Fewer names in the UK drum up as much emotion, as much sense of place, as 'The Old Rectory'. This edition, in the sought-after village of Welham, is as good an example as any.

Stephen King of King West quotes a guide price of £1.6m for this landmark Welland Valley house, Grade II-listed The Old Rectory. It lies on the north bank of the river, four miles north-east of Market Harborough.

According to British History Online, the only buildings on the south side of the village main street are the manor house, the Grade II*-listed Church of St Andrew and the late-18th-century former rectory, which probably occupy the site of a medieval village that apparently once lay to the south of the church.

The remainder of the village, on the north side of the main street, is the result of a complete rebuilding carried out in about 1720 by Francis Edwards, who was lord of the manor.

The Old Rectory is approached from the village lane via a tree-lined gravel driveway enclosed by traditional estate fencing and bordered by box hedging. Its two acres of gardens, grounds and paddock are mainly laid out to the south of the house, with a dry-stone wall leading to a sheltered paddock, part of which descends to the banks of the Welland. To the east of the house is a stable block, comprising three loose boxes and a tack/feed room.

During the tenure of the current owner, the former rectory, built of mellow stone under a blue-slate roof, has undergone extensive renovation, including the addition of an extension incorporating a vast kitchen/living and dining space.

In all, the house provides more than 4,270sq ft of linear living space, with — in addition to the shiny new kitchen/breakfast room — a reception hall, study, living room, sitting room and garden room on the ground floor, and five bedrooms and two bath/shower rooms on the first and second floors.

The Old Rectory is for sale with King West for £1.6 million. For more information and pictures, click here

When in 2001, investment guru Paul Brown and his wife, Maggie, decided to move from Hong Kong, via Yorkshire, to Kent with their three young children, their search agent was instructed to find them a family home near a good village with ‘uninterrupted views and no other building in sight’. The couple’s prayers were answered when their search fell upon The Old Vicarage at Hawkhurst. Now, after many happy years, they’re moving on and the house is on the market through Savills at £3.5 million.

You can see why the fell for it nearly a quarter of a century ago, even though back then it was fairly dilapidated. This pretty Georgian country house is gorgeously secluded despite a village location: it’s set in 6½ acres of gardens and paddock in the lee of Grade I-listed St Laurence Church on the southern edge of the village, close to the East Sussex border and within the picturesque High Weald National Landscape.

The only building visible from the house, which overlooks the Weald, is St Laurence’s 75ft-tall bell tower, which boasts ‘a fine peal of eight bells’.

According to local records, there has probably been a church on the site since at least 1100, when Hawkhurst was owned by the Abbot of Wye and then Battle, having been granted to him by William the Conqueror after the Battle of Hastings, although the first recorded mention is in a Charter of 1285.

The present church house was built in 1826, possibly for Oxford-educated Henry Owen Cleaver, second son of Euseby Cleaver, Archbishop of Dublin, who was appointed perpetual curate of Hawkhurst that year. The former vicarage was sold away from the church in the 1950s, since when it has had only four owners.

Built of painted brick render under slate-tiled roofs, The Old Vicarage has been the subject of a wide-ranging programme of renovation and refurbishment initiated by the current owners, which included a new roof, the landscaping of the gardens by Chelsea Gold medallist Roger Platt and the installation of new bathrooms and utilities.

The house offers more than 4,470sq ft of beautifully presented accommodation on three floors, including a dual-aspect drawing room, dining room, study and office with bespoke joinery by Richard Edmondson of nearby Goudhurst and a large, high-specification kitchen/breakfast room, also by Mr Edmondson, with a sitting room beyond opening onto a terrace.

Stairs from the hallway lead down to the cellar, which has three large store rooms and a wine cellar. The first floor houses the principal bedroom suite, three further bedrooms, a dressing room and a family bathroom, with two further bedrooms and bathrooms on the floor above. A courtyard of useful outbuildings, enclosed on three sides, is attached to the main house.

The gardens, designed to ensure privacy from all angles, include specimen trees, shrubs, flowerbeds, topiary and a formal garden laid mainly to lawn, with a water-feature and ha-ha. A charming kitchen garden is located within the walled garden, from where a private path-way leads to St Laurence’s Church.

In addition to a choice of excellent local schools, The Old Vicarage falls within the Cranbrook School catchment area. Mainline rail services from Etchingham (five miles) and Staplehurst (10½ miles) provide frequent services to London Bridge and Waterloo East; Bewl Water Reservoir at nearby Lamberhurst offers a wide range of leisure activities, including fishing, sailing, rowing and wonderful walks.

The Old Vicarage at Hawkhurst is for sale at £3.5 — see more details and pictures.

I do like a bit of understatement. Used correctly, it can be one of the most powerful comedic tools. Outside of comedy, it is the very cement on which English society is built. We have long been fans of Very British Problems, which does a better job than I ever could of explaining it. But basically, when things are fine, they are terrible. When they are good, they are great. And so on.

Understatement brings me neatly to 1, The Priory near Steveneage. Gazing upon this property, as is your want, you might notice something quite distinctive about it. Per the agents, Michael Graham, ‘a wisteria climbs up the side of the house’. I think we can all agree that is something of an understatement. It is for sale for £1.8 million.

Sadly, you do not get the whole Priory. The property was split in two about 50 years ago, but the bit you do get is pretty exceptional and certainly large enough. With four bedrooms, a dining hall, and three reception rooms, there is plenty of space to go around. About 4,600sq ft of space, to be precise.

The property was listed Grade II in the 1970s and it’s not exactly difficult to see why. The interiors are magnificent, a fine example of the very best of Georgian design. The highlight is surely the astounding staircase, with its beautifully intricate cupola. Worth the price of admission all on its own, if you ask me.

The property has been well maintained and cared for by its current owners, with plenty of period features remaining and I am also a big fan of the traditional kitchen with its Aga. The colours are very nice and well thought out, and it feels like you could move straight in.

There’s a fun bit of history to the place too. The property was built as a rectory for St Nicholas Church in 1780, and was once the home of William Jowitt, who was solicitor general to Sir Winston Churchill during the Second World War. Churchill visited the house and once took a call in the downstairs cloakroom, according to the agents.

The situation is pretty good too. Boasting an acre of gardens and grounds, as well as gated driveway parking, there is plenty of space both indoor and out. However, it occupies a very central location within Stevenage itself, providing ease of access to the Old Town of Stevenage as well as mainline train services from Stevenage station. Hitchin is only a 10-minute drive. 

1, The Priory, is for sale with Michael Graham for £1.8 million. For more information and pictures, click here

It’s January and with all the rain I haven’t seen the sun in 4 days. Years ago, when I was less wise and deemed myself far more invincible, I would suffer in silence during these long dark months. But I am wiser now. I look after my brain to keep the SAD at bay. I take vitamin D supplements. I exercise regularly. The boring things that stop you from succumbing.

I also daydream. Daydream of a spring and summer to come and of sun to be soaked. One of the perks of this job, and there are many, is that I get to look at nice houses, overlooking bodies of water, often photographed in the summertime. This allows me to picture the light at the end of the tunnel. To contextualise dreams of a summer that inches ever closer.

Today’s daydream is this astounding semi-coastal property called Rectory Barn, which is in East Portlemouth in Devon. The owners, through their intermediaries Strutt & Parker, are seeking offers in excess of £4.5 million.

Designed by the Harrison Sutton Partnership, the property offers almost 6,400sq ft of living space in what is helpfully described as an ‘upside down’ configuration. What this means is that the property is set over two floors, but the bedrooms, of which there are four, are on the bottom floor. 

An odd thing to do in the middle of Suffolk, perhaps, but in Devon, when you have views of the Salcombe estuary to take advantage of, very very sensible indeed. And take advantage the owners have. Within this unassuming stone shell, you will find that most precious of things: light. Windows abound, floor to ceiling French doors everywhere you look, and so on. 

The interiors are a modern delight, and scream ‘please host lots of fun parties in me’. The open-plan kitchen is vast and welcoming, as is the library/living room that occupies the first floor. The hydro pool & gym, just separate from the house, is also a light-filled space of elegance.

The ground floor is mostly given over to the bedrooms, and a media room. All the bedrooms are en-suite, with the principal bedroom boasting a vast bathroom and his-and-hers dressing rooms. 

Outside, the property boasts just over 1.5 acres of landscaped gardens and ground that are run through with places to sit and enjoy the sun and the glorious view. 

The days are getting longer, slowly but surely. Soon someone, sadly not me, can enjoy the long summer days here. I am already jealous.

Rectory Barn is for sale with Strutt & Parker for offers in excess of £4.5 million. For more information, click here

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If your idea of rural bliss a Georgian gem in a village of honey-coloured stone surrounded by unspoilt countryside? We’re not talking about the Cotswolds, rather the East Midlands secret that is Rutland. This area of gentle rolling hills, where, as Bach may have said, ‘sheep may safely graze’, is England’s smallest county. You could drive past on the A1 and barely know you had done so, which perhaps explains why it is so bafflingly overlooked. Yet it deserves attention.

Rutland (and some of the bordering ‘Notswolds’ counties of Lincolnshire, Leicestershire and Northamptonshire) have the same mellow, creamy limestone as the Cotswolds and boast beguiling market towns and villages that are every bit as attractive, but without the tourists or hefty prices. If you wish to buy a coveted rectory or converted farmhouse, you will be spoilt for choice. ‘Rutland has never been very trendy, whereas the Cotswolds has, so the area retains excellent value,’ says Tom Wilson, a director at King West.

Nick Leeming, chairman of Jackson-Stops, agrees. ‘Rutland may be the smallest county in the UK, but it is well located with beautiful countryside, historic market towns, public schools and Rutland Water,’ he says.

‘With good rail links to London and limestone villages, it has all the ambience of the Cotswolds without the price tag.’ The average property price in Rutland is £446,892 (according to Savills, using Experian data). In the Cotswolds, the average is £640,422.

One of the most desirable spots is Rutland Water, one of the largest manmade lakes in Europe, and its surrounds, which draws people for everything from birdwatching (ospreys breed here) to swimming, hiking, sailing and cycling, as well as some of the best hunting. Nearby are the stone and thatch villages of Manton (with the popular Rutland Nursery on its doorstep), Edith Weston and extremely desired Hambleton, which sits in rural bliss on its own peninsula.

There are waterfront walks, a cosy pub and elegant Hambleton Hall Hotel, with an excellent view over the water and an equally excellent restaurant, which has held a Michelin star for more than 40 years. A classic Georgian vicarage here starts from roughly £1 million.

Buyers tend to be well-heeled locals, as well as professional families from London and the Home Counties attracted by the good commuting links. The proportion of Londoners buying in Rutland has increased from 3.6% before the pandemic to 5.5%, according to Savills. Trains to London King’s Cross run from Oakham or Stamford via Peterborough, taking about 1½ hours, or direct from Corby to St Pancras (about 1¼ hours). ‘There is also a really helpful route, on the Midlands CrossCountry line, from Birmingham airport through Oakham to Cambridge and Stansted airport,’ says James Abbott, head of the residential department at Savills based in Stamford.

In particular, Uppingham and Oakham public schools are ‘a big draw,’ he adds, as well as Ofsted ‘outstanding’ state schools, such as Harington School sixth form and Catmose College, both in Oakham. This county town bustles with useful shops, a handsome market square and a train station; Uppingham, which is a little smaller and more quaint, has a slightly arty feel, with antique shops and boutiques.

Charming villages include nearby Exton, close to the Barnsdale Hotel with its popular restaurant, or Barrowden and Lyddington. All three boast mellow stone buildings, a green and that most important of amenities, a gastro pub. Three/four-bedroom cottages in these villages range between £500,000 and £750,000.

Most people are drawn by ‘the quality of life,’ says Mr Abbott, and Rutland manages to be peaceful, as well as offering variety. An Arts and music festival has developed from the regular opera programme held at Nevill Holt Hall (in neighbouring Leicestershire); the inaugural festival was held in June this year, on the estate owned by Carphone Warehouse co-founder David Ross.

Sports enthusiasts can enjoy golf or on-trend padel tennis at Woolfox, a new members club outside Stamford, with its pool, gym, yoga glasses and Tarka kids exercise club, as well as the Scandi-esque Woolfox café. Larch-clad, high-end holiday homes are being built by the golf course. These boast airy rooms with floor-to-ceiling windows through which herds of deer or golfers can be seen; prices start from £1.8 million.

A Georgian three/four-bedroom townhouse in the centre of Stamford (in Lincolnshire, strictly speaking) ranges between £750,000 and £1 million. The former wool town’s stone splendour is matched by the range and quality of shops and restaurants: everything from antique emporiums to excellent local butchers can be found here, as well as imposing Burghley House, home of the Cecil family and the Burghley Horse Trials.

Multum in parvo — or ‘much in a small space’ — is Rutland’s motto. Rarely has a motto been more true.

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Devon is a big county, but a small world or, rather, a lot of small worlds where everyone knows everyone else. Just such a world is the 4,600-acre Clovelly estate in north Devon, 11 miles from Bideford and 20 miles from Barnstaple, which has been owned by only three families since the 13th century.

It includes the picturesque seaside village of Clovelly and its surrounding land, comprising some 80 cottages, two chapels, two hotels and a 14th-century harbour, as well as several hundred acres of amenity woodland and five farms, all now owned by John Rous, who inherited the estate, aged 33, in 1983. Historically, among Clovelly’s most influential owners was Mr Rous’s mother’s great-aunt Christine Hamlyn, who owned Clovelly from 1884–1936 and spent her husband’s fortune renovating the estate.

It was a different story on the run-up to the recession of the late 1980s, as Mr Rous revealed in an interview with Country Life in 2021: ‘When I started, it was quite a challenge. The trustees had no option but to sell off outlying farms in order to fund investment in the remaining farms. It was a very difficult time.’ Thereafter, Mr Rous set out to increase the estate’s tourist income by sustained long-term investment in the village, which is now a thriving international tourist destination.

In the late 1980s, the decision was taken to sell The Old Rectory in Higher Clovelly, a handsome Georgian house set in 1¾ acres of gardens in a private woodland setting at the heart of the estate, half a mile inland from the harbour village. The former rectory had been the childhood home of the novelist Charles Kingsley, author of The Water Babies, who lived there as a child from 1831–36 when his father, the Revd Charles Kingsley, served first as senior curate and then as rector. His novel Westward Ho! (1855), set initially in Bideford, is said to have stimulated interest in the area generally, Clovelly in particular, and also inspired the name of the eponymous seaside village.

In 1989, a Country Life advertisement for The Old Rectory caught the eye of the actor Joss Ackland and his wife, Rosemary, who bought it that same year. Already a seasoned Shakespearean actor, Ackland, then aged 61, had recently hit the big time following stellar performances as a Mafia godfather in the 1987 film The Sicilian, as Sir Jock Delves Broughton in White Mischief the same year. By the time he saw Clovelly he had not long finished shooting Lethal Weapon 2 with Mel Gibson and Patsy Kensit, in which he played a corrupt and murderous South African diplomat. How better to relax after that stress than to head for the coast of North Devon?

Not that relaxing was Ackland’s style. A self-confessed workaholic, he took on more than 130 film, radio and television roles in his career, as well as promotional videos for Clovelly, where he was a much-loved local figure. The couple’s 51-year marriage was a happy one despite great personal tragedy, which saw Ackland caring for his wife at home when she was diagnosed with motor neurone disease. She died in there in 2002.

Still grieving, he carried on alone at his beloved Old Rectory, which Country Life contributor Rory Knight Bruce, visiting in June 2010, likened to ‘the eyrie of an albatross who has come to rest. He is surrounded by books, several striking John Bratby paintings and his desk, like Balzac’s at his home in Paris, allows him to face outwards with a large garden window behind… even today Ackland never forgets a part, place or person he has known’.

Joss Ackland died at Clovelly, aged 95, on November 19, 2023, surrounded by family members: at that point, they numbered six surviving children and 34 grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and the family has put the much-loved family home on the market. Florence Biss of Knight Frank in Exeter is handling the sale of a house which needs ‘needs a fair amount of work’.

Looking at the pictures that might be something of an understatement, but it's absolutely liveable, and is priced keenly at £1.4 million to give the buyer plenty of scope to get things done.

Built on three floors over a basement with a white-painted and rendered exterior under a slate roof, the four-square, 5,190sq ft, 19th-century house is arranged on an east-west axis with the rear facing east towards the sea.

The ground floor provides three good-sized reception rooms, with the sitting and dining rooms interconnecting to create one large family room if needed. A large games room in the basement is heated by a wood-burning stove and well lit by natural light flowing in through wide, semi-circular windows.

The house offers eight double bedrooms and two bathrooms laid out over two floors, all of which enjoy views over the grounds, with five looking out towards the coast. An eight-person lift, big enough for a large wheelchair, connects all three floors.

The house sits centrally within its grounds, which consist of level lawns that blend into mature woodland — a rich mix of broadleaf and evergreen native species concealing a charming timber summer house.

The Old Rectory is for sale at £1.4 million — see more details and pictures.

Credit: Strutt and Parker

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In the 18th and early 19th centuries, the country’s richest landowners and industrialists underlined their status in Society by building impressive country houses in the fashionable Palladian, neo-Classical or Regency style of their day.

The less well-off — but still unimaginably rich to the man in the Industrialisation era street — sought to achieve the same effect by tacking a grand Georgian façade onto a less imposing building from an earlier period — and that's what happened at today's property. Launched onto the market earlier this month with a guide price of in excess of £2.95 million through York-based Blenkin & Co, Grade II*-listed The Old Rectory at Brandsby, North Yorkshire, offers the best of both worlds.

Described in Country Life back in March 2012 as ‘a house in two parts’, the original rectory dates from 1565, when it was built by the then incumbent, the Revd Robert Wilson. That house was partially thatched and, some 240 years later, in 1809, one very rich rector, the Revd William Smith, added the fine Georgian front in ashlar stone.

He also created four grand Georgian rooms — the present drawing room, dining room and master and guest bedrooms — in front of the more informal 16th-century rooms at the rear of the house.

Sold away by the Church in 1938, the landmark former rectory stands in some 22½ acres of gardens, paddocks and woodland on the edge of Brandsby village, which lies south of the North York Moors, surrounded on all sides by the undulating wooded countryside of the scenic Howardian Hills, four miles from the Georgian market town of Easingwold and 14 miles north of York. A further 18¼ acres of adjoining grassland is available by separate negotiation.

Successive recent owners have significantly improved the charming main house, which offers more than 7,000sq ft of light-filled living space. This includes entrance and staircase halls; three main reception rooms, including the two elegant Georgian rooms, which boast elaborate plasterwork, fine panelling and tall sash windows overlooking the gardens and grounds.

There is a country kitchen fitted with high-spec modern units and part open-plan with the breakfast room, which together create a splendid family living space.

There are two Georgian bedroom suites and three smaller bedrooms in the older part of the house. The latter is connected to the first floor of the attached cottage annexe, now vacant and in need of renovation.

Further accommodation is provided in the modernised two-bedroom Rectory Cottage. Swathed in roses, it stands alongside a yew tree behind a low wall and a pretty front garden, with an enclosed private garden looking over the hills to the rear. It is currently let on an assured shorthold tenancy.

The detached former coach house has been converted to a substantial annexe, which could accommodate a live-in carer or be turned into two separate dwellings. Outbuildings are arranged around the stable courtyard and include three stables, garaging for three cars, a recently refitted workshop/studio and a large general-purpose building.

The front of the house overlooks parkland gardens towards an all-weather tennis court enclosed with a ha-ha. A traditional walled garden houses two conservatories, a sunny paved terrace and a formal herb garden.

The orchard is part walled, with a variety of fruit bushes, trees and raised beds. A stream-fed wildlife lake beyond the ha-ha comes with a summerhouse and pontoon and beyond the gardens are areas of grassland and wildflower meadows, an avenue of black poplar trees and a section of woodland on the southern boundary under-planted with bluebells.

The Old Rectory at Brandsby is for sale at £2.95 million — see more pictures and details.

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The 13th-century church of St Peter and St Paul stands left of the main gates into the gardens of the Old Rectory in Preston Capes, a small village with large views over undulating fields and tree-lined hills, the latter rare in this part of south Northamptonshire. Generally, the county of squires and spires is hunting country, running over flat fields and wide hedges, the skyline pierced with medieval steeples. It was the lovely rural view with still-visible ridge-and-furrow stripes that drew Luke and Victoria Bridgeman here in 2007, when they bought the rectory from its former owner, Norman St John-Stevas, formerly an MP and later Lord St John of Fawsley, who is buried in the churchyard on the other side of the garden wall.

As so often happens, much of that view had become obscured and overwhelmed by trees—a mature beech and cedar—and overgrown hedges, although the main culprit was a line of Cupressus leylandii. These had been planted by St John-Stevas as a wind-break, but, by the autumn of 2008, when the Bridgemans finally moved in (‘Norman wanted to enjoy a last summer here’) the evergreens had grown outlandishly high and blocked the view to the right.

For the first 10 years, the Bridgemans were happy in their garden. The children played on the large lawn that reached almost to the red-brick walls of the Georgian house and was edged with the skimpiest of beds, which, Mrs Bridgeman remembers, ‘crept around the walls with room only for climbers that clung to the brick’. She trebled the depth of the beds to make space for roses and some herbaceous planting beneath the honeysuckle, roses, wisteria and clematis and enjoyed the bulbs that appeared each spring on the bank below the leylandii—snowdrops and narcissus—and were followed by primroses.

There was a surprising amount of garden with which to contend. The Bridgemans had a sense that there was much more that could be done to enjoy it more fully, as well as to better link its various parts, which included, at the bottom of the hill, an area that was, if not quite big enough to be described as parkland, was planted with mostly oaks and limes and grazed by a herd of roe deer inherited from St John-Stevas. Unless you knew the garden well, you might not push open the gate in the garden wall behind the house to discover a path that leads around the upper slopes of the hill embracing the church in its walled churchyard above, with fields full of nettles sloping down and away to the right.

‘Luke suggested that we get in an expert to help us,’ remembers Mrs Bridgeman, who has become a keen gardener and, together with expert help three days a week from Chie Arai, an extremely knowledgeable plants-woman, keeps the garden going.

The owners talked to the Oxfordshire-based designer James Alexander-Sinclair, who had done some work for Mrs Bridgeman’s parents. The idea was not to go for a radical change, but to open up the view, bring in more colourful planting and make better use of the garden by creating different areas to sit and enjoy the sun as it moves around the house.

The most obvious intervention as one walks around the garden today, four years after the works started, is the removal of the leylandii hedge and the cedar, which had to go after dropping a large branch. The beech has also gone, as it was slowly rotting, with a holly growing through its centre. ‘We must have taken out about 50 leylandii,’ says Mrs Bridgeman. ‘We felt a bit exposed at first’, but young plantings of the fine species Sorbus ulleungensis ‘Dodong’, with its vivid orange-cut leaves and large clusters of berries, are taking well on the bulb-filled slopes, where choice acers, liquidambars, hydrangeas, hamamelis, cornus and roses will eventually provide a froth of autumn colour below the lawn.

The latter has changed considerably, with three square beds of herbaceous plants cut into the side nearest the house and a huge bed in front of the long garden wall. A small access path at the back allows you to get in to clear or simply walk through the shrubs and perennials, which, by late summer, are towering well above you. Stand-out plants here are two Calycanthus ‘Venus’ and ‘Aphrodite’ and huge inulas, rudbeckias and coreopsis. A handful of low yew domes are spotted about the beds, not quite marking each corner, for that would be too formal, but giving just the necessary markers to ground the airy plantings that, in late summer, feature red spikes of bistorts, yellow rudbeckias and the perpetual flowering Rosa x odorata ‘Mutabilis’.

These massed flowerbeds are edged with a cool limestone path that leads past a formal pool to a terrace arranged with benches and tables, where one can at last properly feast on the view. The idea for this came from Mr Bridgeman. ‘The benches were all Norman’s.’ The garden below slopes in a wilder meadowy planting of long grass, through which grow mounds of Rosa moyesii, their hips gleaming in the late-summer sun, with a double row of flat-topped Irish yews (planted in St John-Stevas’s time) leading to a gate through to the deer field below.

Many cherries and apples have been put in around the garden and in the orchard. Along the path below the church the steep grassed bank is now filled with gorse, hazel, field maple and sorbus, all of which can be found growing wild in the fields and hedgerows. At the bottom of the hill, a new pond catches the eye and more oaks and limes have been added to those in the deer field.

Where the land below the churchyard had sloped steeply away, Mr Alexander-Sinclair suggested levelling the ground to create space for a productive garden and using the spoil to gently level the field below. Mrs Bridgeman has put in another round pond just outside the entrance to the vegetable garden and planted cherries around it, too. This area below the churchyard is now home to cutting flowers and peonies and is a favourite place to sit.

Closer to the house, small terraces and gardens have been created, with tables and benches to sit and read or have coffee. Each has its own personality and moment in the sun. To screen these from the churchyard is a ‘wall’ of pleached ornamental pear, Pyrus calleryana ‘Chanticleer’, which comes into flower early in spring with bright-orange leaves late into autumn. Everything looks so happily settled here that it takes some effort to imagine the garden was ever any different.

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Down in the heart of Dorset, Ashley Rawlings of Savills is handling the sale of the restored, Grade II-listed Old Came Rectory.

Situated 1½ miles from Dorchester in Hardy country, it’s the former home of the Victorian scholar, poet and rector William Barnes, and it’s on the market at a guide price of £3.2m.

In all, the buildings provide 3,992sq ft of accommodation including a drawing room, dining room and kitchen/breakfast room on the ground floor.

There is also a study, music room and wine room.

Yes, that does bear repeating: it has a dedicated wine room.

And for the abstemious, the utterly glorious oak-panelled study/library is we'd the sort of place you'd love to squirrel yourself away in for hours. Maybe even days. Depends on how noisy the kids are being.

There are four bedrooms and three bath/shower rooms on the first floor, plus a further sitting room, double bedroom and bathroom in the coach house.

Old Came Rectory was built in the 1830s for the Revd William England in the romantic cottage orné style from a plan by John Nash. It was later the home of Thomas Hardy’s friend and mentor William Barnes, who was rector of Came from 1862 until his death in 1886.

Meticulously restored in recent years, the thatched former rectory and its adjoining coach house stand in 1¾ acres of grounds, which include an enchanting walled knot garden and a kitchen garden. These really do deserve special mention, with a real Secret Garden vibe that's a dream for the green-fingered.

All this, and wonderful seclusion too: the whole property us surrounded by woods and fields with no near neighbours. And yet you're in no way isolated; in fact, the centre of Dorchester is less than two miles away, and the house is walking distance to the station.

Old Came Rectory is for sale via Savills at £3.2m — see more details and pictures.

Credit: Strutt and Parker

Best country houses for sale this week

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

For several years, Plush Manor, which occupies an elevated position within Dorset’s Piddle Valley (no laughing at the back, please), hosted wedding receptions, many of which were held in a decommissioned church that stands on the edge of the property’s nearly seven acres of gardens and grounds. During its heyday, speeches were sometimes given from the pulpit. The church is no longer associated with the property.

Listed Grade II, Plush Manor is, well, plush. A Georgian home with anything and everything you could so desire. Within the confines of the aptly named village of Plush, which boasts a cricket club and pub (the two most important things any village could ever have).

Naturally, the fabulous chance to tell people that you live at 'Plush in Piddle' doesn't come cheap: this property is on the market with Knight Frank for £3.75 million.

Arranged over two floors, the property offers nine bedrooms behind its grey façade and symmetrical projecting wings. The property was a former church rectory, and erected in the late 18th century, with the side extensions tacked on in 19th century. The property's main reception areas occupy the ground floor and are still effortlessly period, such as plastered vault roofs, sash windows, fireplaces, flagstone floors and an extremely elegant central staircase.

The nine bedrooms occupy the first floor, with the principal bedroom suite occupying the entirety of one of the projecting wings, and boasting an en-suite and dressing room.

The Manor has been the family home of Irene Brendel for the past 40 years and, now that her three children have moved out, the time has come to sell. ‘The house gave my former husband, the much-admired pianist Alfred Brendel, a refuge from his relentless travelling schedule and created a peaceful haven for the children,’ explains Mrs Brendel. She adds that the family put on a music festival for 22 years at Plush Manor, which featured young musicians and world-class players.

The gardens and grounds are extensive, totalling almost 7 acres, and the main house is approached through iron gates and along a long driveway that passes through an avenue of trees. Lawned areas, paddocks, terraces, hedging and mature borders are the order of the day here, and the natural elements are improved by a manege, stables, hard tennis court, indoor swimming pool, and a two-bedroom detached cottage.

Plush Manor is for sale with Knight Frank for £3.75 million. For more information and pictures, click here

Georgian and handsome as they come, The Old Rectory at Witton — a little village on the Broads six miles east of Norwich — is real rarity. Not for its architectural grace, its sumptuous interiors, or grand rooms, but for the fact that it’s a beautiful period house with a £2 million price tag which has not been given listed building status.

We’re really not quite sure how it has managed to sneak under the radar, but those who wish to be able to update their home in the manner of their choosing will be thrilled to hear of a house of this quality where you’ll be given relative free rein.

That said, it’d be something of a crime to go too far overboard, for this really is an exceptionally lovely home just as it is, and one which has clearly benefitted from a healthy dose of sympathetic TLC in recent years – not to mention a new slate roof.

Take the kitchen, for example: recently re-done but in a traditional style, with an enormous cream-coloured Aga for that classic country house look. The cooking space leads on to a breakfast/dining area which has French doors leading out to a rear terrace.

The study-cum-library is another standout room, with its huge sash windows, original fireplace, plentiful shelving and leather armchairs. And then there’s the dining room, with its bold, red paint, almost baroque decoration and floor-to-ceiling windows.

There are six bedrooms and four bathrooms, and the principal suite has two dressing rooms and an en-suite bathroom done mostly in marble.

The house has grounds of nearly 10 acres that include an orchard, summerhouse, heated swimming pool and pond; lawns and paddocks are separated by a ha-ha, dominated by a magnificent copper beech.

Listed or not, it’s a country home which is just about picture-perfect in every way. Now, please excuse us as we dream about sliding down that magnificently curving bannister.

The Old Rectory in Witton is for sale via Strutt & Parker at £2m – see more pictures and details.

Credit: Strutt and Parker

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

Is there a more pleasing village name in England than ‘Melbury Bubb’? Just the sound of it seems to bring a smile to the face and a glow to the soul; where else but England could such a place exist?

Thought to have been the inspiration for Great Hintock in Thomas Hardy’s The Woodlanders, this village is a charming little spot. And we mean little quite literally: it had a population of 40, at the last official count. If you fancy adding to that number, there is good news: Savills are selling Melbury Bubb House, also known as The Old Rectory, with a guide price of £2.65m.

Melbury Bubb House has a large kitchen/breakfast room with an electric Aga, various reception rooms, a playroom and seven bedrooms, the majority of which have views over the garden and surrounding countryside.

From the outside dining terrace, there are 180˚ views over lightly wooded hills.

The gardens, which extend to a little over four acres, feature large expanses of lawn fringed with well-stocked borders. A paddock to the east is well fenced and hedged — suitable for either horses or stock.

To the south is a range of seven stables and Moon Daisy, a building equipped with two offices and a meeting room. Another outbuilding houses an indoor swimming pool.

With so much space and in such a quiet spot, selling agent Ashley Rawlings believes Melbury Bubb House is ideal for a family. ‘I particularly like the fact that access to the village is via a no-through road,’ he adds.

The house is late Georgian in origin with Victorian additions — and the building itself apparently appears in Hardy’s novel. It is the house where the wandering Edred Fitzpiers lived; his eventual wife, Grace Melbury, lived opposite in what is now called The Manor House.

The whole area feels like it could exist in a previous time — and, in a charming throwback to another era, there is a railway-platform halt at Chetnole, lying just across the fields, which provides a rail service to Bristol, Weymouth and Paddington. Anyone wanting to board must wave to the train driver.

Melbury Bubb House is for sale via Savills at £2.65m — see more details and pictures.

Credit: Strutt and Parker

Best country houses for sale this week

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

Described by the poet Matthew Arnold as ‘deeply rural’, the small rustic village of Easthorpe, three miles from Marks Tey and seven miles from Colchester, Essex, lies within the farmlands of south-west Colchester in a landscape that’s a mix of small pasture and large arable fields traversed by the gentle slopes of the Roman River valley. Previously a separate parish, Easthorpe amalgamated with nearby Copford in 1949.

It is here that the Grade II-listed St Mary’s Grange lies, which is listed for sale with Strutt & Parker at a guide price of £2.5 million.

St Mary’s Grange is described in its Historic England listing as an ‘early 15th-century house, extended in the late 15th and late 16th centuries and altered in the 18th century… [its] extensive original frame is exposed with cambered tie beams, jowled storey posts, some 16th-century doors and panelling, with 18th-century panelling, doors and architraves in the east wing’.

The imposing, 8,700sq ft house stands in some 12 acres of secluded gardens and grounds on the eastern edge of Easthorpe, surrounded by open farmland, yet within easy reach of the main A12 and commuter stations at Marks Tey and Kelvedon.

According to Mark Rimell of Strutt & Parker’s country department, the current owners, who are set to move overseas, have spared no expense in their bid to retain the essence of a Grade II*-listed building throughout an ambitious renovation and refurbishment of the house, its secondary buildings, gardens and grounds.

Period features in the main house include tall mullioned windows, ancient exposed timbers, intricate wood carving, panelling and restored medieval fireplaces.

Five versatile reception rooms include an elegant drawing room, a beamed dining room, a snooker room with a part-vaulted ceiling and French doors to the garden. A new Smallbone kitchen/breakfast room is fitted with high-quality cabinetry, stone worktops and an island unit. An ornate timber stairway leads to the first floor and the principal bedroom suite, five further bedrooms and two family bathrooms.

Additional accommodation is available in the charming, two-bedroom, converted coach house. Outbuildings include a gym, stable, wood store, triple garage and double car port.

The gardens at St Mary’s Grange are impeccably landscaped, interspersed with mature trees, and include an ornamental lake stocked with carp, an orchard, tennis court and outdoor pool.

Closest to the house is a formal garden with clipped hedging, rows of specimen trees and planted beds. A paved courtyard garden with rose beds and pergola provides a relaxing space for outdoor dining.

St Mary’s Grange is listed with Strutt & Parker at a guide price of £2.5 million.

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Best country houses for sale this week

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

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Penshurst lies within a valley on the northern slopes of the Kentish Weald, at the confluence of the rivers Medway and Eden within the Sevenoaks district of Kent.

Much of the parish lies within the High Weald AONB — a majestic landscape of historic buildings, rolling grasslands, ancient woodlands, sunken lanes and captivating villages where, it has been said, London ends and England begins. And it's in this lovely spot that you'll find The Old Rectory, for sale via Savills at £5.75 million.

This striking, 18th-century house sits within 1½ acres of established gardens overlooking the church and the adjoining Penshurst Place parkland; both church and parkland are accessible via private pedestrian gates.

The village grew up around Penshurst Place, a 14th-century manor house built in 1341 and granted in 1552 to Sir William Sidney, whose descendants have been custodians of the 2,500-acre Penshurst estate ever since. Penshurst’s Grade I-listed church of St John the Baptist stands in the centre of the village, surrounded by stone houses and buildings, one of which is the Old Guild Hall, said to be one of only two still standing in England.

Penshurst’s first priest, Wilhelmus, was installed in 1170 by Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury: his last public act before his assassination by four knights two days later, reputedly at the behest of Henry II.

According to parish records, from the 13th century onwards, rectors of Penshurst lived next door to the church in a rectory that was later given by the Sidney family to the local Parochial Church Council.

Over time, the council became concerned at the cost of maintaining the building and gave it in turn to the diocese, which, in the aftermath of the property market crash of the 1990s, decided to sell the original rectory and built a smaller, modern replacement in the garden.

Private ownership has been kind to the grand, Grade II-listed former rectory, which is classically Queen Anne in style, having red-brick elevations under a hip-tiled roof. The trademark symmetrical front façade has a central panelled door with a square light above and pilasters to either side.

The present owners, who bought The Old Rectory in 2005, have enhanced its many period features with modern styling throughout, selling agent Will Peppitt reveals.

The house offers 5,946sq ft of elegant accommodation on four floors, including an entrance hall, study, drawing room, dining room, kitchen/breakfast room, gym, sauna, utility and store rooms on the ground and lower-ground floors.

There is a principal bedroom suite, three further bedrooms and a family bathroom on the first floor; and four further bedrooms, a bathroom and kitchen area on the second floor.

Outside, the stable cottage is arranged as separate one- and two-bedroom apartments with a double garage.

The Old Rectory is listed with Savills for £5.75 million.

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Dating from the 18th century, The Old Rectory on Low Road near Shelton is a splendid Georgian red-brick home that sits in a private and peaceful 3.2 acres with lovely views of the neighbouring church and the countryside beyond.

It arrives on the market via Savills with a guide price of £1.425 million.

The property offers eight bedrooms over its three floors and, with 4,000sq ft of living space, offers more than enough room for a large family or entertaining.

A ‘thorough yet sympathetic’ programme of restoration has been undertaken in recent years, bringing out the best of the many period features throughout, while also providing all of the comforts of modern living.

The picture window in the kitchen which overlooks the village church and the sweeping central staircase leading to the upper floors are just two examples of the many charming features present throughout the house.

Large sash windows, elegant fireplaces and timber flooring feature throughout the rest of the property.

The garden and grounds surrounding the Old Rectory are extensive and include a two-hundred-year-old beech tree planted to commemorate the Battle of Trafalgar. There are also extensive lawns, woodland, a walled garden and a 1,300sq ft coach house that provides plenty of scope for alternative uses, whether that be as a home office, art studio, ancillary accommodation or games room.

The village of Shelton lies in ‘an unspoilt pocket of south Norfolk’, surrounded by a number of villages and towns which provide shopping, leisure and educational facilities.

Norwich lies about 13 miles to the north and Diss — where you’ll find rail links to London Liverpool street — lies 10 miles to the south.

The Old Rectory is currently on the market via Savills with a guide price of £1.425 million — see more pictures or enquire with the agent for further details.

Credit: Strutt and Parker

Best country houses for sale this week

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

When would-be buyers of country houses dream about their perfect property, what’s often conjured up is a handsome, square-built Georgian-era old rectory or vicarage in a pretty village with a bit of land and views of the surrounding countryside. Quintessentially English, their appeal stems from a combination of beautiful architecture that boasts rooms with excellent proportions and an idyllic setting often next to a church in the heart of a community. They are also ideally sized for today’s families — with four, good-sized reception rooms, five or six bedrooms and large, but manageable, gardens.

Steventon House — a Grade II-listed former vicarage which has launched to the market with Savills and Knight Frank with a guide price of £8.5 million — is exactly such a place. And if you’re getting all sorts of Jane Austen vibes from the picture of this beautiful house, there’s a very good reason for that: this is the old vicarage in the village where Austen was born, and has a direct link with the writer herself.

In June 2023, The Old Rectory Society, formed in 2006 by the former Daily Telegraph editor Charles Moore, is hosting a Jane Austen day. The society is unequivocal about the position of such houses in our built heritage: according to its website, they are ‘some of our country’s greatest repositories of architectural, social, cultural and religious history’.

The visit begins at Chawton, the Hampshire village where Austen and her sister, Cassandra, lived for the last eight years of her life; the cottage is now a museum. It later takes in The Old Rectory in nearby Bentley, where a brother was curate. It doesn’t, however, make reference to another local village, that of Steventon, where Austen was born. Lying a few miles south-west of Basingstoke, Austen’s father was rector of the small, 12th-century church of St Nicholas in Steventon. It’s thought that she wrote parts of Pride and Prejudice and Northanger Abbey when living in the rectory, which she described as the most tranquil period of her life.

When her father retired in 1801, the next eight years of her life were spent moving from one lodging to another in Bath and other places and she couldn’t write again until arriving at Chawton Cottage in 1809. Anyone going in search of Jane’s childhood home today will come away from the village disappointed.

By the time her father had retired, Jane’s elder brother, Edward, had inherited several estates, including Chawton, from his relative and benefactor Thomas Knight; the Knights, being childless, had chosen Edward as their heir, and indeed he took their surname. When Edward's son (and Jane's nephew) William Knight took over as rector of Steventon in 1823, the decision was made to pull down the existing rectory — Austen’s former home and birthplace — and build a new one in a more elevated position on the opposite side of the road. Speculations vary as to the reasons behind this decision, but it’s thought that the old house wasn’t well situated, required extensive repairs following flooding, or simply wasn’t grand enough. In any case, the much grander vicarage for William was built, and is thought to have been completed sometime in the 1820s.

According to the Jane Austen Society, a lime tree, believed to have been planted by Jane’s brother, marks where the original rectory stood in the village. Others point to a water pump. In 2012, the BBC reported on the findings of an archaeological dig in the same field. By assessing the exact size and location of the remaining evidence of the building’s foundations, the team was able to match it to the house, illustrations of which had been published in the memoirs of Jane Austen’s nephew and first biographer, James Edward Austen-Leigh, in 1869.

The new rectory is a handsome Georgian family home with white stucco elevations, elegant sash windows and a slate roof. It was sold to the 2nd Duke of Wellington in 1855 and remained as the rectory for the village until 1930 when the parishes of North Waltham and Steventon were amalgamated.

Approaching what is now known as Steventon House via an attractive tree-lined drive, it’s easy to understand why the ambitious new rector chose the position: the main reception rooms enjoy far-reaching views across the gardens and parkland beyond. The house was last on the market in 2009 and the current owners have carried out an extensive programme of refurbishment in a classic country-house style during the intervening period.

There is an attractive double-aspect kitchen/breakfast room that opens out onto the garden and the house stands in more than 50 acres, with a walled garden complete with seating enclosures and a heated swimming pool. To the west of the walled garden is a greenhouse, kitchen garden and extensive wildflower ride through the trees to the bottom of the drive where there is a useful two-bedroom cottage.

Joint selling agent Edward Sugden of Savills country-house department anticipates that the location near some of the best prep schools and public schools in the country, as well as being accessible or commutable for London, means there’s ‘a strong likelihood of a City- or finance-based family buyer’ coming forward.

Although this part of the countryside was once dominated by stockbrokers, Mr Sugden points out that, today, wealth creation is much wider, from fin-tech to app designers to green energy and health sectors.

‘Not only is it a particularly fine house in a beautiful mature setting, but the world-famous Jane Austen connection gives it a sense of place, history and romance,’ he adds.

‘This will widen its appeal, especially to international buyers, who are a strong sector at this level of the market, especially from the US.’ Edward Cunningham, of Knight Frank, believes the sale offers ‘the opportunity to own a slice of history, in touching distance of London’.

Steventon House is on the market with Savills and Knight Frank with a guide price of £8.5 million.

Credit: Strutt and Parker

Best country houses for sale this week

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

Tucked away on the edge of the hamlet of Hoggeston, the Old Rectory takes full advantage of the surrounding Buckinghamshire countryside.

The property is on the market via Strutt & Parker with a guide price of £3.35 million.

The Grade II*-listed Georgian home features five bedrooms and is as traditional as they come, as shown by the steps up to the front door, projecting wings, red brick and high-ceilinged reception rooms.

Despite its delicate period exterior, the house has been blessed with modern amenities, such as a brand new contemporary kitchen/breakfast room, and sensitively updated interiors.

The accommodation spans four floors, with each room as pristine as the next.

The gardens feature secondary accommodation in the form of the Coach House (two further bedrooms) and extend to three acres.

There are also several other outbuildings, including one which has formerly been used as a cottage/recording studio.

As well as the Coach House and stables, the gardens feature a small lake, several areas of open lawn, a tennis court and a heated swimming pool. Mature trees and hedging surrounds the gardens, creating a totally private oasis.

Although remote, Hoggeston is conveniently set close to several towns, with Buckingham approximately 10 miles to the north and Aylesbury just over eight miles south. You’ll also find Leighton Buzzard to the east and Bicester to the west.

The Old Rectory is currently on the market via Strutt & Parker with a guide price of £3.35 million — see more pictures or enquire with the agent for further details. 

Credit: Strutt and Parker

Best country houses for sale this week

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

Dr Christopher Wren was rector of the Wiltshire village of East Knoyle for 20 years and it was during that time that his son, the future astronomer, geometrician, physicist, mathematician and architect, was born on October 20, 1632. And up for sale today is East Knoyle's Old Rectory — but while it pre-dates the great polymath, it's not the place where Sir Christopher Wren was born.

It seems unbelievable in an age where far lesser places of note merit a turnstile and a giftshop, but (according to local lore) Wren’s actual birthplace was knocked down during a project to widen the road. A plaque stands in the village today, marking the spot where it once stood.

We'll never know, then, what Wren's childhood home looked like, but given his future career trajectory there's every reason to assume that it was just as charming as the current Old Rectory, being sold by Strutt & Parker at £2.5m.

This Grade II-listed property dates back in part to the Tudor period (there is a Tudor arched doorway with transom light); an extension was added in the 1930s by Canon Cross when he moved out of the original rectory.

The size and the level of craftsmanship detailed within suggests The Old Rectory was always intended to be a house of importance. Sold out of Church ownership in 1976, when a parish reorganisation merged those of nearby Hindon, Chicklade and Pertwood, it was bought at that time by the current owners.

They have created what Annabel Blackett of Strutt & Parker’s country department describes as the perfect family home. ‘It’s well suited for modern family life: the internal layout has ample space for entertaining, with a generous dining and drawing room, a quiet library and five good-sized bedrooms.’

A large eat-in kitchen, with units designed by Smallbone of Devizes, sits in the centre.

East Knoyle lies within the Cranborne Chase AONB, about six miles north of Shaftesbury and six miles west of Tisbury. The village has an active community, with various clubs and societies, as well as a church, pub and post office shop (Wren’s Shop) run by village volunteers.

The area has a number of very popular pubs, cafés and delis within easy reach, including the Beckford Arms, on the nearby Fonthill estate, the Grosvenor Arms in Hindon, Pythouse Kitchen Garden, which is set in an 18th-century walled garden in Tisbury, and Compton McRae in nearby Semley. Pythouse is also home to the local tennis club.

The Old Rectory is surrounded by an enclosed formal garden of just over an acre that is mainly laid to lawn and woodland, with, to the east, a one-acre paddock — ideal for horses or a smallholding. Also in the garden is a large potting shed and a bothy.

Access to London is via the mainline station at Tisbury, from where trains to Waterloo take one hour 48 minutes.

The Old Rectory in East Knoyle is for sale via Strutt & Parker at £2.5 million — see more details and pictures.

Credit: Strutt and Parker

Best country houses for sale this week

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

In his book Wold Without End (1932), the prolific rural author and journalist, H. J. Massingham, who lived at Chipping Campden in Gloucestershire, wrote memorably of the neighbouring small village of Saintbury. ‘Almost every house in Saintbury is separated from its neighbour by twists in the hillside,’ he said.

‘This meant orchards or tipped up pastures and even the big chestnut in the centre is all to itself. The little steepled Church of Norman blood and Saxon lineage likewise perches quite alone, not merely overlooking the vast Evesham Vale where Bredon and the Malverns stand like hippos in a shallow lake, but craning over it a few steps with its so abrupt cliff behind it. Houses here and houses there — that is Saintbury.’

Although now redundant, Grade I-listed St Nicholas Church remains a striking landmark on the well-trodden 102-mile Cotswold Way that runs from Chipping Campden to Bath.

Meanwhile, the former rectory that once served the small rural congregation and was gutted by fire in 2006 has been rebuilt as a classic Cotswold-stone country house in the Georgian style, incorporating the benefits of the very latest in interior design and technology. And now the Old Rectory has come up for sale in this delightful village, through the Chipping Campden office of Jackson-Stops, at a guide price of £6.5 million.

It’s a house that stands in 4½ acres of immaculate gardens and grounds overlooking the Vale of Evesham and the Malverns at the north-western edge of the Cotswolds AONB, two miles equidistant from Chipping Campden and Broadway and nine miles from Moreton-in-Marsh — the latter a 90-minute train ride from London Paddington.

Constructed on the footprint of the original building with a substantial kitchen/breakfast/family-room extension at the rear, The Old Rectory offers 9,539sq ft of light-filled living space on three floors.

There is a hefty list of rooms: dining hall and sitting room, a library, drawing room and study downstairs.

Above are a master-bedroom suite, five further bedrooms, six bathrooms and various domestic offices — and that’s without even considering the extension.

There is also a handsome former coach house which survived the fire, and has been converted to provide additional, three-bedroom accommodation adjoining the main house. And of special note for oenophiles is a fabulous, temperature-controlled wine cellar.

The swimming pool is an enclosed area, with a changing room and shower also accessed directly from the house.

The Old Rectory in Saintbury is for sale at £6.5m — see more details and pictures.

Credit: Strutt and Parker

Best country houses for sale this week

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

Aside from a general plea to anyone living in a former rectory to consider naming their home something other than ‘The Old Rectory’, there is little else to fault at (you guessed it)…The Old Rectory, near Bury St. Edmunds in Suffolk.

The elegant home is Grade II listed and believed to date from the 1800’s. Now on the market via Savills for offers over £ 2 million, its grand interiors offer a snapshot into a bygone era and fully encapsulate all the qualities of a classic country home.

The approach sets the scene nicely: a long gravel drive opens up behind double gates, making its way to a sweeping curve in front of the house where the cool grey tones from the imposing Gault brick and Welsh slate exterior stand out against the surrounding green countryside.

Upon entering, a lofty hallway opens up to another central hallway where you’ll find an elegant staircase with iron balustrades. In keeping with the grand theme, a large ballroom takes centre stage on the ground floor mirroring the shape of the adjacent drawing room.

Fluted Ionic columns, sash windows, decorative cornicing and intricate plasterwork form much of the interiors.

Upstairs are eight bedrooms (ideal for visiting family over the festive period). The principal bedroom mimics the footprint of the drawing room below, with an elegant curved wall and plenty of sash windows that provide uninterrupted views out to the surrounding parkland.

Six more bedrooms can be found on this floor (along with four bathrooms), with the remaining bedroom located up a short flight of stairs above.

Whilst the house itself is undoubtedly impressive — and could very easily be made even more spectacular with some refreshed interior design – it’s the 33 acres of private parkland which make The Old Rectory a true ‘hidden gem’, as the agents note.

To the north of the house is a heated outdoor swimming pool and spacious pool house, as well as a charming walled garden overflowing with roses.

To the east of the property is a three-bed cottage known as Old Rectory Cottage. Near to this is the stable yard, complete with seven loose horse boxes, tack room and kennels. A timber barn and several storerooms complete the setup.

The village of Tostock is located approximately eight miles from Bury St Edmunds, 20 miles from Ipswich and just under 35 miles from Cambridge. Trains run from Thurston to London Liverpool street and take about 75 minutes.

Tostock has a popular local pub, The Gardener’s Arms, a village hall and playing field, plus a parish church. Bury St Edmunds offers a wider range of amenities, with comprehensive shopping facilities (including the Arc shopping centre), a Cathedral and Theatre Royal.

Norton CEVC Primary School is the closest primary and is rated ‘outstanding’ by Ofsted. Further options include Thurston Church of England Primary School, Bury St Edmunds Country High School, as well as more options around Cambridge.

The Old Rectory is currently on the market via Savills for offers over £2 million — see more pictures or enquire with the agent for further details. 

Credit: Strutt and Parker

Best country houses for sale this week

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

Luke Pender-Cudlip of Knight Frank in Sherborne is handling the sale—at a guide price of £6.25m—of elegant, late-Georgian The Old Rectory in the pretty village of Stour Provost, six miles west of Shaftesbury, that was once part of several thousand acres given by Henry VI to King’s College, Cambridge.

The main range of the rectory was built by the architect William Wilkins in 1828 for John Tomkyns, the former Vice-Provost of King’s College, following his appointment as rector, with the service wing added slightly later.

Set well back off a quiet, no-through lane on the edge of the village, the Grade II-listed former rectory stands in 4⅓ acres of gardens, woodland and paddocks in a wonderfully private setting overlooking the Stour Vale, which was originally laid out as parkland below The Manor at nearby Fifehead Magdalen.

For the past 10 years, it has been the much-loved family home of the current owners, who have undertaken a complete refurbishment of the interior, where three fine reception rooms are grouped around the reception hall, allowing plentiful natural light to flood the centre of the house.

The secondary wing is dominated by a large kitchen/breakfast room, the hub of the house, with a large dining area and tall French windows opening onto the terrace.

A sweeping main staircase leads to the first floor, where the principal bedroom suite is positioned to catch the sun throughout the day, with windows on three sides looking out across the grounds to the river and beyond. There are five further double bedrooms, two with bathrooms en suite and two with shower rooms.

Formal gardens to the south and west comprise a series of tiered lawns, with a heated jacuzzi pool on the highest level and, below it, a croquet lawn and a recently built terrace with a fountain at its centre.

This overlooks the hard tennis court and the lower lawn, which slopes down to the River Stour, the property’s northern boundary. Thanks to the weir further downstream, the river flows gently at this point and is wide and deep enough for swimming.

The Old Rectory is currently on the market via Knight Frank with a guide price of £6.25 million — see more pictures or enquire with he agent for further details.

Credit: Strutt and Parker

Best country houses for sale this week

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

The end of summer always comes with a bittersweet sting; a crisp chill has suddenly filled the air, the mornings are noticeably darker — and as someone unhelpfully pointed out recently, we’ve had our last 7pm sunset until next year. The days of splashing about in outdoor swimming pools are also behind us, as bronze leaves scatter around them and temperatures threaten to numb extremities.

Nevertheless, there is plenty to enjoy with the changing seasons: a mega crop of blackberries, for starters, September sunsets and, for the likes of The Old Rectory, in the village of Westoning in Bedfordshire, a fantastic indoor pool which makes year-round swimming a top priority.

The seven-bedroom property is currently on the market via Michael Graham with a guide price of £2 million. Noted for its architectural and historical importance, the handsome, 16^th century family home offers an abundance of interesting and period features, with intricate marble fireplaces, sash windows and decorate cornices.

Reception rooms are plentiful and comfortably sized, with tall ceilings and lots of natural light. The farmhouse-style kitchen is centred around a forest green Aga and features a stable door opening out to the garden beyond. Adjoining the kitchen are the dining room and utility room, while across the spacious hallway you’ll find a drawing room, sitting room (with a Queen Anne marble fireplace) and a large family room/study.

All seven bedrooms are located on the first floor, accessed via the sweeping Georgian staircase. The master is fitted as an ensuite and there are two further shared bath/shower rooms. Attic space on the second floor provides excellent storage options should you run out of space in the two workshops, garage and wood store, all of which are located outside and adjacent to the property.

The indoor pool is situated in a large ‘leisure complex', where you will also find a sauna, bathroom and utility.

The Old Rectory stands in 1.75 acres of lush verdant gardens, formed of a tennis court, rose garden; a large pond, cornfield meadow, formal lawns, herbaceous borders and mature trees.

The village of Westoning is home to a butcher, a village shop, two great pubs and a lower school. Flitwick and Harlington stations are both located two miles away and run a Thameslink service into London St. Pancras and the city.

Harlington Lower School, Westoning Lower School and Flitwick Lower School are all within a two mile radius. For secondary, there is Harlington Upper School.

The Old Rectory is currently on the market via Michael Graham with a guide price of £2 million — see more pictures or enquire with the agent for further details. 

Credit: Strutt and Parker

Best country houses for sale this week

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

Marvellous in mellow yellow and with beautifully kept interiors to match, Ashwell’s Old Rectory — about eight miles from Royston and 19 from Cambridge — enjoys sunny gardens leading down to the River Cam.

The property is currently on the market via Savills with a guide price of £2.25 million, and benefits from large windows which flood the internal spaces with plenty of natural daylight. This, met with the crisp, bright interiors which run throughout the house, helps to create a serene, elegant environment.

The kitchen, in particular, with its wooden floors and white quartz countertops is an especially charming room.

With five, mostly dual-aspect bedrooms, it’s Grade II listed, dates from about 1830 and sits in just under an acre of land, through which a drive meanders and where mature sycamores, firs, oaks and limes are dotted about.

The Old Rectory is currently on the market via Savills with a guide price of £2.25 million — see more pictures or enquire with the agent for further details. 

Ashwell: What you need to know

Location: 45 miles from central London and just over 18 miles south of Cambridge. There are excellent transport links both by car and rail, with access to the A10, A1 and M25, and the Ashwell & Morden train station runs services to London in under an hour.

Atmosphere: The sought-after village benefits from a butchers, a well-loved bakery, a coffee and gift shop, three pubs; a doctor's surgery, dentist and chemist.

Things to do: Visit the Ashwell Village Museum, Gotha Gardens at Pembroke Farm or take a day trip to Cambridge where you can punt along the River Cam, visit the University museums and Gothic-spired buildings and meander along the historic streets.

Schools: There are several good options in the area with Ashwell Primary School, Steeple Morden C of E VC Primary School and Guilden Morden C of E Primary Academy, all rated 'good' by Ofsted. Secondary options include Knights Templar, Kingshott School and Kimbolton School, with further options in Cambridge.

See more property for sale in the area.

Credit: Strutt and Parker

Best country houses for sale this week

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

Alex Barton of Strutt & Parker’s Newbury office is handling the sale of Grade II-listed The Old Rectory at Chilton Foliat on the West Berkshire/Wiltshire border, two miles north of Hungerford and 11 miles from Newbury, which comes to the market for the first time in 50 years, at a guide price of £5.95 million.

Screened from the village by a high brick-and-flint wall, the imposing, 9,500sq ft former rectory stands in some 11 acres of immaculate gardens and grounds that merge into the surrounding parkland, which belongs to the estate of which the Old Rectory was once a part.

The house, which stands alongside the 12th-century Norman church of St Mary’s, dates, according to its listing, from the mid 18th century, with a late-18th-century wing incorporating an earlier, 17th-century, square structure of two storeys and an attic. A former 17th-century manor house to the west of the church was demolished in the 1750s.

Owned by Abingdon Abbey until the Dissolution, the former rectory was sold by the Crown in 1546 to Sir Edward Darrell of Littlecote House, as part of Chilton Foliat Manor. In 1578, it was sold to Sir Ernest Wills as part of the Littlecote estate, and descended thereafter with the manor and Littlecote House.

According to the Victoria County History, Berkshire, the original building late-16th- or early 17th-century building was probably timber frame. Early in the 17th century, a south range of flint rubble was added to the front of the east wing. The main south front was rebuilt in brick in the early 18th century and a north staircase block was added between the main house and the kitchen range to the west.

The remodelling included the addition of the elegant, bow-fronted drawing room and the principal bedroom suite above. Later that century, a sloping bay, the side windows of which were blocked, was added to the south of the early-17th-century range. Also then, or early in the 19th century, the space between the wings at the back was filled and service rooms were added to the west of the house.

The former rectory was put up for sale in 1963, when a new rectory was built. The following year, it was acquired by the writer Auberon Waugh and his wife, Lady Teresa Onslow, who married in 1961 and lived in London for a time before moving to Chilton Foliat.

In 1971, having failed to sell his father, Evelyn’s, dilapidated Combe Florey House in Somerset, Waugh bought that house from his mother and moved there with his family instead.

By that time, the present owners of The Old Rectory had bought the house from the Waugh estate; they further enhanced it some 20 years ago with the addition of the bespoke orangery/drawing room, sitting room and guest bedroom, bathroom and dressing room.

Today, the accommodation, arranged over three floors, includes, on the ground floor, a large reception hall, a spacious drawing room, an unusual square dining room located next to the kitchen in the oldest part of the house, plus a comfortable study overlooking the gardens, a sitting room, garden room and conservatory.

An impressive Queen Anne staircase leads to the first floor and six comfortable bedrooms and bathrooms, with a further six bedrooms on the second floor. A flat above the garage houses a self-contained, two-bedroom staff flat.

The gardens surrounding the house are beautifully designed and maintained, with manicured lawns, colourful borders and inspired specimen planting. At the back of the house is a large Yorkstone terrace interspersed with flowering shrubs and plants; to the side is a large flat lawn, much used for croquet, which rises via stone steps towards the terrace and swimming pool.

The pièce de résistance is the delightful swimming-pool garden, enclosed by mellow brick walls lined with mature fig trees and, on the pool house itself, a magnificent, fully flowering wisteria.

The Old Rectory is currently on the market via Strutt & Parker with a guide price of £6.75 million — see more pictures, or enquire with the agent for further details. 

Chilton Foliat: What you need to know

Location: On the River Kennet, just 2.5 miles from Hungerford, where trains link to London Paddington.

Atmosphere: The charming village has a thriving community with a local pub, village school and glorious countryside surroundings. Excellent facilities are on offer in the neighbouring village of Ramsbury, with a tennis club, gastro-pub, doctors surgery, village school and village shop; whilst Hungerford provides further amenities.

Things to do: The surrounding countryside offers excellent opportunities for walking and cycling, whilst Hungerford and Marlborough are home to a number of shops, restaurants and independent boutiques.

Schools: Chilton Foliant Church of England Primary School, Hungerford Primary School and John O'Gaunt School are all rated 'good' by Ofsted.

See more property for sale in the area.

Credit: Strutt and Parker

Best country houses for sale this week

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

Views of open countryside rival those of the local church at The Old Rectory, a beautiful Grade II-listed house in Lavenham which is currently on the market via Savills with a guide price of £5.5 million. 

Originally dating from 1720, it has been painstakingly renovated by the current owners and retains many Georgian features, from fine fireplaces to original shutters and a barrelled ceiling in the wine cellar.

There are eight bedrooms, a newly built conservatory and an indoor pool, plus additional accommodation in the form of a three-bedroom coach house and a one-bedroom apartment.

Outside, the grounds span three acres of land- scaped gardens with ornamental pond, terraces, an orchard, mature woodland and walled vegetable garden.

The Old Rectory is currently on the market via Savills with a guide price of £5.5 million — see more pictures or enquire with the agent for further details. 

Lavenham: What you need to know

Location: 19 miles west of Ipswich and 11 miles south of Bury St Edmunds. Cambridge is also approximately 40 miles to the west. There are rail services from Colchester (18 miles south) providing Great Eastern Mainline services.

Atmosphere: Regarded as the 'finest surviving Medieval wool town,' known for its timber-framed properties and quirky, wonky houses. It benefits from a large number of shops including a butchers, bakery, pharmacy and post office; plus numerous pubs, restaurants and galleries. The Swan Hotel is also home to an award-winning spa — The Weaver’s Spa.

Things to do: Visit the National Trust’s Lavenham Guild Hall and the Dedham Vale AONB as well as the Suffolk Coast and Healths AONB. There are countless walks in and around Lavenham, plus plenty of history to absorb.

Schools: Lavenham Community Primary School, Acton Church of England Voluntary Controlled Primary School and Great Waldingfield Church of England Voluntary Controlled Primary School are all rated 'good' by Ofsted. Old Buckenham Hall School is a local independent prep school and Thomas Gainsborough School is a secondary option

See more property for sale in the area.

Credit: Strutt and Parker

Best country houses for sale this week

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

It is unclear what William Wordsworth, whose Anglican divine brother Christopher lived at the former Georgian rectory of St Mary’s Lambeth in the 1810s, would make of its current, luxurious fate.

The property is currently on the market with Alexander Millett for £15 million, and is an inspiring place to live... with one slight snag. It's not actually been finished yet.

That's right: as real as the pictures on this page look, they are actually computer-generated.

Palace House, as it is now known, is marketed in ‘shell and core’ condition, with all structural work complete and consents and permissions in place to turn it into a 13,448sq ft townhouse.

Once finished, it will have six bedrooms — all with en-suite bathrooms and dressing rooms, naturally — plus a swimming pool, jacuzzi, steam room, gym and 15-seater cinema in the basement.

Not your normal pied-a-terre, in other words.

It’s ‘in the very centre of London, yet matching the grandeur of properties located in the English countryside,’ say agents.

At a guess, the poet might approve of the extensive walled garden (daffodils optional, clouds unpredictable), views over Archbishop’s Park and galleried library.

On the west side of the carriage driveway, the Coach House contains a three-car garage and two-bedroom staff annexe.

Palace House is currently on the market via Alexander Millett for £15 million — see more pictures, or enquire with the agent for further details. 

Lambeth: What you need to know

Location: The London Borough of Lambeth is located in South London on the Thames. Nearby stations include Lambeth North Underground (Bakerloo line), Westminster Underground (District, Circle and Jubilee lines), Waterloo Underground (Waterloo & City, Bakerloo, Northern and Jubilee lines) and Elephant and Castle (Northern line).

Atmosphere: The riverside borough is home to Lambeth Palace — the residence of the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Imperial War Museum. It is conveniently located for direct access into Westminster and beyond, and benefits from plenty of shops, restaurants and bars in the area.

Things to do: Take a walk along the Albert Embankment which runs adjacent to the Thames, or visit the exhibits at the Garden Museum. The Imperial War Museum is close by and a short walk over Lambeth Bridge takes you to Westminster and Victoria.

Schools: Walnut Tree Walk Primary School is rated 'good' by Ofsted, whilst King's College London Maths School and Evelina Hospital School are both rated 'outstanding.'

See more property for sale in the area.

It takes a certain confidence to move a mini digger into an established walled garden. There are the existing plants to consider, not to mention the sense that what is there already forms part of its history. But Victoria Wormsley is a designer with an eye for what works and she could not live with the tall shrubs that blocked the view of the walled garden from the house.

The Old Rectory in East Woodhay lies on the upper slopes of a hill with a lovely open view over a small valley, with copses and meadows to the north-west. It was built on the site of an earlier and rather handsome gabled parsonage that, in 1828, was deemed beyond repair and swiftly pulled down to make way for a smart new rectory designed by the Mayfair architect Henry Harrison (about 1785–1865) in a Regency Gothic style.

It is not clear when the walled garden was built, but it slopes towards the south-west and catches the warmth of the sun within its fine, knapped-flint walls. A perfectly sited bench invites one to sit, inhaling the scent of Rosa ‘Cécile Brünner’ planted as a climber, with ‘Generous Gardener’ on the wall behind. Rosa ‘Gertrude Jekyll’ and ‘William Shakespeare’ thrive in the generous beds opposite.

This is exactly the detail one might expect from someone who works with interiors, but Mrs Wormsley, who took a course at the Chelsea Physic Garden more than 20 years ago, also has a feeling for and an understanding of plants. Her husband, David, takes care of the edibles (stepover apples and Victoria plums, rhubarb and asparagus, plus a cage full of picking fruits), leaving the decoratives to his wife.

‘When we arrived here,’ Mrs Wormsley remembers, ‘there were two narrow paths running down the sides and a mass of shrubs — including an 8ft viburnum — so one couldn’t see the topiary. The cherries were dying and needed removing and there was a walnut tree that cast too much shade, so we took that out and replaced it with a cercis.’ Bold new grass paths were laid at an angle, made wide enough for two people to walk side by side, and a shrub was placed in the centre of the resulting triangular beds.

Previously, the planting in the walled garden had been focused on June, with a predominance of roses. The thinking behind Mrs Wormsley’s new scheme has been to introduce greater variety. This is certainly better for the roses, which are much sturdier and less disease prone, and it also ensures a longer season of interest. There are plenty of dependables: Lobelia ‘Hadspen Purple’ and L. siphilitica, Penstemon ‘Purple Bedder’, salvias and melittis, with small deep blueish-mauve flowers of the semi-herbaceous Clematis ‘Arabella’ woven in between.

Where the box edging to the beds has suffered blight, it is being replaced with Ilex crenata, but the large-leaved fastigiate box columns are doing well on a regimen of mulch, manure and Toprose. Here, as elsewhere in the garden, the heavy clay soil on a bed of chalk requires plenty of mulch to keep it and its inhabitants in good heart.

The beds around the house have also been improved by being widened. They sustain year-round interest from a broad selection of shrubs using a thoughtfully limited palette of colours, with Japanese anemones, hellebores and hardy geraniums as a repeating understorey.

More recently, the approach to the house has been reconfigured, although the removal of the 10ft-high yew hedge that separated the house from the drive saw several years of procrastination before Mrs Wormsley took the plunge. The yew has been replaced by a low hedge of phillyrea that allows one to see the lawn facing the steps up to the front door. This has now been divided into quarters and standing at the crux of the new paths is a lead planter filled in summer with the magenta-pink Salvia ‘Wendy’s Wish’, bright-pink Glandularia ‘Sissinghurst’ and Plectranthus argentatus ‘Silver Shield’, which delivers a very satisfying entrance to the garden.

On the far side of the lawn, a new area of meadow leads through the old orchard shown on the 1911 Ordnance Survey (OS). Yellow rattle was introduced to keep down tougher grasses and bugle, achillea and cowslips are spreading happily. In recent years, pyramidal and common orchids have appeared.

Beyond this, reached through coppiced hazels and old rhododendrons on the lower slopes, is the Old Chalk Pit. The first edition OS map of 1879 shows a circular path around its perimeter leading down to a figure-of-eight path that suggests that a woodland walk had been made here. Surely, the snowdrops and ferns that fill the woods must date from then.

It is perhaps in the Pool Garden that Mrs Wormsley has best been able to combine her talents. First, she removed the grass from around the stone pool border, because clippings kept blowing into the water. Next, she commissioned a cabinetmaker to construct the green-oak gazebo. It is a beautiful piece of craftsmanship and, because all the timbers have been slotted into place and fixed with wooden pegs, it all moves together.

The planting in the next-door bed is her most adventurous and, although she has restricted herself to a limited palette, the use of yellows and purples makes a bold statement with the acid-yellow racemes of Moroccan broom and the deep purply-blue Hibiscus syriacus ‘Oiseau Bleu’ providing the backdrop to a mixed scheme of stately annuals and perennials.

What better invitation for lunch can there be than the table set beside the pool, in the cool shade of the gazebo, over which now climb vines and kiwi heavy with fruit?

The Old Rectory, East Woodhay, Hampshire opens for the NGS by arrangement — www.ngs.org.uk

Asked to design a kitchen in an addition to a Georgian rectory, designer and antique dealer Max Rollitt focused on creating an eminently practical room, well suited to family life in the country, with a sense of character and warmth.

‘My brief was to create a fresh country-house look, as if layered over time, yet with a nod to contemporary style,’ says Mr Rollitt, who worked with Plain English on the room. ‘When I’m restoring a piece of furniture, it often helps when I work with someone else, and so it was with this project — something additional is created when more than one hand is involved.’

Antiqued French-oak shelves and glazed cupboards with backs painted in Farrow & Ball India Yellow, one of a number of Farrow & Ball colours used. They are teamed with Plain English cupboards, including a tall larder cabinet painted in Dead Salmon, a colour chosen for the soft warmth it creates in the south-facing room. The Spitalfield island has a pippy oak worktop with cupboards painted in Stiffkey Blue, finished with a specialist glaze to add depth. ‘To strike a contemporary note, the colour is punchier than you might see in a traditional home,’ explains Mr Rollitt.

‘I treat interior design as if I were creating a painting, layering colours to build up a palette for a subtle balance,’ he adds. The dark tone of the island is tempered by worktops in Bianco Eclipsia quartzite, a large white Everhot. A bespoke light with bone-china shades is suspended from the bars of the roof lantern as an elegant and practical finishing touch.

See more about Max Rollitt at www.maxrollitt.com

Credit: Tom Mannion

Beautiful bedrooms: How to tell a tale with your choice of antiques

Max Rollitt has lent a distinctive, period feel to a farmhouse bedroom.

Blending antiques, colours and design to create a beautiful room

Giles Kime takes a look at the work of Max Rollitt, focusing on this beautiful room in an 18th century

Credit: Tom Mannion

Bedded bliss: The return of the four-poster bed

Next month, an exhibition curated by Max Rollitt will explore the decorative possibilities of the four- poster. In this preview,

Credit: Max Rollitt / Plain English

Why you shouldn't neglect your ancillary rooms: 'We now live in our kitchens... we want them to be beautiful spaces'

Interior designer and antique dealer Max Rollitt collaborated with custom-cupboard maker Plain English to create this atmospheric pantry in a

Credit: Photograph by Andreas von Einsiedel for Sutton House Interiors

A bedroom in the eaves brightened up by classic wallpaper and the 'paint that goes with everything'

Papering the walls and eaves of this guest room with a lively botanical wallpaper has lent it a summery feel.

Buyers of The Old Rectory at Woolstone, on the Cotswold escarpment, will enjoy a very special view. This elegant Victorian house, which is now for sale with Knight Frank at an asking price of £2.85 million, stands on high ground overlooking Cheltenham racecourse, with the Malvern Hills and the Black Mountains in the distance.

Built in a grand manner in 1896 to replace a more modest house that was destroyed by fire, the former rectory was previously run as a successful wedding and holiday business before the present owners bought it some 14 years ago and reinstated it as a comfortable family home.

Today, the house offers more than 10,000sq ft of well-proportioned living space on three floors, including entrance and reception halls, four main reception rooms, a study and a kitchen/breakfast/family room that’s especially striking, with flagstone floors a central island with four-oven Aga and a vaulted ceiling. There are double doors at either end, one leading to a courtyard garden bounded by dry-stone walls and mature trees, the other leading to a courtyard with a fountain.

An oak staircase leads to the first floor’s six bedrooms, which include a magnificent master suite with marble fireplace, long countryside views and roll-top bath in the bathroom. Two more bedrooms are situated on the top floor.

Extensive cellars, accessed from the hall, provide ample storage space.

The lovely gardens have an ornamental pond and a wooden latticed folly. The Old Rectory also comes with a two-bedroom cottage, a useful outbuilding and a large garage.

The Old Rectory is for sale at £2.85 million via Knight Frank — see more pictures or enquire with the agent for further details.

Woolstone: What you need to know

• Location: Woolstone is situated seven miles north of Cheltenham and six miles west of Winchcombe
• Atmosphere: Set in the Cotswold Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, this is a peaceful village, centred on its church. It’s also within walking distance from the neighbouring village of Gotherington, which has a pub, primary school, village stores and cricket club
• Things to do: There’s peaceful countryside to enjoy locally and Cheltenham almost on the doorstep for food, literature, jazz and science festivals — as well as shopping, entertainment and National Hunt racing.
• Schools: Cheltenham has an excellent selection of independent and state schools, including Cheltenham Ladies College, Cheltenham College and Dean Close. Find more properties in the area.

Credit: Strutt and Parker

Best country houses for sale this week

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

Designed as an extension to the main kitchen, it features Wilkes cupboards painted in Little Greene Tuscan Red, a 17th-century Spanish centre table and an antique wooden stool — and even a sink large enough to bathe the dog.

‘As we now tend to live in our kitchens, we want them to be beautiful spaces, not filled with things that would be better put away elsewhere, so ancillary rooms, such as larders, boot rooms and utility rooms, are very useful for practical tasks and storage,’ explains Mr Rollitt.

‘Ancillary spaces need to be functional, but, given that we spend so much time in them, they also want some charm.’

Such charm comes from the inclusion of ‘functional’ antiques, such as tables and shelves. ‘They’ve gained their richness and patina by being used over many years, so why not continue to use them?’

He also likes to apply bolder colours to cabinetry. ‘You do find brighter colours used in smaller rooms in historic houses, but in days before chemical dyes, they were mixed with more black and raw umber tones, which softened them,’ advises Mr Rollitt, who likes to choose similarly ‘friendly’ shades for his projects today. Max Rollitt — 01962 791124; www.maxrollitt.com Plain English kitchens start from £50,000 — 01449 774028; www.plainenglishdesign.co.uk

[collections]

The historic village of Davenham, two miles south of Northwich at the confluence of the rivers Weaver and Dane, is one of Cheshire’s best-kept secrets, according to Mark Holden of Savills in Wilmslow. Mark is handling the sale of its loveliest Georgian house, Grade II-listed The Old Rectory in Church Street, at a guide price of £2.75m.

During his 20-year tenure, the present owner took the entire building back to its original brick, laying down Rhodesian teak herringbone floors in the main reception rooms, re-installing working period fireplaces an upgrading bathrooms.

They have also created a modern family kitchen with granite surfaces, integrated Miele appliances and an Aga.

In all, there is more than 6,500sq ft of elegant living space, including five reception rooms, a study, playroom, breakfast kitchen, six bedrooms, four bathrooms and a range of barrel-vaulted cellars.

The main study is worthy of a special mention, particularly in these days of working remotely. There is officially a smaller study listed on the details, but the sitting room has been put together as a superb library/office, with quite wonderful desk, chair and bookshelves. Could anyone hope for a finer background for a Zoom call?

Built in the days when the village rector was a man of wealth and standing, the classic early-18th-century former rectory stands in almost 1½ acres of landscaped gardens and grounds near the village centre, with views to the south over the rich farmland of the Cheshire Plain.

The present owner's hard work was much needed. The house was previously owned by successive generations of the same family, each of whom apparently left any major repairs to the next incumbent, the house has been restored ‘to an exemplary standard’ in recent years under the direction of Mark Gillette Interior Design of Chester.

The Old Rectory, Davenham, is for sale via Savills at £2.75m — see more details and pictures.

Credit: Strutt and Parker

Best country houses for sale this week

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

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Like many of his estate agent colleagues, the ever-cheerful Tim Dansie of Jackson-Stops in Ipswich has been run ragged as buyers and vendors make the most of a busy country market that ‘may not go on forever’. The current pride of his portfolio is Grade II-listed The Old Rectory in the village of East Bergholt, on the northern side of the lovely Stour Valley — Constable country — for sale at £3.15m.

The impeccably restored former rectory, which dates from 1714 with additional wings added in the 1820s, was once the home of Dr Rhudde, the grandfather of Constable’s wife, Maria.

Built on high ground overlooking the Dedham Vale AONB, the elegant, 7,408sq ft house has light and spacious accommodation on three floors, including a large reception hall, three main reception rooms, a study and a kitchen/breakfast room on the ground floor.

The rest of the accommodation is split between the two floors above. There are eight bedrooms and four bathrooms on the first floor, with a further three bedrooms on the second floor.

The main house, set in eight acres of gardens, grounds and woodland, with amenities including a hard tennis court, a croquet lawn and a swimming pool, is on offer at £3.15 million, with an additional eight acres of pasture priced at £200,000 and a 13-acre arable field at £150,000.

The location is ideal for those wanting a country house setting but still able to get further afield. It’s a short drive to the main A12, with Ipswich and Colchester each about 9 miles away.

Those keen on the idea of a commute from Suffolk will be happy to see that the railway station at Manningtree — three and a half miles away — has a mainline service into London’s Liverpool Street Station which takes 55 minutes.

The Old Rectory is for sale via Jackson-Stops — see more pictures and details.

Credit: Strutt and Parker

Best country houses for sale this week

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

Carla Carlisle: Poetry, bird flu, and galloping about doing good

Carla Carlisle talks about how poetry inspired her to do good deeds – and how one deed in particular now seems

Credit: De Agostini via Getty Images

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An interesting comparison between the price of a classic Cotswold former rectory in the late 1980s and its value today is presented by The Old Rectory at Shipton Oliffe, 7½ miles east of Cheltenham, currently on the market with the Cheltenham office of Savills.

According to a report in Country Life (July 9, 1987), Hamptons were due to offer The Old Rectory at auction in June 1987, when a private buyer stepped in to buy ‘the six-bedroom, Grade II-listed house standing in four acres of gardens and grounds, for more than £350,000 before the auction’.

Now, The Old Rectory, set in three acres of gardens and grounds with the River Coln running through, is on the market at a guide price of £3.5m. It’s a price at which it seems to have found its market: selling agent Christian Swaab hosted more than 20 viewings in the first week of marketing alone.

It's not hard to see the appeal, as the agents' details make clear: 'The Old Rectory benefits from large windows and light-filled, capacious accommodation which is thoughtfully arranged over three floors with a cellar providing a good balance of formality and relaxed modern living.'

That's ticking an awful lot of boxes, and when you start reading about the Aga in the kitchen, the huge drawing room ideal for entertaining and the tennis court, it's not hard to imagine the lifestyle you'd enjoy in a place like this.

The imposing former rectory was rebuilt on the site of a smaller house by rector John Anby Carr in 1863, to designs by the almost-forgotten Gloucestershire architect Thomas Fulljames.

It stands on former glebe land to the south of the village overlooking rolling Cotswold countryside and offers 6,632sq ft of accommodation on three floors.

There are four reception rooms, a kitchen/breakfast room, a family room, six bedrooms and five bathrooms, while the gardens are secluded and idyllic.

The entire place has been beautifully restored and impeccably maintained by its current owner over the past 20 years.

The Old Rectory is for sale with Savills at £3.5m — see more pictures and details.

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Sheering, Essex — £2.25 million

As the region of East Anglia got rich from its farming and its proximity to mainland Europe, so, too, did its clergy, leading to the creation of some very fine rectories. One such example is the Old Rectory in Sheering, Essex, a seven-bedroom home dating from about 1760, on the market for the first time in 40 years.

The Grade II-listed main house has a mix of formal and family living areas spread over three floors, and outbuildings offer stables, a garage, a workshop and garden store rooms with a spacious loft.

The grounds are mostly set to lawn, but include specimen trees, a paddock across the lane, as well as a swimming pool with pool house and tennis court.

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

Lavenham, Suffolk — £525,000

The exquisitely charming village of Lavenham is as picturesque as it is famous — it was used in the filming of the Harry Potter films as his parents' home village of Godric's Hollow. As fun as that is, we'd caution you that it's not a place to move to unless you're happy with your house showing up on Instagram every few days.

Putting that caveat to one side, this brilliantly bonkers crooked house is the sort of place which can't help but make you smile: a two-bedroom home dating back to 1395, whose history is rich and varied. It's been everything from a home to a photographic studio, and these days it's a tea room with a flat above.

The interior is every bit as exotic as you'd hope, and the present owners have doubled-down on its medieval charm with touches such as a four-poster bed.

For sale with Carter Jonas. See more pictures and details about this property.

Mortimers Farm, Suffolk — £1.25 million

East Anglia has long been renowned for its farming and Mortimers Farm, near the famous village of Lavenham, is a prime opportunity to buy into that history. The Grade II-listed farmhouse sits in some six acres and is believed to date back to the 15th century, with medieval features such as a crown post, exposed timbers, brick chimney breast and vaulted ceilings still in place today.

The interiors are more than up to date; a lot of care has been taken to bring this five-bedroom family home into the 21st century.

Outside, there is a stableyard, as well as formal gardens, orchard and a pergola walkway, with climbing roses and honeysuckle.

For sale with Carter Jonas. See more pictures and details about this property.

Stetchworth, Cambridgeshire — £1.5 million

Located in this highly desirable Cambridgeshire village, just three miles from ‘the head-quarters of British racing’ at Newmarket, sits Perrymans.

With some 3,300sq ft of living space in the four-bedroom main house, as well as a 1,420sq ft detached annexe barn, Perrymans offers that rare balance of isolated space in a village setting, with a post office, shop, pub, nursery and sports centre all within walking distance.

Unsurprisingly, given its location, equestrian facilities are provided in the shape of three stables and a small paddock and there is also an outdoor heated swimming pool for when you need exercise and the horses don’t.

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

Preston St Mary, Suffolk — £895,000

No look at East Anglian property is complete without a thatched cottage, and Rooksey Green Farm is a beauty — and, rather surprisingly, unlisted.

There are four bedrooms, reception rooms bursting with character charm and features and 7.5 acres of land to potter about in.

The highlight has to be the sitting room, with chunky ceiling beams — beautifully picked out by spotlights – as well as wood panelling, stone mullioned windows and a feeling of space that's not easy to find in such charming properties.

For sale with Bedfords. See more pictures and details about this property.

Only a couple of miles inland from Chesil Beach, Litton Cheney tucks into the southern slopes of the high escarpment that hangs above the verdant valley of the River Bride. It’s a classic Dorset village, with its thatched cottages, spreading oak trees, gurgling streams and narrow lanes. At the bottom is the pub and right at the top is the 14th-century church. Immediately below, its roof on a level with the daisies in the churchyard, is a classic Georgian rectory, complete with latticework porch and a thatched summerhouse off to one side.

The house, built in about 1780, perches on a long, narrow shelf cut into the side of the hill, which rises steeply above it on one side and falls away just as steeply on the other. The thickly wooded area below the house has a wild, romantic atmosphere, animated by crystal-clear springs that burst from fern-fringed hollows in the hillside and rush down narrow gullies into shady pools below.

From 1953 to 1979, the Old Rectory was the home of the engraver Reynolds Stone and his photographer wife, Janet, who between them welcomed many of the leading literary and artistic figures of their day, from Iris Murdoch and Kenneth Clark to Joyce Grenfell and Benjamin Britten. Since 2009, it has been owned by Richard and Emily Cave, who have refurbished the house and, with the help of Arne Maynard, considerably smartened up the four acres of woods and gardens that surround it.

As it is for most new owners, their first focus was on the house, but they started talking to Mr Maynard in 2014, after Mrs Cave had attended a gardening course at Allt-y-bela, his home and garden in Monmouthshire.

‘I loved what he had done there,’ she says, ‘and we got on right away. We asked him to connect the house to the garden more solidly, and to impose a bit of order.’ By happy coincidence Mr Maynard had been brought up in Dorset, and although he hadn’t visited Litton Cheney before, its setting immediately struck a chord.

‘When I first visited, the garden was rather overgrown,’ he recalls, ‘but I remember being awestruck — all those springs, especially the one they call the grotto immediately below the house. The site is actually pretty constrained, but it feels much larger than it really is because of the way it shades off into wildness at the edges.’

The first stage of the project was also the biggest, but made the most obvious difference. For Mr Cave, an expert in 18th-century English furniture who set up on his own in Notting Hill after 25 years at Mallett, the most important thing was to place the house more successfully in the garden.

‘When we moved in, there was a turning circle right outside the front door,’ Mr Cave says, ‘and the lawn sloped down to the house.’ Mr Maynard moved the drive to the side and realigned the levels in front of the house, so that it now sits on a grassy plinth and you are able to step from the door straight out onto the lawn.

‘One of the things that struck me most was the view from the hall into the garden,’ the landscape gardener says. ‘It’s important that you look out into soft landscaping and can walk outside in bare feet if you want to, which is why we came up with the idea of the grass steps.’

It’s a motif with local associations, too. Mr Maynard was brought up near Charlton Marshall, south of Blandford, and the garden of an old house there (since demolished) had a similar feature that lodged somewhere in his memory.

The planting, as befits a Georgian house in the country, is a studied mix of gentle informality with a few more formal elements closer to the house, although even these have been chosen for their slightly tousled, bucolic feel. Instead of pleached limes, for example, the drive is screened by a row of crab-apples that rise above a low hedge of loose-clipped box, which mirrors the existing box hedge on the other side of the lawn.

As Mr Maynard explains, this open screen does several things: ‘It hides cars and gives the front garden some privacy, as it’s overlooked from the churchyard above. We could have planted a hedge along the churchyard boundary, but that felt disrespectful. The ground rises so steeply above the drive that it’s almost a cliff, so the hedge also helps divide up the vertical height, like putting a comma in a paragraph.’

Beyond the house, the ledge of flatter land continues past the old tithe barn and coach house (formerly Stone’s studio, now holiday accommodation) to a small kitchen garden. ‘Again the challenge was to create something interesting on a narrow site,’ Mr Maynard notes. ‘We tried to keep it simple, with asymmetrical beds, which I think look rather charming.’

Beyond the kitchen garden a gate leads into an open meadow, on whose upper slopes Mrs Cave has established a rose nursery for her new business, Rosa Cheney, which supplies cut roses for weddings and gifts.

Perhaps the most magical area is also the least conventionally gardened. The hillside below the house, with its gurgling springs and tall trees, is too steep and damp to be tamed, although the Caves have opened up the tree canopy and cleared the undergrowth to let in more light.

The biggest change is the swimming pond. Overlooked by a newly stepped hillside, Mr Maynard designed it as a place to sit and warm up after a swim in its chilly waters. It adds formality in its wild surroundings. As he explains: ‘The whole garden is a play on these contrasts: formality and informality, cut and uncut, clipped yew versus clipped field maple, the loose-clipped box at the front, the tumbling borders, the plants seeded out in the chippings — it’s the thread that pulls the whole thing together.’

The gardens of the Old Rectory at Litton Cheney are open via arrangement via the NGS

Credit: Knight Frank

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Ashbocking House, in the scattered village of Ashbocking, 8.5 miles from Ipswich and 9.5 miles from Woodbridge, is a traditional Georgian former rectory set in a peaceful, 10-acre wooded setting surrounded by well-maintained farmland.

For sale through the country department of Strutt & Parker at a guide price of £2.35m, the house, built in part render, and part brick-and-flint under a slate roof, has been beautifully refurbished.

The home combines light and spacious reception rooms which are accessed from a fine reception hall, floored in York stone and with a fireplace and galleried staircase.

There are seven bedrooms in total: master and guest suites plus five further bedrooms on the first and second floors.

Outbuildings include the guest annexe and there is planning consent for an additional two-bedroom annexe in the woods.

The landscaped gardens and grounds provide a tranquil setting for a heated swimming pool and a paddock with timber stables and an all-weather tennis court are located across the lane.

Ashbocking House is for sale via Strutt & Parker at £2.35 million – see more details and pictures.

Credit: Tony Timmington

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Fresh onto the market at a guide price of £1.15m through Knight Frank, comes The Old Rectory at East Chinnock in Somerset – a thriving small village with a 17th-century church, pre-school, pub and post office, some 3½ miles west of Yeovil along the A30.

The Old Rectory, listed Grade II, probably dates from about 1680 and was altered and extended in both the Georgian and Victorian periods.

Built of Ham stone on two storeys with slate and Roman clay-tile roofs, it has been the family home of the current owners for the past 15 years, during which time they have restored and updated the house.

Among the additions are a a smart conservatory to create an inviting new kitchen, an excellent family space for eating and entertaining.

The house, clad in mature wisteria, stands in just under an acre of well-laid-out gardens, where a high stone wall conceals a heated swimming pool and a small orchard.

The main building provides more than 4,700sq ft of surprisingly spacious accommodation, including four/five reception rooms, six/seven bedrooms and three bathrooms; three of the bedrooms, including the master, have lovely views over the village and the surrounding countryside.

The present owners have also converted the former coach house to a self-contained, two-bedroom guest cottage with obvious letting potential.

This is a property with fascinating history. The manor and church of East Chinnock were endowed to the 12th-century Cluniac Priory founded at Montacute by William, Earl of Mortaine, and held by the priory until its dissolution in 1538–39.

In 1561, the manor was bought by Henry Portman, in whose family it remained until 1924, when lands and property belonging to the estate were sold.

The Old Rectory at East Chinnock is for sale for Knight Frank at £1.15m – see more pictures and details.

If ever a house and garden encapsulated the Georgian rectory dream, it’s Grade II-listed The Old Rectory at Frampton, six miles north of Dorchester, for which Knight Frank quote a guide price of £1.25m.

Built in 1726, in the classic, square-cut Georgian style, the gracious former rectory stands next to the church in a quintessential Dorset village setting.

Unusually, it’s been little altered since it was built – apart from a discreet Victorian extension at its northern end – until a decade ago, when the present owners bought it and had the entire property restored and refurbished throughout.

Inside there is some 3,500sq ft of accommodation, including three reception rooms, five bedrooms and four bathrooms.

The vendors have been careful to retain the charm of the many original features, with tall bay windows, wooden floors and fireplaces in the reception rooms.

The drawing room – pictured at the top of this page – exemplifies many of these charms, with elegant cornicing and sash windows which can be covered by original working shutters.

The setting is idyllic. The house is set in just over an acre of formal and wild gardens on three sides, with a kitchen garden at the rear.

Beyond the main home there is stabling and garaging in the coachhouse that comes as part of the property, and which is Grade II-listed in its own right.

The Old Rectory in Frampton is for sale via Knight Frank at £1.25 million – see more details and pictures.

Credit: Strutt and Parker

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Wiltshire – £475,000

A pretty semi-detached cottage which has been sympathetically extended to provide three bedrooms and two reception rooms.

For sale with Perry Bishop and Chambers via OnTheMarket.com. See more pictures and details about this property.

Surrey – £1,850,000

Luxury family home and modern open-plan living, all set within a secure gated development in a sought after village in Surrey.

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Surrey – £1,175,000

A contemporary new home with a detached studio situated in a commanding position with southerly views of the River Thames.

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Somerset – £950,000

A unique detached residence in the beautiful hamlet of Little Norton. Built and finished to the very highest of standards.

For sale with Greenslade Taylor Hunt via OnTheMarket.com. See more pictures and details about this property.

Pembrokeshire – £379,950

An architectural designed three bed property, in 1 acre, open-plan living, gas fire, underfloor heating and countryside views.

For sale with Popular Move via OnTheMarket.com. See more pictures and details about this property.

Oxfordshire – £825,000

An immaculately presented five bedroom stone-built property situated in the desirable village of Finmere.

For sale with Russell & Butler via OnTheMarket.com. See more pictures and details about this property.

North Yorkshire – £875,000

Beautifully extended four/five bed village home only 3 miles from Skipton, 1 acre of south-facing gardens, splendid long-range views.

For sale with Dale Eddison via OnTheMarket.com. See more pictures and details about this property.

North Yorkshire – £2,495,000

Outstanding country house of 4500 sq. ft. and lodge house with separate access, in a National Park village north of York.

For sale with Blenkin & Co via OnTheMarket.com. See more pictures and details about this property.

Norfolk – £750,000

A four bed barn conversion, approx. 2800 sq. ft. of accommodation (STS), in 1.5 acres (STS) of grounds with surrounding woodland.

For sale with Musker McIntyre via OnTheMarket.com. See more pictures and details about this property.

Norfolk – £695,000

A Change of pace? Restored four bed village cottage in 0.68 acre with rural views. Lots of character and tea-room too!

For sale with TWGaze via OnTheMarket.com. See more pictures and details about this property.

Leicestershire – £295,000

A stunning character cottage with an exacting level of finish and exceptional attention to detail showcasing character features.

For sale with Bentons via OnTheMarket.com. See more pictures and details about this property.

Kent – £649,000

A handsome detached period farmhouse in a village location, with outbuildings and grounds of approximately a third of an acre.

For sale with Colebrook Sturrock via OnTheMarket.com. See more pictures and details about this property.

Hampshire – £500,000

A Grade II listed cottage enjoying character and period features, three bedrooms, two receptions and fitted kitchen/breakfast room.

For sale with Goadsby via OnTheMarket.com. See more pictures and details about this property.

East Riding of Yorkshire – £495,000

An imposing five bedroom sympathetically renovated detached property dating back to the 1860's with a very generous rear garden.

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Dorset – £2,250,000

A charming former Rectory

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Devon – £700,000

Grade II-listed thatched cottage in Bickleigh, completely renovated throughout to a high standard.

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Buckinghamshire – £950,000

Unique development opportunity in a pretty village near Beaconsfield. Detached, circa 3000 sq. ft., 0.28 acre plot on the green.

For sale with LREA via OnTheMarket.com. See more pictures and details about this property.

Buckinghamshire – £1,095,000

1936 built four bedroom detached home in 1/4 acre with three bath/shower rooms, three receptions and superb kitchen.

For sale with Andrew Milsom via OnTheMarket.com. See more pictures and details about this property.

Bedfordshire – £850,000

A Grade II listed four double bedroom detached former farmhouse, in formal gardens of approx. 1.3 acres and includes an orchard.

For sale with Michael Graham via OnTheMarket.com. See more pictures and details about this property.

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The area of north-west Dorset between Sherborne and the county boundary with Somerset is a timeless, wooded landscape of ancient villages linked by narrow, winding lanes enclosed by high grassy banks or walls of local stone.

Here, Knight Frank and Symonds & Sampson are joint agents in the sale of imposing The Old Rectory in the village of Nether Compton, west Dorset – three miles west of Sherborne and three miles east of Yeovil, Somerset – at a guide price of £2.25m.

Historically, Nether Compton and its neighbour, Over Compton, were part of a large estate owned, from 1736 until 2003, by the Goodden family, whose seat was Compton House at Over Compton.

In 1883, Col John Goodden inherited the estate and, throughout the 1880s and 1890s, carried out a number of improvements in Nether Compton, restoring and extending the church and adding new buildings, many of which were designed by the architect Evelyn Hellicar.

Distinguished 20th-century residents include the test pilot, aviation historian and naval architect Harald Penrose, who lived at Nether Compton for 50 years in a house that he designed himself. Actresses Kristin and Serena Scott Thomas also spent their childhoods in the village.

Built of the warm local Ham stone under a slate roof, The Old Rectory, listed Grade II, dates from about 1820, with a substantial Victorian extension added in 1860/1870 and a garden room created by the current owners during their 35-year tenure. The house stands in more than three acres of wooded, park-like gardens, well stocked with shrub beds and borders.

It offers 6,135sq ft of light and airy living space, including reception and inner halls, three fine reception rooms, a well-designed kitchen/breakfast room, a garden room, master and guest bedrooms with en-suite bathrooms, three further bedrooms and a family bathroom, plus extensive cellars.

The vendors hold an assignable lease on surrounding glebe land of some 10.8 acres; this expires in 2022, but could be extended by agreement with the Diocese of Salisbury. There is also planning and listed-building consent to convert the stables to additional annexe accommodation.

The Old Rectory in Nether Compton is on the market through Knight Frank and Symonds & Sampson at a guide price of £2.25million. Click here for more information and pictures. 

Credit: Savills

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These days, any young couple lucky enough to buy a former rectory or old vicarage as their ‘forever’ family home can expect to enjoy it for at least 20 years before needing to downsize. The really lucky ones can expect to live there for the rest of their lives.

Sometimes, however, things don’t quite work out that way.

This the owners of The Old Rectory, Cuddington, Buckinghamshire, discovered when they bought their dream home two years ago and immediately embarked on a total refurbishment of the house and grounds.

No sooner had the work been completed than they found themselves obliged to move back closer to London, hence last month’s launch onto the market of their pristine house, gardens and grounds, through Knight Frank, at a guide price of £2.95 million.

Set behind electric gates and approached along a sweeping gravel driveway, this grand, three-storey, gabled building stands on high ground within the picturesque Vale of Aylesbury, surrounded by almost five acres of gardens, grounds and wildflower meadow established by the previous long-term owners.

The present owners have upgraded the gardens and totally transformed the interior – now, a symphony in cool pastels and white – as well as restoring period features to the minutest detail and updating heating, lighting and electrical systems to the most exacting of contemporary standards. Unlike the owners of other former rectories, who prefer to restore as they go, the next custodians of this Victorian gem will only ever need to flick a switch or two.

The main house offers some 5,800sq ft of living space on three floors, including a spacious entrance hall, a sitting room and an elegant drawing room, with ornate coving and a bay window overlooking the garden, as well as a garden room with underfloor heating, a stylish dining room and a well-fitted kitchen/breakfast room.

The first floor houses the master suite and three double bedrooms, each with its own bath or shower room, with a split-level fifth bedroom that has its own bathroom and seating area on the second floor.

The former hayloft has been converted to four garage bays, with a comfortable, one-bedroom guest or staff apartment on the floor above.

The gardens – a well-established mix of mature flowerbeds, fine specimen trees and manicured lawns, with a striking ‘canal’ water feature and a tennis court – have been thoughtfully designed to make the most of the panoramic views over the surrounding countryside and were a popular venue for charity events under the previous owners.

Historically the chapel of Cuddington – a small rural parish bounded to the north by the River Thame and to the south by its tributary the Dad Brook – was held by the Priory of St Andrew, Rochester, until its dissolution in 1540. Subsequently, the living of the vicarage of Cuddington, with that of nearby Haddenham, was granted by Henry VIII to the Dean and Chapter of Rochester.

The present former rectory, which is unlisted, was built in 1857 on land to the east of the village. It was owned by the Church until 1972, serving as the vicarage for the 12th-century Church of St Nicholas which stands at the western end of the village and was more or less rebuilt in 1857.

The Old Rectory, Cuddington, is for sale via Knight Frank at £2.95 million – see more details and pictures.

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George Gilbert Scott's enduring fame rests on the public buildings which he either created or reimagined. The Gothic fantasy that is the Midland Hotel at London's St Pancras Station is perhaps his most famous, but his work on places such as Wakefield Cathedral is also well remembered.

Yet he was also a prolific architect at more modest levels, and currently for sale is one of the houses which he transformed: the Old Rectory in Fillingham, a few miles north of Lincoln, which is currently on the market with Humberts at £1.395 million.

The Rectory, which originally dates from the 1700s, is a nine-bedroom home spread over more than 6,100 sq ft. It's been very well maintained by owners who clearly have a strong sense of their own style – and it's clear that they've obviously relished making the most of Scott's Gothic flourishes, which include stone mullioned windows which would look perfectly at home in most churches.

There is a similarly bold approach in the wood-panelled library, where the fixtures, fittings and furnishings come together to create the sort of room that you'd imagine Sherlock Holmes using while on a weekend retreat to the country.

Yet the house also has an up-to-date feel in many places. The beautiful country kitchen/breakfast room with Aga and French windows opening onto the lawns is timeless, while the bright hallway is beautifully decorated in a modern style that still sits in sympathy with a glorious Victorian front door.

Three of the nine bedrooms are en-suite, including the master bedroom which also has a dressing room attached.

The interiors have been kept at a high standard, with high ceilings and the original stone gothic windows throughout. There are also gothic arched doorways and hallways right through the property, and open stone fireplaces that are similar to the ones that Scott designed for the Houses of Parliament.

There is also a formal dining room and a sitting room in keeping with the feeling of grandeur that runs throughout.

The bedrooms are spacious, with the large arched windows allowing plenty of natural light. The staircase leading to the first floor wraps around the interior wall, opening up the hallway and the landing beautifully.

The house is approached via wrought iron gates which lead on to a driveway, with room for multiple vehicles near the house as well as a detached quadruple garage.

There are also various outbuildings and a stable for up to four horses; given that there is a paddock within the grounds, this is an ideal home for a family with pony-mad children. (Or indeed horse-mad adults.) 

To the front and far side of the house there are beautiful formal gardens with extensive views on to rolling countryside, and also an outdoor swimming pool with a polytunnel cover. 

While the rectory is a fine country house, the location has plenty of facilities on the doorstep, including a village shop and primary school (the house is also in catchment for Gainsborough Grammar School). There are also a couple of pubs and a doctor’s surgery, while Lincoln is 11.5 miles away when the need arises for more.

The Old Rectory is on the market with Humberts at a guide price of £1,395,000 – see more information and pictures. 

There are no prizes for identifying the spirit that pervades the village of Chawton, near the market town of Alton, Hampshire: it is, of course, that of Jane Austen, who lived at Chawton Cottage on the estate of her brother, Edward Austen Knight, during the last eight years of her short life. And at the moment one of the finest homes in the village is up for sale – and it’s a house which Austen herself knew well.

During her time in Chawton, Austen and her family were well acquainted with the incumbent of the rectory, who, according to local historian Jane Hurst, was, for a time, high on her mother’s list of suitable suitors for her daughter – a hope that was never realised.

The rectory was one of the most impressive houses in the village, housing barns, stables, outhouses and gardens. It was acquired in the late 1800s by Montagu Knight, squire of Chawton and Knight’s descendant, for the then dowager and, thereafter, known as The Dower House.

Currently on the market through Savills at a guide price of £1.95m, the Austen connection has produced a steady stream of viewings of this imposing country house, none of which has quite made it over the line, says selling agent Lottie Geaves.

The house has been through several incarnations. It dates originally to around 1450, was extensively ‘modernised’ in 1600, then again in the 1840s, before works in the 1890s gave it the appearance it has today.

That’s not to say that time has since stood still. The home has been handsomely refurbished in the Arts-and-Crafts style over the past few decades, though there are some areas in which it now needs a little updating.

There is a generous 6,848sq ft of accommodation, including three main reception rooms, a kitchen/breakfast room and a garden hall.

There are six first-floor bedrooms, two bathrooms and an interior annexe split over two floors.

There is also plenty of land: Dower House stands in some seven acres of landscaped gardens, stabling, paddocks and woodland. Given that, and the proximity to London (it’s just over an hour from Waterloo on the train and has decent road links via the A31), this seems as superb opportunity for a family to set up in Hampshire – just as the Austens did over 200 years ago.

The Dower House in Chawton is for sale via Savills - see more images and details.

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Tor Vivian trained at the Inchbald School of Design before working in the art world, including a spell at Sotheby’s. She later spent four years working in the practice of the acclaimed designer Chester Jones before establishing her own studio in 2001.

This bathroom is part of a complete refurbishment of a Grade II-listed Georgian rectory. The owner had fitted out the room a number of years previously, investing in handsome joinery, reclaimed parquet and classic fittings from Drummonds.

These were wise choices as they don’t date, so it was a case of refreshing the colours and accessories to tie the space in with the rest of the house,’ explains Tor.

The walls had originally been painted a creamy beige, which didn’t sit happily alongside the purer tones of the Carrara-marble vanity basin, so Tor opted for a warm, light grey – Skimming Stone by Farrow & Ball – picking out the cupboards in a gentle mid grey and adding bone handles to enhance the look of the traditional joinery.

‘The result is a lovely flow between the spaces.’

Above the vanity unit, she hung a pair of bespoke mirrors from Westgate Fine Art flanked by a trio of nickel wall lights from Jim Lawrence. ‘I always find that the best way to illuminate a basin area is with lights either side of the mirrors, so the face is evenly lit from both sides,’ she says.

In large bathrooms such as this, Tor likes to introduce upholstery to soften the look of the hard surfaces. Here, an antique bench is an elegant addition, providing a useful place to sit in the dressing area.

At the windows, she hung Roman blinds made from a simple cotton linen, adding a braid to the edges that echoes the blue of the cushions. ‘The adjoining bedroom has blue accents, so the furnishings carry through this palette,’ she says. ‘The result is a lovely flow between the spaces.’

To find out more about Tor Interiors, visit www.torinteriors.com.

This bathroom was photographed by interiors photographer Nicholas Yarsley. To see some of his other work, visit www.nicholasyarsley.co.uk.

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Arguably Bath’s most famous resident, Jane Austen lived in the city from the time of her father’s retirement until shortly after his death, a period of five years from 1801 to 1806. During her stay, she wrote the novel Persuasion and, later, Sense and Sensibility – concepts that appear to resonate perfectly with the city’s estate agents in today’s unpredictable property market.

‘At a time when sensible pricing has never been so important, some vendors still take a lot of persuading to lower their sights,’ says Charlie Taylor of Knight Frank. That message is hitting home with some, however: take the case of Grade II-listed The Old Rectory at Claverton, a historic manorial settlement on the southern side of Bath which has seen a substantial reduction in asking price to reflect the conditions.

Located in undulating countryside between Claverton Manor and Warleigh Manor, the valley was the subject of landscaping and grand planning during the 17th and 18th centuries, a legacy still evident today.

First launched on the market in May at a guide price of £2.95 million, the substantial, late-17th-century former rectory, rebuilt and extended in 1852, is now on through Knight Frank and Savills at a guide price of £2.5 million.

The recently refurbished main house provides more than 6,800sq ft of living space on three floors, including a drawing room, dining room and kitchen, all with fine views over the garden to the Limpley Stoke valley.

The first floor houses a luxurious master suite, a study, four further bedrooms and a family bathroom, with two further bedrooms on the floor above.

Outside, a bank of mature woodland ensures the privacy and seclusion of the lovely rear garden, which has been thoughtfully laid out and beautifully maintained.

In 1750, the writer, poet and Anglican minister Richard Graves – best known in scholarly circles for his novel The Spiritual Quixote, a satire of John Wesley and Methodism – was installed as rector of Claverton and, from then until his death in 1804, he rarely left the living for long.

In those days, the rectory, which stood on the same site as the present one, was, according to Graves’s biographer Francis Kilvert, ‘of a far humbler character, a long low building, beneath the level of the road, possessing nevertheless an air of comfort and respectability’.

Today’s handsome former rectory comprises three main parts: the original 17th-century house to the south, the imposing 19th-century part, with its distinctive gables, in the centre and the attached two-bedroom Rectory Cottage to the north.

The Old Rectory at Claverton is for sale through Knight Frank and Savills at a guide price of £2.5 million – see more details and pictures.

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The village of Newton Toney, on the Hampshire/Wiltshire border, is one of those rural cul-de-sacs with an access road seemingly going nowhere. Yet being just nine miles from Salisbury and 12 miles from Andover – which has a 69-minute train ride to London Waterloo – it’s a great spot for those wanting country life with practical access to the metropolis. As such, the sale of the Old Rectory – through Knight Frank and Strutt & Parker at a guide price of £3.25m – will no doubt spark plenty of interest.

There has been a church at Newton Toney since at least the 12th century and records from 1179 suggest that it was originally under the aegis of Amesbury Priory. The living was in the gift of the lords of the manor, but was given to Queens’ College, Cambridge in 1637.

In 1776, the college appointed the Rev John Ekins, later Dean of Salisbury Cathedral, as the village rector. He swiftly dismantled the existing Jacobean rectory and built the present one of Flemish brickwork on a stone plinth, the latter sourced from the original cathedral at Old Sarum.

In 1844, the medieval village church was replaced by the present one, dedicated to St Andrew and designed by Wyatt and Brandon in a 14th-century style – the gift of the Malet family. All the memorials were transferred to the new church, including that of the Fiennes family to Celia Fiennes, who made the ride around the country on her ‘cock horse’.

The rectory was sold away by the Church in 1953 and is again for sale, a classic Georgian building stands in just over two acres of gardens and grounds on the north-eastern edge of Newton Toney, overlooking the village and across the rolling chalk hills of the Bourne valley to the south-west.

Meticulously refurbished by the current owners, The Old Rectory has been partially re-wired, re-plumbed and equipped with a new borehole and central-heating system to provide ‘zoned’ heating on each floor.

The entrance hall leads to a well-appointed drawing room, study and sitting room, beyond which is a well-equipped kitchen/breakfast room leading to a large east-facing terrace – perfect for a leisurely breakfast in the morning sun.

Some 6,000sq ft of extended family living space includes five first-floor bedrooms and four bathrooms and a top floor cleverly converted into two double bedrooms, a bathroom and a small sitting room.

The house also comes with a former coach house and planning consent for a three-bay garage with a large storeroom above. There is also more than two acres of land which include a tennis court, walled garden and paddocks.

The Old Rectory in Newton Toney is for sale via Knight Frank and Strutt & Parker – see more pictures and details.

Credit: Strutt and Parker

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For more than 40 years, The Old Rectory at Widdington in Essex, five miles from Saffron Walden and eight miles from Bishop’s Stortford, was the family home of the late Brian Lister, arguably Britain’s leading postwar designer and builder of sports racing cars, under the banner of the Lister engineering firm founded by his grandfather in 1890.

Now, following the death of his widow, Josephine, the lovely Grade II-listed former rectory – which stands in more than six acres of delightful gardens and grounds alongside the church in this popular commuter village – has been placed on the market through Knight Frank in Bishop’s Stortford at a guide price of £3.25 million.

On leaving Cambridge’s Perse School in 1942, Lister completed a four-year apprenticeship with the family firm, before joining the RAF as a National Serviceman, where he continued to hone his skills, both as an engineer and a jazz musician, before rejoining the family business. At the time, motorsports were enjoying a renaissance and Lister was soon bitten by the racing bug.

He helped to found the Cambridge 50 Car Club, where he forged a close friendship with the diminutive daredevil ‘Archie’ Scott Brown and, backed by his father, developed the first Lister car, which was driven by Scott Brown to a winning debut at Snetterton in 1954.

In 1957, the Lister Jaguar swept all before it and the car went into production for the following year, however, the venture stalled when, in May 1958, Scott Brown died after crashing at Spa, Belgium.

After that, the sport lost its appeal for Lister. He finally withdrew from racing in 1964, while remaining actively involved in the company, which diversified successfully into other fields of engineering. He died in December 2014, at the age of 88.

Sometimes described as ‘the biggest cul-de-sac in Essex’, because the road leading to it goes nowhere else, the ancient village of Widdington sits in a quiet, but accessible corner in the rural north-eastern part of the county, close to the source of the River Cam.

The Old Rectory, described in White’s Directory of Essex 1848 as ‘the commodious brick residence of the Rev C. A. Campbell M. A. [with] about 40 acres of glebe’, has long been one of the most important houses in the village.

Built in the late 16th or early 17th century, it was originally timber-framed and covered with plaster, before being extended and altered in the 18th century, when the front façade was faced in red brick. The house offers just under 6,000sq ft of family-friendly living space on two main floors, with attics reached via a 17th-century staircase and well-planned cellars with ample space for the storage of fine wines.

Accommodation includes four main reception rooms, a kitchen/breakfast room, six bedrooms and four bath/shower rooms.

Although all is now silent there, the magnificent Grade II-listed barn in the grounds, with its stage, minstrels’ gallery and huge entertaining space, evokes images of many a rollicking jazz evening led by its enthusiastic former owner on the drums.

The Old Rectory at Widdington is on sale through Knight Frank at a guide price of £3.25 million. Click here for more information and pictures. 

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Centuries of history sit lightly on the broad shoulders of Grade II*-listed The Old Rectory at Westwell, Oxfordshire – a quintessential Cotswold-stone village, 2½ miles south-west of Burford, which, as its name suggests, once boasted the most westerly well in the county.

The imposing former rectory, built on the site of an earlier parsonage in about 1700, with 19th- and 20th-century additions, sits in an idyllic position at the top of the village, overlooking an enchanting valley and its own four acres of tree-ringed gardens and grounds.

Currently for sale through Knight Frank at a guide price of £5.85 million, The Old Rectory was built during its ownership by Christ Church, Oxford, which, in 1546, bought Westwell Manor and the living of the ancient village church of St Mary, following the dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII.

The college established a thriving village on the site, but failed to properly maintain its Westwell holdings and, by 1912, both the manor and the rectory had been sadly neglected. Thankfully, those days are long gone.

The manor house was sold to Sir Alfred Sothern Holland, created 1st Baronet Holland of Westwell in 1917 in recognition of his services as Trade Commissioner to South Africa and as Director-General of Inspection of Munitions in 1916. He had the dilapidated manor house restored, using a merry band of skilled local craftsmen.

The rectory was bought and renovated for Capt the Hon Bertram Freeman-Mitford, later 3rd Lord Redesdale, who, in 1958, inherited the title from his brother – the famously mercurial father of the six Mitford sisters, who lived at nearby Swinbrook – only to die, himself, four years later.

Many a memorable weekend has been enjoyed by the friends and family of the current owners of The Old Rectory, who have refurbished, remodelled and reconfigured the house, grounds and ancillary buildings with serious entertaining in mind.

Room to manoeuvre is clearly not an issue, with 5,246sq ft of living space in the main house, including four main reception rooms, a large kitchen/breakfast room, eight bedrooms and six bathrooms, plus a 1,022sq ft annexe.

It comes with a self-contained, one-bedroom cottage, a storage barn with potential for conversion to a second cottage and, the property’s pièce de résistance, a massive, 3,318sq ft entertaining barn.

It's a huge space which can be configured to seat up to 36 guests around the main table – and it also houses a library and a games room.

Of course, there’s much more to this beautifully maintained house than style, statistics and big-name designers.

The outdoor brigade can enjoy quiet moments in the delightful formal, informal or walled gardens or in the less structured woodland gardens, where the owners have retained the original Cotswold-stone walls and dreamy enclaves that give this area its unique charm.

On the other hand, weekenders with energy to burn can work it off on the tennis court, in the swimming pool or by swinging a bat or a croquet mallet on the manicured ball-playing lawn.

The grounds also include a number of discreet dining areas, including a paved sunken patio to the rear of the house and a covered dining area alongside the barn.

The Old Rectory is for sale via Knight Frank – see more details and pictures.

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Three miles south-east of Newmarket lies the ancient parish of Cheveley, the eastern boundary of which forms the county boundary between Cambridgeshire and Suffolk.

In the early 1700s, Cheveley Park became the centre of a great landed estate, following substantial land purchases by the Duke of Somerset; the bloodstock industry in Cheveley can be traced from the stud he founded there at that time. Later, following the agricultural depression of Victorian times, Thoroughbred breeding overtook farming as the main source of employment in the area.

Today, one of the most successful of the smaller studs is the pristine Glebe House and Stud at Cheveley, founded in 1958, which, during the 25 years of its current ownership, has acquired an enviable record for producing top-class foals and yearlings for the Newmarket sales.

The owners of the stud farm have now decided to move on, however, and their cleverly designed complex – stretching to 74 acres in total – is for sale through Savills and Windsor Clive International at a guide price of £4.5 million. For the benefit of those who fancy taking on the house but not the business premises – or vice versa – the property is also up for sale in three separate lots. 

Lot 1 is the elegant, Grade II-listed Glebe House, offered at £2.5 million. It's a late-18th-century village house set back from the village high street that was home to rectors and curates from 1778 to 1946, when it was sold off by the Church and the glebe land converted to a stud.

The house is beautiful, an eight-bedroom place in excellent condition and full of original features.

Along with the main house, this first lot also includes a series of outbuildings, a separate three-bedroom cottage and 12 acres of gorgeous gardens and grounds, including a walled garden, tennis court and swimming pool.

Lot 2 is the main stud farm, with extensive Thoroughbred breeding facilities and the bulk of the land – just over 56 acres – plus two bungalows. It's on the market at £1.6 million.

Lot 3 is an equestrian's dream: a three-bedroom detached bungalow built in 2005, and priced at £400,000.

Though the house is very nice, buyers will no doubt be drawn by the facilities: there's a range of eight timber-framed boxes and five and a half acres of land included.

Glebe House and Stud is available via Savills – see more details and pictures.

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James Way of Knight Frank’s busy Stratford-upon-Avon office is handling the sale – at a guide price of £2.2 million – of Georgian, Grade II-listed The Old Rectory at Birdingbury, 10 miles from Leamington Spa and seven miles from Rugby, from where fast trains to London take 48 minutes.

According to village historians, ‘Birdingbury has had a quiet life. As a small village in east Warwickshire some forty generations have lived here while great events largely passed them by. The villagers put up with the weather, tilled the land, paid their rents and got on with their lives.’

At the time of Domesday, most of the land was owned by the Benedictine monastery founded in Coventry by Leofric, husband of Godiva, the rest by Thorkil, one of few Saxon landowners to keep his property after the Norman Conquest. The village was sold many times until, in 1687, it was bought by the Biddulph family from Staffordshire and inherited, in 1743, by the first of five Sir Theophilus Biddulphs of Birdingbury Hall.

Built by them in about 1760, The Old Rectory stands in some 11 acres of landscaped gardens, grounds and parkland meadow, with frontage to the River Leam and views back to the rectory, the church and Birdingbury Hall.

One incumbent of note was the scholar and writer Henry Homer, who, while up at Cambridge, met the then Sir Theophilus Biddulph, who later installed him as rector. Homer proceeded to have 17 children, ‘thus ensuring his own congregation’, as Mee slyly observed.

Extensively refurbished by the current owners, the gracious former rectory has 5,415sq ft of stylish, well-proportioned accommodation on three floors.

There is an impressive reception hall, four reception rooms, an orangery, a Christopher Peters kitchen, six bedrooms and three bathrooms

The Old Rectory at Birdingbury is on the market with Knight Frank at a guide price of £2.2 million – see more details and pictures.

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