shower room and a study/office or separate sitting room.

An impressive steel staircase leads to the first floor and four further bedrooms, including, at the south end of the house, the principal bedroom suite, which has a dual-aspect bedroom and balcony overlooking Black Rock and the entrance to Falmouth harbour.

There's also private access to a secluded beach below.

Jonathan Cunliffe calls it 'one of the finest properties on the south coast, a spectacular modern masterpiece commanding grandstand views', while Savills note its 'rare combination of immense sense of privacy and unrivalled marine views'.

For sale at £6.95 million — see more details via Savills or Jonathan Cunliffe.

Would you buy a house just because you fell in love with its Aga?

It sounds far-fetched, but then again Aga devotees are numerous, and include the likes of Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and Jamie Oliver and, of course, Dame Mary Berry, who told Country Life a few years ago that her Aga is 'the heart of the kitchen. I love the warmth and the wonderful welcome. If I had to live without one, I’d loathe it.'

Another superfan is former event rider Lou Swallow, owner of The Moat House, who first set eyes on her dream Aga — a biscuit-cream model — back in 1998.

It was a model that had seen better days and needed some tender loving care, but that was only the start of issues. The Aga sat in a kitchen that periodically flooded when it rained, and was surrounded by a house that was in a semi-derelict state.

Fast forward almost three decades and both the kitchen and the Aga are now immaculate, and for sale at £3 million — but it's taken a lot of work to get to that point. ‘Slowly and gradually Lou renovated the house, but immediately lavished love on the four-oven, coal-fed Aga that is believed to have been in the house since 1940,’ says Lisa Proffitt of the agents Michael Graham.

The Aga has since been converted to gas, thankfully, and despite almost 30 years of living with it, Swallow admits that she has no idea of the temperature and has ‘learned to roll with it... the Aga is very much in charge’.

Just as well, then, that the rest of the house is just as beautiful as its characterful cooker.

Grade II-listed and built on an L-shaped plan, this 18th-century home in Sharnbrook, eight miles from Bedford, has six reception rooms, seven double bedrooms.

There are also glorious gardens, tennis court, three stables and a paddock, as well as various other outbuildings and spaces amid the four acres of land.

The Moat House is for sale through Michael Graham — see more details.

When Clive Aslet, former Editor of Country Life, wrote a book called The Last Country Houses in 1982, the future of the English country house looked bleak. It had been eight years since the landmark exhibition at the V&A Museum, ‘The Destruction of the Country House’, which had told the stories of many houses lost to fire, neglect and the wrecking ball. It was a time when a resurgence of the English country-house tradition would have been unthinkable.

It was a couple of years later, in 1984, that John Martin Robinson brought out a book called The Latest Country Houses, covering the period since the end of the Second World War. By then, there were enough green shoots to suggest that the English country house was not dead and buried after all, with the latest examples suggesting the start of a new revival. More recent books on the subject, such as Alan Powers’s The Twentieth Century House in Britain (2004) and David Watkin’s The Classical Country House (2010), both illustrated with photographs from the Country Life archive, have concluded with chapters on new country houses, showing that their spirit is now alive and well in the 21st century.

Yet, despite the impressive number built in the past 40 years, there remains a certain nervousness around the building of new country houses. It is something to do with old-fashioned English taste that has always been suspicious of anything that looks too new. I even feel it myself, loving the worn, lived-in look that is so indelibly associated with the English style of decoration. Surely, one of the things that makes country houses so lovely is their patina of age.

Another question that often comes up is why build a new house when there are so many lovely old buildings in need of restoration? Without passionate owners to love and care for these houses, what future do they have? Again, I find myself agreeing with this and, indeed, much of my work as an architect has involved breathing new life into homes through gentle re-ordering and sensitive repair.

All of this may make it surprising that the main focus of my architectural career to date has been in designing new country houses. To some extent, this has been inherited; my grandfather was the architect Raymond Erith (1904–73), who worked on many country houses, both old and new, in the post-war years. His career was unusual in that he had rejected the Modern Movement and practiced traditional architecture at a time when this was very unfashionable. In 1962, he had taken on a pupil, Quinlan Terry, and, in time, they formed the partnership Erith and Terry Architects. After my grandfather’s death, Terry continued the practice and by the mid 1980s had become the foremost country-house architect working in Britain.

After studying architecture in Edinburgh, I joined the Erith and Terry office in the mid 1990s, by which time the practice was working on projects all over Britain and also abroad. Country houses were at the core of everything, employing a language of traditional detail and construction that had been refined over many years since my grandfather’s days. Having spent seven years training in this office, in 2003 I left to join Adam Architecture, becoming a director the following year and gradually starting to build up a portfolio of my own. Since then, over the past 20 years, it has included many country houses.

What, then, has been the motivation of my clients who have chosen to commission new country houses? What has tipped the balance for them away from a restoration project and towards the seemingly daunting prospect of starting from scratch? The reasons are not universal, but, over the years, I have seen that there are definitely a few common trends.

Firstly, the owners might have a connection or fondness for a particular site. We are currently building a house in a valley where one of my clients used to play as a child and realised it was their favourite place on earth and, in another case, we built a new house next door to where the owner’s mother lived so that they could be close at hand. Sites with strong personal connections such as these are irreplaceable and signify a family finding its place in the world and committing to the long-term management of the surrounding land.

Next, I often find that clients have lived at different times in old houses and, as much as they may have loved them, they realise how inflexible they can be. The nicest houses will be listed, at the very least at Grade II, but possibly at Grade II* or Grade I. This means that any alterations need to be approved by a conservation officer and, at the higher designation, also by an inspector from Historic England. Anyone with experience of going through this process will know that it can be incredibly frustrating and inconsistent. Something as apparently straightforward as moving a kitchen from a draughty wing into one of the larger rooms with a higher ceiling and a better view can be a major battle.

Similarly, it can be a tussle to put bathrooms into a house where there are not nearly enough to go around or even remove indifferent Victorian or Edwardian extensions that spoil the outside. ‘These are an important part of the social history of the house,’ says the conservation officer, apparently blind to their ugliness. There are no such problems with a new house, where the layout can be planned around modern living with the kitchen at its heart and as many bathrooms as bedrooms.

Then there is the question of running costs. An old house with single-glazed windows and solid walls is likely to come with an astronomical heating bill. Upgrading insulation, even if desirable, may be resisted by a conservation officer and will involve a significant cost. The same goes for the fuel source: out goes the old oil tank and in comes the new geothermal heating system, all a big step forward, but with a massive price tag attached. Halfway through a restoration project, the realisation begins to sink in: old houses are unpredictable money pits. On the subject of cost, too, everything that forms part of the restoration will be subject to VAT. The costs of building a new house, by contrast, are VAT exempt.

When you put all these factors together, the appetite for restoring an old house can start to dissipate and the benefits of a new one take on a sharper focus. The last piece of the jigsaw puzzle is to find someone to design it: the one thing you definitely don’t want is for a new house to look not quite right when it is finished. This was more difficult in, say, the 1960s, when architects had turned their backs on the past and there was a wilful desire to reject traditional forms, no matter how attractive they might be, but there are now quite a few architects with the training and experience to design country houses to a high standard.

Once the decision to build a new home has been made, a world of possibilities opens up about its design. Some of my clients have brought with them a lifelong interest in architecture and have very definite views about styles, perhaps even down to having a favourite decade of the 18th century. Others are keen to explore a range of options and to be guided along the way, when a key part of the design process is for us to go and look at other houses that might serve as inspiration. Little by little, the design starts to take on a character all of its own, shaped by the site and by the owners’ requirements and taste. When approached with care in every detail, there is no reason why a new house, given a bit of time, should not look every bit as good as the old houses that we all admire.

This is the key thing: the importance of time. I would be the first to admit that a brand-new country house, when first completed, is likely to look much too new. Clients over the years have asked my advice: should we smear manure or yoghurt over the brickwork to accelerate the weathering process or choose a more faded colour palette for the paintwork? My advice is always the same: have patience.

The great thing about new traditional buildings is that, although they might look uncomfortably new at first, it will not be long before the effects of weather start to show. Within a year or two, a stone or brick house will have begun to soften and, as the plants flesh out in the flowerbeds around the house and trees begin to grow, the appearance of newness will start to fade. Within five years, the more exposed parts of the house — the roof, chimneys and hard landscaping — will no longer look new at all and within 10 years the house will be entirely established within its landscape. It continues to improve and, in only 20 years, you would not even know that it was a recently built structure.

About 10 years ago, I made this point in a talk to a group of students and concluded that traditional architects really ought to wait a few years before photographing and publishing their work. A new house will look so much better, I said, if you leave a bit of time for it to bed in. Then, a couple of years ago, I was approached by a commissioning editor, Philip Reeser, about writing a book on country houses and realised that this was the opportunity for which I had been waiting. Happily, the owners all agreed to me doing it and, with the architectural photographer Peter Dixon, I spent a few weeks last year taking new photographs of 12 different houses. Without exception, the owners were extremely welcoming; indeed, it has been wonderful how many of my former clients are now counted as friends. Meanwhile, I wrote down my thoughts on the design of each house, all of which have now made it into the book as a guide to anyone contemplating a similar journey.

Ultimately, the building of new country houses is a statement of confidence: of putting down roots for this and future generations, investing in building well, not needing to follow the latest trends and being safe in the knowledge that time will take care of the rest. It is, of course, also a creative endeavour: since time immemorial, building has been a way to leave one’s mark on the world. For most clients, it is immensely enjoyable to work not only with an architect, but also a landscape designer and an interior decorator, collaborating with the common goal of making something as beautiful as possible. For me, it has been hugely rewarding not only to be so involved in the design and construction of new country houses, but to see over many years how they take their place in a tradition that stretches back deep in time and will, I hope, also have a long future.

‘The Romance of Classicism’ by George Saumarez Smith is published by Rizzoli (£47.95).

This feature originally appeared in the September 9, 2026, print edition of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.

Buckinghamshire — £2,500,000

A house that's 'tucked away in its own private corner of the Chiltern Hills', as the agents put it. Four bedrooms, stables, lawns and paddock are all part of the fun.

For sale via Blue Book — see more details and pictures.

West Sussex — £3,000,000

This beautiful 16th-century farmhouse sits in 29 acres of land in a village not far from Horsham, with easy access to London and the south coast. The main house has five bedrooms, while the cottage — a two-bed conversion created 25 years ago — has two further bedrooms.

For sale via Strutt & Parker — see more details and pictures.

Cheshire — £1,600,000

The Jacobean character of this Grade II*-listed hall shines through, yet this is also a refurbished, cosy family home in two and a half acres of gardens. Six bedrooms, over 7,000sq ft, and wonderful views of open countryside.

For sale via Savills — see more details and pictures.

Hampshire — £4,900,000

A proper castle in miniature, with castellations, leaded windows, huge open fireplaces and wood-panelled walls. This eight-bedroom home has a huge amount of floorspace, a pair of self-contained flats, ten acres of land and easy access to London by road or rail.

For sale via Knight Frank — see more details and pictures.

Bedford — £1,895,000

An unusual prospect in the form of a modern home right across the road from Victorian Park, in the centre of Bedford itself.

The design here is quite extraordinary — it feels more like a high-end boutique hotel than a family home in a market town — but that adds to its charm. Superb links by road, rail and air complete the picture.

For sale via Michael Graham — see more details and pictures.

Warwickshire — £4,500,000

A house with Warwick Castle in the back garden — quite literally — is up for sale. And as if that weren't enough, it's even designed by the great Ben Pentreath himself.

For sale via Fine & Country — see more details and pictures.

'I swear nobody on earth had more homes than Agatha Christie,' read the message from one of my colleagues. The prompt? An email from the agents at Sandfords, who are selling the £1.95 million flat in Swan Court, Chelsea, that was for many years home to the Queen of Crime herself.

I should say 'one of the homes of the Queen of Crime', for — as my colleague alluded to — Christie had many. Most famous and most picturesque of the lot is Greenway, the magnificent country pile sitting on a clifftop in Devon overlooking the River Dart a couple of miles upstream from Dartmouth and the English Channel.

Christie fell in love with the spot (as do many visitors to this part of Devon), calling it 'the loveliest place in the world'. She had grown up nearby, so when it came up for sale in 1937 — through Country Life, naturally — she and her then-husband Max Mallowan bought the place. This historic, 16th-century landmark, once home to Sir Walter Raleigh, became their much-loved base in Devon.

Today, Greenway is in the hands of the National Trust and is a hugely popular place to come and find out more about the best-selling novelist of all time. (Only William Shakespeare and the authors of the Bible have sold more books.)

Yet while Greenway did make its way into Christie's fiction, it was very much the couple's holiday home rather than the place she created her stories. Much of the hard graft was done elsewhere, for Christie worked wherever she happened to be. One of the places where that work happened was Winterbrook House, on the Oxfordshire/Berkshire border in the town of Wallingford, which Christie bought a few years before picking up Greenway.

Winterbrook, like Greenway, was also advertised in Country Life ahead of its sale to Christie and Mallowan; back then it was still in Berkshire rather than Oxfordshire. Wallingford was actually in Berkshire for 1,000 years before the Oxfordshire boundary was redrawn by the Local Government Act 1972.

Christie and Mallowan spent a large chunk of their time at Winterbook, a home which they kept for the rest of their lives, as noted by its blue plaque. Yet it still wasn't really the place that informed and nurtured her stories: as Christie makes fairly clear in her autobiography, she very much considered it Max's house. Mallowan was an archaeologist and historian who'd studied at the University of Oxford, and went on to become a fellow of All Souls College. This made Wallingford, half an hour or so from Oxford, an ideal spot. Unlike Greenway, it's not a tourist destination, but a private home which came on to the market as recently as 2021. Once again, it made an appearance in Country Life at the time.

While several of Christie's books and plays were worked on while she was at Wallingford, it was more a place of pleasant refuge, as historian Judy Dewey writes on agathachristie.com. While at Winterbook she went about her business as Mrs Mallowan, rather than the great crime writer Agatha Christie. She described it as 'a nice place' that had 'a poor railway service and was therefore not at all the sort of place people came to, either from Oxford or from London... we have been very happy here.'

Much of her inspiration came elsewhere, from New York to Istanbul to Iraq to the great country houses of Britain — and of course London, where Christie owned a string of homes, in all sorts of buildings. One was in the Modernism icon that is the Isokon Building in Hampstead, where a flat was sold last year. Even more famous is her house at 58, Sheffield Terrace, Holland Park, where she had a dedicated writing room. It's here that she worked while writing some of her best-known works, including Murder on the Orient Express and Death on the Nile.

Christie seems to have written bits here, there and everywhere. Some claim she wrote Murder on the Orient Express in a house on Campden Street, for example, a place that she apparently owned from 1930 to 1934. Clearing all this up is tricky, and even her autobiography isn't much help — not least because she mixed up several of the addresses and numbers.

Earlier in her life, Christie lived and worked in a house on Northwick Terrace in St John's Wood, and another at Cresswell Place, South Kensington. But many of the houses she bought were purely for fun, for investments, for development and renovation. The author admitted having 'a passion' for property, and referred several times to her 'plutocratic period', during which she bought and sold houses as casually as Premier League footballers buy Italian supercars. It was as close to real-life Monopoly as anything we've ever come across.

The current Agatha Christie flat for sale, 48, Swan Court, is not mentioned in her autobiography — but unlike many of the houses she owned, there's no doubt that she lived and worked there. Funnily enough, the evidence comes from another of her houses: Greenway, where the National Trust have preserved forwarding instructions from Christie to the Royal Mail, giving instructions about sending her post on from Devon to both Winterbrook and Swan Court.

Christie bought the flat in 1948 and is thought to have written Witness for the Prosecution while here, as well as a portion of The Mousetrap. The play first hit the West End in 1951, and is still going today: it holds the record for the longest-running stage production anywhere in the world, and went past 30,000 performances just last year.

What of Swan Court itself? For an author in need of a pied-à-terre it's pretty perfect. Sitting on Chelsea Manor Street, just a few steps from the King's Road, this lovely old Art Deco building is a classic 1930s purpose-built apartment block.

The two-bedroom flat has a simple floorplan: two good-size bedrooms bedrooms, one of which has plenty of storage and an en-suite bathroom, plus a further bathroom, modest kitchen, and a long reception room measuring over 32 foot.

If that sounds big, it's for good reason: this home was originally two flats that were knocked together. The agents haven't been able to ascertain if it was Christie herself who had that work done. It certainly isn't unique: Margaret Thatcher lived in Swan Court in the 1950s (imagine them meeting in the corridors), and that apartment also appears to have had the same treatment.

Both the building and the flat have been very well kept and refurbished over the years: there's a lift, CCTV, 24-hour porter and all the other things you'd expect of a £2 million home in this sought-after postcode, where service charges range from about £5,000 to £10,000 depending on the apartment.

It's a lot of money, of course. Might we suggest writing a few best-selling crime novels to cover the mortgage?

48 Swan Court is for sale through Sandfords — see more details.

Where was it?

On the edge of a village in Mid Suffolk. I had spent 40 years in London, so it was a drastic move, prompted by my daughter starting secondary school. I didn’t fancy her, aged 12, on the night bus and going to house parties, so we moved to Suffolk, where she became knowledgeable about tractors, specifically John Deeres

A quick description

A seven-bedroom, Grade II-listed farmhouse built in 1548 and linked to a giant ancient barn via a sizeable modern extension. We did that London thing of going ‘wow, look at how much house we can get for our money’.

I was very happy there, but it was much too big and there was an element of rattling around unless all the children (now grown up) were home. It also had 17 acres — too much garden for someone who also has a job and far too much maintenance on the fence post front. [Ed: India Knight and her family sold the house, Barton Grange in Worlingworth, in the summer of 2025.]

How did you find it?

We saw it online.

What made you buy it?

We had planned to spend the day looking at several other houses — at this point either in Suffolk or Somerset — but knew immediately that it was the one.

Favourite aspect?

It had a wildflower meadow and a little moat on three sides. I especially loved winter nights holed up in the snug by the wood burner.

Best memory of living there?

We had some fun parties in that barn.

Biggest mistake?

I once painted a room teal and orange.

Anything unusual about it?

Really low beamed ceilings in the old part. I’m 5ft 10in and my boys are 6ft 2in and 6ft 4in. You quickly develop an unattractive Quasimodo shuffle.

Biggest indulgence?

My greenhouse. It wasn’t wildly expensive, but it felt like such an extravagance at the time.

What happened to it?

One day I saw the house of my dreams. When I first viewed it, it literally spoke to me. It is about 20 minutes away from the huge farmhouse and we are never moving again.

India Knight is a journalist and author. Her latest book, 'Home: How To Love It, Live In It, And Find Joy' is out in paperback on October 15 (Penguin Books, £11.99).

This feature originally appeared in the September 30, 2026, print edition of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.

Ardross Castle in Scotland’s beautiful Ross and Cromarty is famous both sides of the Atlantic Ocean for murder, deceit and seduction. Yet far from being about the Scottish Baronial castle’s past, this truly traitorous behaviour has everything to do with its present and, given its popularity, its future.

Here, we invite you to join us at a large, round table in order to delve into the Country Life archives and uncloak the history of the turreted Highland castle made famous by the global TV franchise The Traitors.

We also invite you to marvel at how often the castle has been bought and sold, and for how much — for it's quite staggering that at some points in its history, it's changed hands at prices that would make you weep...

The 60,000 acre plot on which the magnificent Ardross Castle stands was sold, in 1845, to one Sir Alexander Matheson, by the then-Duke of Sutherland, for an eye-watering £90,000 (according to the Bank of England's inflation calculator that is roughly £9.5 million in today’s money). Matheson, a Liberal, had started his career as a merchant in China trading, it would appear, in both the highly-faithful British staple of tea, and the definitely treacherous commodity of opium. He subsequently went on the be, among other things, a director of the Bank of England, a director of the East and West India Dock Company, and chairman of the Highland Railway Company. The clearly-talented, well liked and very well-connected businessman subsequently set about developing his vast lands into well-drained roads, tenanted farms, sporting habitats and tree plantations.

The castle itself was the creation of architect Alexander Ross, who Matheson had first encountered during his tenure as chairman of the Highland Railway Company. Ross designed the stunning Scottish Baronial castle around an existing hunting lodge on the plot, adding more than 30 rooms to property, including the now infamous turrets. Ross also laid out extensive pleasure grounds around his masterpiece.

Matheson ploughed huge quantities of his personal wealth into the estate, but when he died in 1886, his son and heir Sir Kenneth Matheson quickly showed that he did not share his father’s passion for the tamed lands in the north east of Scotland. He first let out the property, for a decade, before selling the castle, the village of Ardross and some 36,000 acres in 1897 to a Mr C. W. Dyson Perrins—the grandson of the co-inventor of the still-secret recipe for Lea & Perrins Worcestershire Sauce. Perrins, who was from Malvern and had served as a Captain in the Highland Light Infantry, was a philanthropist and collector who also had interests in the Royal Worcester porcelain company. Perrins purchased the property as a summer retreat and much like the Royal Family, he, his family, guests and staff would travel from Worcestershire to the Highlands on his own train for an annual two-month-long holiday — where he would host shooting and fishing parties on his grouse moors, in his salmon-stocked rivers, trout-filled lochs, and deep in his numerous deer forests. He, too, lavished his vast fortune on the estate, adding electricity, bathrooms and formal gardens to the castle, while also purchasing further hunting grounds to expand his sporting opportunities. He also restored and modernised his farms and farm buildings, and in 1899 invested in the new (for the time) polled Aberdeen Angus cattle for his farms. Like Matheson before him, it would appear he was also a considerate landowner, too. A report in Glasgow’s Daily Record in 1911 described Perrins as doing a '…great deal of good for the people on his estate, who look upon him as the ideal landlord'.

Perrins stayed with his Highland retreat until 1936, when he seemingly-reluctantly put the whole lot up for sale. (Seemingly reluctantly, as he bought back the Factor’s House on the estate for his own use.)

When advertised for sale in the pages of Country Life, the property seemed to have devalued greatly despite the amount of love and attention he had showered upon it. An article dated November 14, 1936, the estate amounted to 53,000 acres and was described as 'very compact around the Castle.' The whole lot sold faster than Alan Carr delicately wiping a grain of poisonous pollen across the cheek of his best friend.

In little under two months, it was sold to a client of one Percy Deas of Duns. He went on the divide the land from the castle, according to an account in Country Life from January 23, 1937. An advert was placed for the castle alone on February 27 of the same year, asking the mind-bogglingly low amount of £6,500 (about £385,000). The main selling points will be instantly recognisable to fans of The Traitors. Listed as the top attractions were a library, a billiards room and a panelled oak room. It then went on to list other exceptional features such as a magnificent galleried ball room, indoor swimming bath, dressing rooms, 28 principal bedrooms, six bathrooms and 26 secondary and servants rooms, plus many other amenities — all for the 2025-comparable price of a London studio flat.

A history professor, and son of a tobacco company director, Austin Mardon snapped up the castle. He was quoted as saying they would live in 'as many rooms as necessary', and that he had bought the vast property so his children could 'grow up in perfect freedom'. Contemporary newspaper reports state how the adventurous Mardon camped out with three of his older sons while waiting to take up ownership of the property. The Bristolian explained that as the father of nine children, he was not welcomed into any hotels in the area, so had left his American wife with the youngest while he and the boys awaited the handover of the (presumably sizeable) keys. This inauspicious start does not seemed to have dampened the family’s ambitions for their use of the property, as it did not change hands again until 1983.

An advert placed by Savills in that year shows the remains of the formal garden in a sorry state in front of the still-magnificent castle. Almost unbelievably, it was advertised at 'offers over £70,000' for the building and 80 acres.

Adjusted for inflation, that's about £240,000 — though as we all know, house prices have outstripped inflation wildly over the past couple of generations. So let's put it this way: in 1983 the average house price in the UK was £27,000; today, it's around £270,000. In other words, you — or more likely your parents, or perhaps your grandparents — could have bought the Traitors castle for the same price as this terraced house in Guildford.

The McTaggart family bought the structure and nursed it and its gardens slowly back to health. Used to this day as a wedding venue, its main starring role is playing host to The Traitors — a television show broadcast in the UK and USA. It’s strange that a building with such a positive history should be the backdrop for such backstabbing, but then perhaps that what makes it the perfect faithful.

The Country Life Image Archive contains more than 150,000 images documenting British culture and heritage, from 1897 to the present day. An additional 50,000 assets from the historic archive are scheduled to be added this year — with completion expected in Summer 2025. To search and purchase images directly from the Image Archive, please register here.

Prime Minister Andy Burnham kicked off his speech to the Labour Party Conference in Liverpool this week not with pensions, Brexit or tax, but with a story about his grandmother, Kitty, in post-war Liverpool.

'She walked three miles out of the bombed-out city after the war to put a deposit down on a house,' he said.

'She put a deposit down on a house. The house where I was born. It changed the fortunes of my family...

'That home on Keble Drive unlocked the aspiration in my mum and dad for a better life for us all and has taken us to places we could never have imagined.

'With a good home, everything is possible. Without one, it feels like nothing is.'

Labour's journey to the next general election will also start with housing: the creation of a national council house building programme, the partial scrapping of right to buy, an end to rough sleeping and the relaunch of the Help to Buy equity loan scheme. Burnham's aim is clear: to help other people experience the same uplift in their lives that his family had in post-war Liverpool.

The sentiment and rhetoric are one thing, but what does Burnham's speech really tell us about his plan for mending Britain's broken housing market?

Helping first time buyers — or throwing them under the bus?

Help to Buy has been rebranded as 'Your First Home'. First time buyers who have already saved a 2.5 per cent deposit will be able to borrow a loan worth 20 per cent of the property's value to amass a total deposit of 22 per cent to buy a new build home. Other tweaks to the new version expected in the Budget will include an income cap.

'This is certainly a move in the right direction,' says Marcus Dixon, head of residential research for JLL. 'But as usual, the devil is in the detail.'

One concern Dixon has is that the Treasury will not regionalise the scheme. Will they cap incomes in London at the same level as in Manchester, for example? Will the price of the property that is eligible vary by region? 'If they get this wrong it will become a scheme that only works [at best] in travel zone six and beyond. It will become a drawbridge for talent exiting the capital where housing need is greatest,' says Dixon.

Help to Buy works in a rising market and apartment prices have been falling since May 2025, Zoopla reports. This is not just a London problem where the price of a flat fell 2.6% in the year to August. Prices slid 1.3% across the UK and 2.9% in the East Midlands. Flats in Liverpool city centre are slow to sell too, one estate agent admits to Country Life.

Economist James Gerrard describes Help to Buy as 'throwing young Londoners under the bus.' It is, after all, a tool to get developers building homes for both private sale and as council houses, to help Labour get anywhere close to its wild target of getting 1.5 million new homes built.

There are strong headwinds, though. The leasehold scandal, the premium on a new build, and fear of cladding following Grenfell have deterred young buyers from purchasing a flat. Many skip this rung of the ladder now and jump straight to buying a family-sized home. Help to Buy does not necessarily address these issues and trends. In fact, it could encourage developers to throw up yet more apartments in a flooded and falling market.

At the end of five years these Help to Buy flat owners might not have accrued any equity to propel them up the ladder and will owe the Government a fifth of the value of their home. 'This could gum up the market further,' says Dixon.

As ever with the health of the wider housing market, pulling just one lever in isolation can be more hindrance than help.

'We're taxing geography, not wealth' as the Mansion Tax looms

There was red flag in Burnham's speech for those who want less property taxation, with Burnham describing Britain as a 'country run for vested interests and not the public interest'. It seems unlikely we will see any property tax relief for wealthy homeowners, second homeowners or landlords in the Budget.

The danger comes if the Government leaves Stamp Duty in place and adds the Mansion Tax on top. The family homes market is one of the few tranches of the market that is showing signs of life. The Zoopla numbers show this: in the north west, for example. flat prices have fallen 0.6% in the same period that the price of a house has risen 3.6%.

The Mansion Tax could quash sales family homes and mobility up the ladder. In the last autumn budget, the then Chancellor Rachel Reeves proposed that the tax would come in to force for properties valued at £2 million and above, but Rob Fanshawe of Property Vision fears that this value threshold could be lowered to £1.5 million.

Becky Fatemi, of UK Sotheby's International Realty agrees. 'We have to stop pretending the same property value means the same thing everywhere,' she says. 'I would look seriously at regional weighting, otherwise we are taxing geography and not wealth.'

Dominic Agace of Winkworth made the same point when the Mansion Tax was announced last year: 'In London, this is a terrace tax, not a mansion tax,' he told Country Life.

Ignore the countryside at your peril

Burnham promised 'good growth in every postcode' but there has been little mention of the countryside in his first 10 weeks in power, where there is both considerable wealth and considerable poverty. Fanshawe describes it as 'a speech that ignores the countryside and has no regard but for anyone but the urban mob.'

A new report by Savills — due to be published next week — shows that the rural and village property market is sluggish, with country house values falling by 1.4% over the past three months, following on from a fall of 2.8% in the second quarter of the year. A Mansion Tax in high value parts of the countryside such as the Cotswolds, Cornwall or Surrey will surely slow sales further to the detriment of the wider economy and housebuilding efforts — a problem, since households relocating from urban to rural areas is important for the dissemination of wealth across regions, as well as for mobility and lifestyle.

Nick Leeming of Jackson Stops sums it all up: 'Helping people move into homeownership is an ambition we should all support and increasing the supply of new homes gives first-time buyers more routes onto the ladder.

'But getting people onto that first rung is only part of the equation. Those buyers will eventually become second-steppers themselves, and they need a healthy fluid market to move into as their circumstances change.

'Any further taxation of higher value homes therefore needs to be considered in the context of the overall tax burden on property and, importantly, on housing mobility.'

Ever watched the celebrities and professional dancers twirl around the Strictly Come Dancing ballroom floor and thought: ‘I really need one of those in my home’? Now you can. This property on Charlbury Road in Oxford, on the market for £6.25 million with Knight Frank, comes with its very own first floor ballroom.

Measuring around 50 by 27 feet with lovely views over the garden, you could spend your days waltzing to your heart’s content, pretending you’re training to compete with one of the show's heavily spray-tanned pros in a ridiculous themed costume on Saturday night.

You could even invite a few to stay with you — the nine-bedroom house isn’t really lacking in space, and has one of the largest private gardens in central north Oxford to boot, according to the agent.

The property also comes with a walled garden with herbaceous borders, several mature trees and a large paved terrace for alfresco dining (or dancing, should you wish).

With approximately 8500 square feet over three floors and a 0.5 acre plot, you’d need a quickstep to get around this property quickly.

Stained glass windows, cornicing and wooden flooring add to the ballroom's charm to make for an elegant home indeed.

The property is also in a prime location. It is near a great range of schools, with the Dragon, Whychwood and Oxford High School within walking distance and University Parks nearby for riverside walks.

Better still, four dance studios — Swing Dance Summertown, Onsalsa, Oxford Academy of Dance and Oxford Dance Studio — are only a short drive away. Surely even Craig Revel Horwood would have to award this family home a ‘10’.

This property is for sale through Knight Frank — see more details.

Across the River Tamar in south Cornwall, renovation is also the name of the game. Here Strutt & Parker Cornwall quotes a guide price of £1.9 million for secluded Grade II-listed Nansough Manor, an exquisite small Georgian manor house set in eight acres of gardens, paddocks and woodland, a mile from the ancient village of Ladock and six miles from the cathedral city of Truro.

Local records show that an earlier manor and chapel existed on the site, dating to at least 1414, and most likely a couple of centuries before that.

Nothing remains of the medieval house, however. Historic England suggest that the Nansough Manor that stands today is 'probably' 17th in origin, though it effectively became a Georgian house when rebuilt in 1792.

That work was carried out by the Roberts family, who were long established in Cornwall. Local tradition suggests that its construction was funded through the historic trade of horses and brandy between Penzance and France.

The 3,372 square foot main house offers elegant, well-proportioned accommodation on two floors, including an entrance hall with a high ceiling and decorative cornicing, a light-filled drawing room with original fireplaces and large sash windows, a good-sized dining room, and a recently-refurbished kitchen.

One thing that's lovely to see is the interior decoration. The place has been renovated, but there's been no effort to give the house an original Georgian flavour, nor have the owners made it look overtly slick and modern.

Instead, there's a lovely palate of colours from across the spectrum — greens and blues and oranges and pinks — which feel as if they've been chosen by someone wearing a big smile on their face. It's fresh and welcoming, full of life.

Something about it reminded us of a Hockney painting — and the choice of art that hangs on the walls only adds to the feeling that the owners have real visual flair.

A sweeping 18th-century staircase leads to four first-floor bedrooms, including the principal bedroom, which boasts a large en-suite bathroom and wonderful south-facing views.

The adjoining two-bedroom cob cottage provides additional accommodation and requires additional work, but has the potential to create a proper annexe or a useful holiday let subject to consents. The potential is huge, and it's full of character with inglenook fire place, bread oven, wash boiler and pig trundle.

Nansough Manor has formal lawns and paddocks enclosed by a copse of mature oak trees.

The land is well suited to equestrian use, with facilities including a recently installed range of Monarch stables, stock fencing, powered water troughs and miles of nearby bridleways for riding out.

Nansough Manor is for sale through Strutt & Parker — see more details.

A couple of times a year, pretty much without fail, a story goes viral about the funniest place names in Britain. Those six month gaps are long enough to forget some of the funniest examples, and so, once again pretty much without fail, we end up clicking on those stories for a chuckle about the likes of Wetwang (Yorkshire), Shitterton (Dorset) and Twatt (Orkney).

The problem with such, er, overt vulgarity is that it misses the richer, gentler world of quietly quirky place names. Just today, for example, I discovered that Bignor and Littleton are villages just up the road from each other in Sussex; that Dull, in Scotland, is twinned with Boring, Oregon; and that there's a place called Pudding Pie Hill in Yorkshire. And that brings us to the quirkily-named house on this page: Pud Hill, in Inchbrook, Gloucestershire, which is for sale through Hamptons at £1.95 million.

It may not sound glamorous, but this is a very fine house indeed, a wisteria-clad beauty with a history going back to the 17th century, according to its Grade II listing at Historic England.

Pud Hill as it stands today is defined just as much — if not more — by the work which took place here in the 1840s addition, when its interiors took on grand Victorian proportions with exceptional historic detailing.

The Gothic-style windows, for example, not only allow unimpeded access to spectacular Nailsworth Valley views, but they let natural light flood in throughout the house, including through the showstopper in the stairwell, which illuminates the stone cantilevered staircase.

The property has four reception rooms, plus seven bedrooms over two floors, as well as an extra bedroom in a separate annexe.

The cellar alone is bigger than some houses: at 886 square feet, this could make an uncommonly good wine store for a true aficionado. Outside, the grounds run to just under two acres, with a 2¼-acre paddock and stable block available to buy by separate negotiation.

The setting, Inchbrook, is a small village, but the thriving market town of Nailsworth is only a 10-minute walk away along a quiet cycle path.

Stroud and Tetbury are also easily reached, though if you're looking for more funny place names than useful towns for shopping, you'll be delighted to hear that Balls Green and Box are close by, while Waterley Bottoms is about a 20 minute drive.

Pud Hill is for sale through Hamptons at £1.95 million — see more details.

Somerset — £3.325 million

Seven bedrooms, six reception rooms and a walled garden at this very pretty house that's been refurbished inside. A series of outbuildings include a stable block, while there's also a paddock, tennis court and more.

For sale via Knight Frank — see more details and pictures.

Hertfordshire — £4.95 million

A house described by the agents as 'one of Hertfordshire's most remarkable surviving Elizabethan manor houses'.

It's a Grade II*-listed home with almost 5,000 square feet of space, plenty of original features, charming formal gardens and 17 acres of grounds.

For sale via Savills — see more details and pictures.

Cornwall — £1.9 million

Wonderfully preserved original architecture meet arty, stylish design flair at this irresistible home in the Cornish countryside five miles from Truro, and eight miles from Newquay.

For sale via Strutt & Parker — see more details and pictures.

Surrey — £1.695 million

A 17th century building with 18th century façade and 19th century additions make this country home a place full of character, in a leafy Surrey village.

The price is for one wing of this historic home, but you still get five bedrooms, almost two acres of gardens, and a fire engine-red Aga.

For sale via Jackson-Stops — see more details and pictures.

Hertfordshire — £1.75 million

A Grade II-listed, 16th century farmhouse with a plethora of original beams throughout the living space, giving huge character. The gardens are a real hghlight, wrapping around this home located in a village near Hitchin, and thus easily commutable to central London.

For sale via Michael Graham — see more details and pictures.

Devon — £1.575 million

Life on the water — right on the water — at this converted two-bedroom boathouse which dips its toes straight in to the River Dart at Stoke Gabriel, upstream from Dartmouth.

The huge ground floor living space has a balcony on the harbour, a mezzanine floor offers relaxing space, and the bedrooms have a bathroom each. There's even a terrace area with a hot tub overlooking the harbour.

For sale via Strutt & Parker — see more details and pictures.

In 1829, the Revd Walter Stephenson Halliday inherited a fortune. His father, Simon Halliday, had been a naval surgeon during the Napoleonic Wars, going on to a fabulously successful career in banking, building up huge wealth. And when he died, Halliday resigned from the Church and decided to put his father’s wealth to good use.

Halliday embarked on a search for a country estate and eventually settled at Countisbury, North Devon, where he gradually bought the entire parish — some 7,000 acres in all — and became lord of the manor. Two centuries later the house that he built, which is unarguably one of the most beautiful homes in Britain in its combination of architecture and setting, is up for sale: James Toogood of Savills quotes a guide price of £6.5 million.

Halliday was in the happy position of being able to choose his landscape and fit his house into it, and he was seemingly happy to take his time getting things just right, spending huge amounts of time and money before the house itself was even started.

The first step was building stables at Home Farm to house working horses, and having a track cut through to the shore, where a landing stage was built for building materials to come in by sea.

Meanwhile, it reputedly took the best part of a year to create the serpentine three-mile drive that leads down to the site of the house, beyond which the lawn falls steeply to the sea. Only then could work begin on the house itself.

Glenthonre stands on a grassy clearing said to be the only piece of flat land between Porlock and Lynmouth, with the sea and a wonderfully sheltered cove far below and the hills and moorland of Exmoor behind. Built of the pinkish local stone and roofed with Cornish slate, its architecture is classically Georgian in places and Neo-Gothic in others, with some 17th-century elements in between.

The core of the house was built between 1829 and 1831 and, in 1839, new kitchens, service quarters and a large conservatory were added. In 1846, the front of the house was extended by adding a library wing with a new master bedroom and dressing room above.

During the 1850s, Home Farm, another solid stone-built house, was built in a sheltered corner of the estate.

Glenthorne's arrival on to the market has pepped up the West Country market, and though the house no longer comes with an entire parish, it's still a remarkable home.

This Grade II-listed landmark remains as imposing, dramatic and romantic today as it was in the 19th century, set in 77 wooded acres on a spectacular coastal site overlooking the Bristol Channel towards Lynmouth, Porlock Bay and Wales.

The house boasts impressive accommodation on three floors, including six main reception rooms, a library, a gun room, a kitchen and a breakfast room, a master-bedroom suite, 11 further bedrooms and four further bathrooms.

There are two further houses on the plot: the aforementioned Home Farm, which has been completely refurbished to a wonderful standard; and Gardener's Cottage, which hasn't been touched for years and needs everything doing. There are also several outbuildings, including stables, stores and a barn that's used as a gym.

Halliday died childless in 1872, leaving Glenthorne to his nephew, William, who added the billiard room and laid down a croquet lawn at the side of the house. The estate then passed through various members of the Halliday clan until, in September 1983, a snippet in Country Life announced the sale, ‘for the first time in its history, of Glenthorne, with 18 acres of gardens, woods and paddock, access to the foreshore and views across the Bristol Channel to Wales’. Offers in the region of £250,000 were sought.

A year later, Glenthorne, by then in a semi-ruinous state, was acquired by the writer, explorer, financier and philanthropist, the late Sir Christopher Ondaatje, who died in July 2026. 'Despite its romantic, Daphne du Maurier appearance, the house was an absolute wreck,' he told Country Life a few years ago, 'with rain pouring through the roof, right down to the ground floor.’

Sir Christropher drafted in a team of 35 craftsmen and builders to renovate the entire 12,450 square foot house in a military-style operation that took only seven months to complete.

Home Farm, though originally built by Halliday, had been split off from the main property, but was acquired by Sir Christopher some years later. Writing in Country Life, Sir Christopher reflected on his lifelong love affair with Exmoor and the enduring fascination of his ‘mystical Gothic manor house.

'It is the most beautiful spot on Earth,' Sir Christopher told Country Life in 2018. 'Woods climb giant hills behind us, separated occasionally by narrow streams, hidden by ferns and rhododendrons, which cascade over mossy rocks down to the stony beach.'

Beautiful words about a house that clearly inspires them: it was in the library at Glenthorne that Michael Ondaatje, Sir Christopher's younger brother, wrote much of The English Patient.

In 2019, Sir Christopher, then aged 86, who already owned houses in London, the Bahamas and Canada, sold Glenthorne to its present owner, who, according to the agents, ‘has enhanced many of the building’s original features, as well as incorporating modern conveniences required of today’s country houses’.

Those changes haven't done anything to harm the charm of the place: Glenthorne retains the magic of its beautiful gardens, deep combes, ancient woodland, magnificent views and complete privacy, with its nearest neighbour some seven miles away.

Glenthorne is for sale through Savills — see more details.