Down in Somerset, not far from the Cadbury Castle Iron Age hill fort, you'll find the ancient village of Corton Denham. Situated some five miles north of Sherborne and about 10 miles south of Bruton (the village dubbed 'the New Notting Hill'), Corton Denham is thought to have been settled in pre-Roman times, and appears as 'Corfeton' in the Domesday Survey.

By those standards, the old rectory is relatively new, having been built only 400 years, and rebuilt in 1750. The succeeding centuries have been kind to the place, and this exquisitely beautiful home — now named Corton Denham House — is for sale through George Nares of Blue Book at a guide price of £6 million.

This exquisitely symmetrical Georgian house — listed Grade II — stands in more than 10 acres of enchanting gardens, which have been created by the current owners over the past 25 years.

There are lakes and bridges, lawns and flower beds, formal areas and wildly beautiful shady spots at every turn. It's like stepping to the fantasy of an English Country Garden.

The house itself is equally beguiling. Constructed of the local stone with ashlar dressings, it offers more than 7,860sq ft of serene living space spread across the three floors.

Venture past the entrance hall on the ground floor and you'll find four reception rooms, a kitchen/breakfast room and domestic offices and cellars.

Above, a large principal bedroom suite with underfloor heating and two dressing rooms is the highlight, and seven bedrooms and three further bathrooms arranged across the first and second floors.

The first floor has one of the real curiosities of the place: Cordon Denham's very own 'Bridge of Sighs', which connects the main house to Stable Cottage, one of the other properties included in the sale.

The first floor of the cottage is a separate, self-contained two-bedroom apartment, tailor-made for guests, staff, or multi-generational living. The ground floor of Stable Cottage provides different types of space: a games room, freezer room, workshop, store and a garage.

Another separate building, The Clock House, is set up as a three-bedroom apartment, while other outbuildings include stores, stables, a potting shed, a garden machinery barn and a very fine pool house, with a kitchen-diner on its first floor.

It is, in other words, the epitome of a modern country house — quite astonishing when you consider that Corton Denham House was originally built as the village rectory, and served as such until 1929.

Corton Denham House is for sale through Blue Book — see more details.

The idea of giving a glamorous nickname is, at its heart, a clever bit of marketing. Yet there's no denying that it works: recent figures suggest it can bring as much as a 20% uplift to house prices.

It's also nothing new, going back at least as far as the Victorians, who dubbed the area around Torbay — Torquay, Paignton and Brixham — as 'The English Riviera'.

What started out as a neat idea to sell a few extra train tickets to tourists coming down from London has stuck, for The English Riviera is indelibly linked to the warm, pleasant and palm-tree lined beaches and coves of South Devon.

True, there was a time when, like most seaside towns in Britain, the area was down on its luck; and the classic sitcom Fawlty Towers, set in Torquay, probably didn't help much. But the area is having a bit of a resurgence, even earning UNESCO recognition recently to celebrate '22 miles of intricate coastline which provides a real mix of quiet wildlife-rich secluded coves, dramatic cliffs and headlands to family friendly beaches, bustling seafront proms and protected harbours.'

For those keen to move down here, there's good news: one of the prettiest houses in Torquay is up for sale. Brim Hill is a Grade II-listed Regency villa with sensational sea views, and it has the X-factor everybody wants: a sea view.

The view is glorious from the gardens and terrace, but even better from the full-width first-floor balcony, reached via French doors from the dressing room adjoining the principal bedroom, and it provides a front-row seat to this coastal panorama.

The rest of the house is also worth writing home about. Built in the early 1830s, Brim Hill retains many period details within its five bedrooms and five reception rooms.

There are newer touches too: bifold doors connect the sitting room and drawing room, and can be pushed back to create a large entertaining space.

The kitchen, too, is made for catering for convivial gatherings. Also on the ground floor, there is a dining room, family room and study, while outside a detached annexe lends itself to a variety of uses. And, naturally, there's a pool.

Brim Hill is for sale via Strutt & Parker — see more details.

Pennington House's story started well. Originally built in an elaborate Classical style in 1735, it was extended in 1840 and again in the early 20th century, when Lord Lurgan’s parents added a service wing, having bought the house in 1916.

For much of the remainder of the 20th century, things took a turn for the worse. By the early 1990s it was in a dire state, riddled with dry rot and rising damp, and in need of a new roof, new electrics, new plumbing and decoration.

The grounds didn't fare too badly — so long as you took care not to look to closely at the walled garden, where what was once a pretty vegetable plot had been overrun with nettles and brambles.

Thankfully, salvation was at hand: new owners came along and lavished care, attention and no doubt plenty of money on the place over the course of the next three decades. It's now their moment to pass on the reins, and Ed Cunningham of Knight Frank and Ed Sugden of Savills are joint agents in the sale at £8.25 million. That buys the handsome, Grade II-listed Pennington House itself, and the 42 acres of gardens around it.

The present owners' 34-year tenure has returned this Grade II-listed Georgian mansion to glory. As it stands today, Pennington offers impressive accommodation on three floors including, on the ground floor, an entrance hall, large sitting room/reception hall, drawing room, dining room, library and study.

There's also a kitchen/breakfast room, pantry, wine cellar and self-contained office.

Upstairs are seven double bedrooms, three of which enjoy far-reaching southerly views towards the Solent and the Isle of Wight, and five bath/shower rooms. For those who need more space, or who are looking for multi-generational living, there are two further properties on the estate, Rose Cottage and Meadow Cottage, for sale at £1.25 million and £1.5 million respectively.

It's not just a wonderful home, but a wonderful home in a beautiful part of the world. Pennington sits on Hampshire coast at the southern end of the New Forest National Park, with views across the Solent to the Isle of Wight.

This is a place with a wonderful parkland setting, with two large lakes, an area of woodland, a walled vegetable garden, and pleasure gardens that have been open to the public under the National Garden Scheme.

Close by is the yachting mecca of Lymington, which offers year-round competitive sailing from its two marinas, the Lymington Yacht Haven and the prestigious Royal Lymington Yacht Club.

Pennington House is for sale through Knight Frank and Savills at £8.25 million.

'Half term = Chaos' wrote Callie Coles on an Instagram post this time last year. It was accompanied by a video of her youngest child leading a horse into the kitchen — a kitchen already populated by more children, a couple of dogs, half a dozen chickens, and Callie herself trying to make lunch amidst it all.

Chaos indeed. No wonder the video went viral, with five million people liking it. The writer and influencer's page — with its mix of rural house renovation and family life — was already popular, but now it went crazy, going past one million followers. Callie's family — and in particular her horse, Sparky — became famous, even earning an invitation to Highclere Castle, the house used in the filming of Downton Abbey.

It won't be long before Sparky no longer has the run of the house, however, because the Coles family has decided to sell up. Woodley Park Farm is on the market at £875,000 through Knight Frank.

Allowing horses into your kitchen — or your drawing room, or anywhere else indoors — is unusual, but far from unknown. Indeed, former Country Life staffer Flora Watkins is a fan, and wrote a piece about it for us a couple of years ago.

One of the anecdotes Flora shared came from a 1981 documentary called The Englishwoman and the Horse, and it directly addresses the elephant in the room: what happens should the horse decide to, ahem, 'unload its cargo' on the carpet?

'House training is not something we've ever addressed,' said Celia Knight, one of the interviewees, while pouring tea next to her steed. 'I have a feeling that at the time he does disgrace himself, that will be the end of his invitations into the drawing room.' (You can watch the whole film here.)

With that question dealt with, the other question is: would you buy a house where animals once roamed freely? If you have no problem sharing your space with a space once spared with livestock, then there is no doubt that Woodley Park Farm is a real find, at a price which seems incredibly reasonable given the amount of space on offer.

Coles and her husband Toby both worked in the equestrian industry before settling down here in 2020, a house that they spent two years renovating. Toby took on almost all of the refurbishment work himself — a job that proved to be literally backbreaking, since a mishap left him with a broken spine and forced the plans to be put on hold at one point.

The end result was worth it: a dream home in Devon, set within 24 beautiful acres of land, and featuring three properties in one.

There's the main house, with four bedrooms set over three floors, the bottom of which features the famous kitchen — where Sparky became a social media star — plus a huge sitting room and a boot room, as well as a bathroom.

There's another bathroom on the first floor, along with three good-sized bedrooms — one of which houses the staircase up to the fourth bedroom, on the second floor.

Beyond the main house, there is also a converted cow byer, which the Coleses lived in while carrying out their refurbishment (they also apparently lived in the toolshed at one point, according to an interview in The Times). Beyond that is another two-bedroom building, The Treehouse, and there's also a stable block with tack room.

With all this on hand, then, why are Coles and her family moving away from a house which she has described as 'basically the manifestation of all my childhood dreams'? It's a question of space, not just in the house but in the surrounding areas, with Toby keen to move back to where he grew up in Scotland, where he 'had an amazing childhood, being able to roam free,' as he tells The Times.

Callie agrees: We just have outgrown it,' she says. 'We don’t fit in the house anymore. Jesse [her oldest son] has to sleep in a shepherd’s hut. It’s just too small for all these noisy big boys. I’ll miss every pebble, every tree. I’ll miss the trees a lot.'

Woodley Park Farm is for sale via Knight Frank at £875,000 — see more details.

'Colour never dies in the Quantocks' we wrote in Country Life when Fiona Reynolds and Kate Green walked through this enchanted area, a place which inspired everyone from Samuel Taylor Coleridge to John Dower, the civil servant in post-war Britain who came up with the plan to protect Britain's most spectacular areas. Thus it was the the Quantocks became Britain's first ever designated Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty, back in 1956.

And at the centre of this rolling landscape of hills and heather, woodland and wilderness, you'll find one of the most charming homes in the county: Grade II-listed Triscombe House. Sarah Brown of Strutt & Parker’s country department quotes a guide price of £6 million for what is one of Somerset’s finest country houses.

The house is roughly half-way between Taunton and the wide open beaches of the North Somerset coast. Nearby, the village of Bishops Lydeard is a quaint and charming place, where the steam railway puffs through regularly. And Triscombe itself stands in the midst of all this, within almost 20 acres of paddocks, parkland and woodland.

Originally built between 1902 and 1905 by Pollard & Sons of Bridgwater to the designs of Sir Ernest Newton, Triscombe House remained in the same family until 1956, when the estate was divided following the death of Emily Wimbush. It was put on the market at the turn of the millennium, and a sale had been agreed which would see the house developed.

The changes that came turned out to be rather different than originally envisioned: a devastating fire in 2002 left only the main walls standing. Thankfully, in 2003, the shell was saved from demolition by a developer who embarked on a renovation programme. Triscombe was saved, and beautifully so.

Later years have seen things get even better. The current owners bought the house five years ago, and have made many improvements in that time.

As it stands today, Triscombe is a huge country home, with almost 16,000 sq ft in the main house, and a further 4,000sq ft split up between outbuildings, garaging and a separate three-bedroom lodge.

There are seven reception rooms — including library, drawing room and a snug — plus a huge kitchen-breakfast room, and a 'winter garden', all on the ground floor.

Below this level, the basement has a wine room, cinema room and a 'data room', which is a bit of a rarity in a rural home such as this one.

The nine bedrooms are split across the first and second floors, with the highlight being the huge master suite on the first floor, with its bay window, large private bathroom and a dressing room.

There are all sorts of other lovely things to discover beyond the mere sleeping and washing spots, though: there are separate laundry and linen rooms, and a 'winter dressing room' on the first floor, because nobody should have to keep boots and woolies next to summer dresses and wide-brimmed hats.

The second floor also has more to offer, in the shape of a large, dedicated games room and a studio space.

Should nine bedrooms not be enough, the further accommodation in the aforementioned lodge is there for you.

Then there are the grounds, with wide open areas of lawn as well as formal planting, woodland, a kitchen garden and stabling. Triscombe really is a place with something for everyone.

Triscombe House is for sale through Strutt & Parker — see more details.

There's something reassuring about a house that's on the market for the first time in decades. After all, nobody would hang on to a place that looked good on the surface, but turned out to have some glaring flaw. It's like buying a second-hand car: one owner from new is a powerful tool.

The Old Rectory in the Wiltshire village of Alton Barnes has an impeccable pedigree on that score: it's for sale on the open market for the first time in more than 60 years. What's more, its previous owners had the place from new: the Church of England sold off endless spectacular rectories in the 19th and early 20th centuries, but this one was in their hands until in the 1960s. Even they couldn't bear to part with the place. And even a cursory glance at the house makes it pretty clear why.

Alex Barton of Strutt & Parker in Newbury seeks ‘offers in excess of £2m’ for this most picturesque of Grade II-listed old rectories, set in the ‘highly desirable’ village that is Alton Barnes. This part of Wiltshire — the Pewsey Vale — is some eight miles east of Devizes and on the edge of the North Wessex Downs National Landscape.

The house itself is as beautiful and graceful as the landscape. It's an elegant Queen Anne-style rectory originally built in the 1720s or 1730s, with a rear block added in 1785 and further alterations from about 1830.

It offers more than 5,300 sq ft of pleasant family accommodation, including four reception rooms, seven bedrooms and two bathrooms.

On the ground floor you'll find a kitchen/diner, sitting room, dining room and family room.

The first floor has four bedrooms — one of which is an en-suite master bedroom — and a drawing room with wonderful views.

The house stands in two acres of gardens and grounds to the west of the ancient Saxon church of St Mary, and looks out over the surrounding hills and the famous Alton Barnes White Horse. It's the epitome of the idyllic country rectory.

The second floor has three more bedrooms, and plentiful storage space. There's also a separate, two-storey annexe with its own separate entrance; it makes the house ideal for multi-generational living.

The Old Rectory in Alton Barnes is for sale via Strutt & Parker at £2 million — see more details.

Old houses are like onions. Peel away one layer, and another is waiting for you; and another, and another, and another.

The property which prompted this though is Batheaston House, situated three miles outside the centre of Bath itself, and newly on the market through via Savills with an asking price of £4.25 million.

The first thing that caught my eye about the place — and no doubt yours — were the pictures. This is a classic Queen Anne house, with a touch of mini-French chateau about its charming symmetry and steeply-pitched roof, set amid an acre and a quarter of gardens that are nothing short of blissful.

Inside, room after room is spacious, filled with light, dripping with character and gorgeously decorated.

The bathrooms are a particular highlight; one is double aspect, with three huge sash windows making the most of wonderful views across Somerset. To find a place like this with such bucolic charm just five minutes from the middle of Bath (not in rush hour traffic, of course) is really something.

Peel back those first few layers, though, and the story behind the place is fascinating. The house as it stands today dates to 1712 (unsurprisingly, it’s Grade II*-listed), but that work — commissioned by Henry Walters, then the High Sheriff of Somerset —was built on top of an earlier, Tudor home belonging to Sir John Harrington, a godson of Elizabeth I, who is renowned for inventing the first flushing loo. (Surprisingly, it didn’t take off: Sir John and Good Queen Bess both had them, but the invention didn’t take off for another 200 years.)

Another iconic monarch also has links to the house: Queen Victoria, whose youngest granddaughter Princess Beatrice apparently had piano lessons at Batheaston, courtesy of the exotically-named musician Francesca Ferrari, whose sister rented the place at the time.

Even more intriguing is a link to the artist Walter Sickert, one of the leading lights of post-Impressionist art in early 20th century Britain. A search through the Country Life archive reveals a portrait of Sickert by Cecil Beaton, which according to the article was taken at Batheaston House in 1940.

Sickert didn’t own the place, but did live nearby in Bathampton in the final years of an almost unfathomably colourful life which included spells as an actor, trailblazing painter, and possibly even a spell as the world’s most famous serial killer. You read that right: a ludicrously fanciful theory was promoted by the American crime writer Patricia Cornwell, who penned a book in 2002 claiming that Sickert was actually Jack the Ripper. (The suggestion has been widely debunked, and a New York Times review called it ‘sloppy’ and ‘insulting’.)

Such things are no doubt more about selling books than serious investigation, but it's an interesting footnote to a house that Batheaston House’s most recent chapter actually began in 2015, when the place was given a superb restoration by architects Watson, Bertram and Fell — the same people who turned Cliveden from a great country house into a great country house hotel. And a new chapter is about to begin; will it be you who writes it?

Batheaston House is for sale at £4.25 million via Savills — see more details.

The riverside village of Lerryn is an idyllic little spot. It sits a few miles inland from the harbour town of Lostwithiel at the head of the Fowey estuary. It's an peaceful spot amid the rolling valleys of this part of south Cornwall.

As you head down to the village on the country lanes from Lostwithiel, you'd more than likely head straight past a discreet set of gates leading onto a private lane off to one side. But it's here that you'll find a true gem of a house that has just come up for sale: the 17th century, Grade II*-listed Ethy House. You won't find the house on the property portals: it's being marketed through a few select channels (among them Country Life, so you're in privileged company reading this) by Andrew Chilcott of Truro-based Lillicrap Chilcott. Andrew quotes a guide price of £3 million for this beautiful home, set in 17½ acres of gardens, woods and parkland.

Historically owned by the Courtenay family, who were Earls of Devon, Ethy House was built on the site of an earlier manor at the turn of the 17th century and extended and updated in the mid 19th century. In 1870, The Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales listed Ethy House as a ‘chief residence of the parish of Winnow, 2.25 miles south-south east of Lostwithiel’.

Approached down the aforementioned (and long) private drive, Ethy House stands on high ground, facing south-east over National Trust land and the lovely Lerryn Valley, a captivating landscape of undulating parkland, woods and farmland that slopes down to the River Lerryn.

Built in the symmetrical Georgian style of rendered brick under a slate roof with a shallow 19th-century service wing to the west, the house offers elegant, well-planned accommodation on two main floors, with four attic rooms on the second floor and an indoor swimming pool, games room and various domestic offices on the lower ground floor.

Much cherished by its current owners, who have lived there for 27 years, highlights include an impressive staircase hall, three fine reception rooms and a good-sized kitchen/breakfast room.

The first-floor principal suite has two bedrooms, two en-suite bathrooms and a sitting room, plus two further en-suite bedrooms and three further guest bedrooms in the rear wing.

Additional accommodation is provided in the two-bedroom Stables Cottage.

To the north of the main house, a range of unconverted period barns offers scope for further improvement — as do the property’s three lovely walled gardens.

Ethy House is for sale through Lillicrap Chilcott — request more details via the agent.

Down in the West Country, vendors are taking advantage of the longer, brighter days to launch some fine country properties onto the open market. History repeats itself, however — endlessly.

Back in August 1980, my illustrious predecessor Michael Hanson wrote in Country Life: ‘How long is it since the estate market has been in such a parlous state, with agents having so many houses on their books for sale, but hardly a buyer to be seen? Memories are notoriously short, but it was only in 1974 that the present market collapsed after the boom years of 1972 and 1973… Yet who believes that the market will not recover eventually? The question is when.’

Fortunately, life goes on and, despite the downturn, 1980 saw the sale of a number of notable houses, among them Redlap House, a striking coastal property set in 20 acres of gardens near Dartmouth, Devon, for which selling agents Jackson-Stops invited ‘offers in the region of £250,000’.

Today, a resurgent Redlap leads the West Country charge, at a guide price of £10 million through Lindsay Cuthill’s Blue Book Agency.

For Devon-based property consultant Martin Lamb, who handled its sale in 1980, 2009 and 2015 and is currently advising the vendor, Redlap House, now set in more than 31 acres of magical landscaped gardens with its own private beach and breathtaking views over Start Bay, is ‘one of the most dramatic small private coastal estates in the South Hams, if not the entire South-West’.

Situated just outside the pretty cliff-top village of Stoke Fleming, two miles from Dartmouth and 40 miles from Exeter Airport, the discreet, foliage-clad main house — reconfigured and renovated throughout by its present owner — is approached via a long woodland drive that leads to the south-facing façade, from where meandering paths run to Redlap Cove.

With not a single right of way crossing the land, everything — from the private beach sheltered by towering cliffs to the wooded valley itself — is wholly owned by the estate.

Hidden among the trees, the 7,371sq ft main house boasts proportions that are both generous and balanced. The reception hall leads to four elegant reception rooms, each of which enjoys views either over the ornate gardens or the spectacular coastline.

The study, in particular, enjoys a mesmerising outlook down the valley to the sea and beyond to the rolling South Hams hills.

The upgraded kitchen is the focal point of daily family life — and as magnificent dramatic in its decor as the landscape around the house.

Upstairs, the light-filled, 34ft artist’s studio seems to draw in the landscape and the principal bedroom suite offers the same panoramic views.

Five further bedrooms and four further bathrooms complete the accommodation.

An impressive new addition to Redlap House is the splendid leisure complex, set away from the house and designed to echo the grandeur of the setting. A 20m (65½ft) pool under a dramatic beamed ceiling opens onto a terrace that looks out across the gardens to the sea.

Two en-suite guest bedrooms make this a self-contained retreat that is ideal for visitors or as a private wellness suite.

Redlap House is for sale through Blue Book — see more details.

First mentioned in 1337 as part of the manor of Tybesta, handsome, Grade II-listed Nantellan House sits in five and a half acres of glorious gardens and grounds in a quiet rural hamlet, three-quarters of a mile from Grampound, roughly half-way between St Austell and Truro.

Now for sale at a guide price of £1.95 million through Falmouth-based Jonathan Cunliffe, Nantellan has also been the much-loved family home of its present owners for the past 27 years.

While its history stretches back seven centuries, the house that stands here today is newer than that — but not by much. According to local records, the house was rebuilt in 1551 on the ruins of an earlier manor by the historian John Vincent, scion of a family that was influential in Cornwall from the 14th century onwards.

Later the building became a farmhouse, and was extended in 1748, then again in 1795, with the addition of a new Georgian south front housing the three main reception rooms. The snug/study at the rear of the house is thought to be the original living room.

Approached along a private gated driveway bordered by yew trees, the house offers 4,217sq ft of bright and cheerful living space, including a grand staircase with a stairwell window, five well-proportioned reception rooms and six double bedrooms, two of which have en-suite bathrooms.

Outside, the landscaped gardens — a mix of formal lawns and richly-planted borders framed by splendid specimen trees — provide an impressive backdrop to the main house.

Also within the grounds is an outdoor heated swimming pool and a collection of useful outbuildings, including a small cottage, a car-port, a potting shed and chicken coop, some or all of which could be suitable for conversion, subject to the usual consents.

Nantellan is for sale via Jonathan Cunliffe at £1.95 million — see more details.

A Somerset house designed by the architect of Oxford’s Bridge of Sighs has come to the market.

Grade II-listed Thorne House, in the village of Thorne on the outskirts of Yeovil, was commissioned by a local judge, James Hooper, and built on the site of a much smaller property in 1882. It's not small these days, incidentally: this £3.5 million property includes 10 bedrooms and a helipad.

As well as his work at the University of Oxford, the architect T. G. Jackson (later Sir Thomas Jackson) designed the chapel at Radley College in Oxfordshire, various buildings at Brighton College in East Sussex (where he was educated) and the front entrance hall in Burlington House, London W1.

Thorne House may not be as grand as those buildings, but in the context of a West Country village it's an enormously impressive — and beautiful — house set within 5¾ acres.

It's also absolutely huge, with almost 8,000sq ft of space between the main hosue and the separate two-bedroom cottage, which is attached to the main house at the north-west corner — and ideal, therefore, for multi-generational living.

The main house is arranged on a square floorplan, with the four corners of the ground floor taken up by a dining room, sitting room, library and a large kitchen-diner.

On the first floor there are six bedrooms, and for those in need of more that that there is plenty of scope on the second floor to create more.

Beyond the main house and cottage there is also a large coach house with its own kitchen, a 36ft wood-panelled entertaining room and outbuildings with offices. It also has a clocktower.

The gardens feature lawns, a pond, a kitchen garden and the aforementioned helipad.

A further four-acre paddock, ideal for horses or livestock, is available by separate negotiation.

Thorne House is on the market for £3.5 million through Savills in Wimborne — see more details.

When the former BBC and ITV television journalist Michele Romaine and her husband bought Knapp House at East Anstey near Exmoor in Devon, they were looking for somewhere that offered space, character and a change of pace.

Now, the time has come to downsize from this beautiful nine-bedroom home, and the couple have put the house up for sale for £2.45m through Jackson-Stops in Taunton.

The Arts-and-Crafts house needed some work, so the couple began an extensive renovation programme that revealed several stories.

Believed to have been built as a weekend retreat for a shipping magnate who supplied coal and water to ships going through Suez, it was converted into a prep school during the Second World War when Hillsbrow School in Surrey was evacuated.

The names of the school houses are still written in the attic cupboards and several documents from that period surfaced during the works. One references that Andrew Lyle, of the Tate & Lyle dynasty, was a pupil at the school. ‘He had a sugar cube next to his name in the school register so that the headmaster could remember who he was,’ explains Ms Romaine. The boys lived a charmed life, where after lessons they 'rode ponies and swam in the River Barle — a real Exmoor childhood.’

As well as those nine bedrooms, the house also has a large kitchen/breakfast room with an Aga and several reception rooms boasting far-reaching views across Exmoor.

Downstairs is a cinema room, wine cellar, gym and garden room.

In the nine-acre grounds, meanwhile, are four holiday lodges.

Knapp House is for sale via Jackson-Stops — see more details.

It's very easy to think of home improvements as a phenomenon starting with the 1980s DIY boom, or the Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen era TV shows of the 1990s. Obviously, though, this isn't true, for making a few changes around the place' is as old as human history. No doubt the first Neanderthals to move in to a cave were also the first to discuss knocking through into the cave next door, or perhaps adding a mezzanine floor made of bamboo and clay bricks.

And that leads us on to The Yews, a wonderful old house that has been much improved by a string of owners over many centuries. It's currently for sale via Jackson-Stops at £1.95 million.

The Yews started life as a medieval manor house — to which its original ceiling beams bear testament — but by the mid 18th century, a five-bay entrance façade had been added, with Hamstone dressings and quoins.

The 19th century owners of this Grade II*-listed property thought that more could be done. They commissioned a 30½ft by 18¾ft ballroom to be constructed, which today forms a bewitching reception room with eye-candy items, including a carved-oak fireplace, decorative ceiling cornice, an arched top window and French doors that lead out to a loggia where mature grape vines and jasmine grow. It's wonderful.

It's also eminently practical as a family home. The seven bedrooms mean that this is a house that's ideal for those with plenty of kids, or who love entertaining friends.

A further bedroom can be found above the original coach house beyond the main house and an added ‘extra’ (or a feature not often found intact these days) is a glorious Victorian glasshouse — a haven for plant enthusiasts, who will also love the 2¼ acres of gardens.

The location, Curry Rivel, is perched on a ridge above the Somerset Levels, and it isn’t only the landscape that is spectacular here: so, too, apparently, is the community spirit.

A lovely house in a lovely place, then; no wonder it's been so clearly loved by those who've lived within these walls for so long.

The Yews is for sale via Jackson-Stops at £1.95 million — see more details.

Billiard room, music room, drawing room, library, dining room, study, cinema, gym, golf room... wait, golf room? That's right: Burton Hill House, on the southern edge of Malmesbury in Wiltshire, is not your normal country house.

This enormous, Grade II-listed house — for sale via Strutt & Parker at £7.5 million — and stands in about 12 acres of gardens and land, and it was built for entertaining on a lavish scale.

The floorplan alone takes a while to get your head around, as if someone has bought a charity shop's entire stock of Cluedo sets, and set about cutting up and re-arranging the boards into an epic, sprawling home of more than 22,000 sq ft.

There are 19 bedrooms, 11 bathrooms and eight reception rooms in this mid-19th century house, but that's just the start: the various other spaces include boot rooms, utility rooms and the aforementioned 'store/golf' room, which isn't pictured on the agent's details, but has us imagining a golf nut's storage space, with endless rows of putters, wedges and drivers.

As the pictures show beautifully, this is a house that has been meticulously updated. The current owners have embarked upon a wonderfully sympathetic restoration project, with intricate plasterwork, oak panelling and joinery.

Even the home cinema has a fittingly period feel: it has rows of 1930s-style fold-up cinema seats, rather than the shapeless, sprawling sofas you often find in such rooms.

Another lovely example: the stair-gates aren't the usual white-painted metal contraptions you get from John Lewis, but instead there's a beautifully custom-made wooden gate, stopping little ones climbing too high while perfectly matching the original bannisters. This is so nicely thought out.

At the same time, there's a wonderful sense of whimsy and 21st century panache in a lot of the decisions that have been made. What else could account for the decision to put the gym in the old chapel, letting you lift weights and pound the treadmill as the sunlights pours in through stained glass windows?

And once you're done pumping iron, there's a wellness spa with with pool and sauna that open out onto one of the terraces. It's the sort of slick-looking thing you'd see at a top-end country house hotel.

No wonder the agents wax lyrical, calling it 'one of the area’s most impressive private homes. Its scale, design, and meticulous presentation create a residence that balances historic integrity with refined modern living.'

Burton Hill House is for sale via Strutt & Parker at £7.5 million — see more details.

Rolling Stones drummer Charlie Watts and his wife, Shirley, moved into Grade II-listed Halsdon House in Dolton, mid Devon, in 1983. He lived there for nearly four decades until he died in 2021 at the age of 80; Shirley died a year later, also at home in Devon, at the end of 2022. Set on the edge of the village, the house enjoys a secluded position above the valley of the River Torridge and is surrounded by green hills and meadows.

It’s fitting that the house is launched on to the market via Country Life, because the Wattses originally found it house in this very publication: ‘Browsing through Country Life magazine five years ago, Charlie found the ideal home. Halsdon, once the residence of a local Devon squire, John Henry Furse, is set above the valley of the river Torridge and surrounded by green hills and meadows,’ wrote American author Kevin Sessums in a 1989 profile of the Rolling Stones in Vanity Fair. ‘There he and his artist wife, Shirley, are content to live their solitary human lives amongst a menagerie that includes fifteen Arabian horses, eighteen dogs, and two cats.’

This late-17th-century house with an early-Victorian front was, by the early 1980s, in a sorry state. That didn’t seem to put buyers off, though — quite the contrary, since in the space of two weeks it attracted 100 enquiries and 20 viewings. The winning bid was ‘considerably more than the guide price of £90,000’, according to a follow-up report in Country Life, which added that the sale had included a further 20 acres of land on top of the original 14. Over the years more land was acquired, the house has was upgraded and improved, and Halsdon is launched on the market in Country Life this week for £2.75 million via Savills.

This late-17th-century house with an early-Victorian front had already come up for sale several times via Country Life in the 20^th century, and by the early 1980s was in a sorry state. That didn’t seem to put buyers off, though — quite the contrary, since in the space of two weeks it attracted 100 enquiries and 20 viewings.

The winning bid was ‘considerably more than the guide price of £90,000’, according to a report in Country Life, which added that the sale had included a further 20 acres of land on top of the original 14. It’s since expanded, upgraded and improved, and is launched on the market in Country Life this week for £2.75 million via Savills.

Charlie and Shirley’s daughter, Seraphina, who was about 15 when the family moved to Halsdon, says her parents liked to be far from the madding crowd, placing tremendous value on their privacy and family time. Halsdon was a sanctuary out of the glare of the spotlight when the band wasn’t touring — a totally separate world.

As a rock-and-roll star, Watts famously cut a different dash to his bandmates, eschewing most of the wild excesses of the associated lifestyle and dressing in dapper suits made by Huntsman in Savile Row. The summer before purchasing Halsdon, the band had toured Europe — on a private 747 jumbo jet — with shows in France, Germany and the Netherlands. During that tour, the band’s PR manager, Alan Edwards, only managed to convince the publicity-shy Watts to do one interview, talking about the upcoming Test matches with The Daily Telegraph’s cricket correspondent.

Shirley Watts and her daughter spent a great deal of time riding together and a further attraction with Halsdon was that it offered a historic stable yard and land to raise horses and ride. Shirley pursued an interest in Arabian horses and developed an innate sense and knowledge of bloodlines and breeding, all of which was self-taught. She became a renowned Arabian horse breeder, globally known and earning top honours at shows. The extensive and beautiful equestrian facilities at Halsdon speak volumes about how important this was to the family.

Her interest in the breed was sparked when she attended a horse fair in the South of France during the mid 1980s, according to an obituary in The Arabian magazine, published after she died, aged 84, in 2022. Inspired, she set out to learn as much as she could about the breed from experts in Poland and the US, later acquiring a stallion, Piechur, who would pave the way for Halsdon’s so-called ‘decade of dominance’ in the show ring of the 1990s.

The gardens at Halsdon were another hobby, created and planted by Shirley Watts with the help of her gardener. As a result, there are wild roses and plantings all around the house and stables, as well as a secret garden and lily pond.

When the Watts bought Halsdon, they inherited the original gardener, Horace, who had been at the property since he was 14 and stayed into his nineties. The current gardener, Casey, took over the responsibility several years ago and, according to Ms Watts, maintains it the way her mother would have wanted.

True to its role as a world away from his professional life, Watts never built a recording studio at Halsdon. During the first lockdown in April 2020, he joined his bandmates Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood playing air drums from the library at Halsdon House for a virtual performance of You Can’t Always Get What You Want for Global Citizen’s One World: Together At Home, a campaign partnered with the World Health Organisation to support frontline healthcare workers. As there wasn’t a drum kit in the house, he improvised using some boxes for drums and a chair as imaginary cymbals. The video went viral, with just under 5 million views:

‘Halsdon House has been a sanctuary for our family over the years, for my parents, myself and my daughter,’ says Seraphina.

‘As the house sits at the heart of its own grounds, surrounded by rolling countryside, the opportunities for walks and rides were endless. My parents loved being surrounded by Nature and dogs, which were always abundant during their lifetimes. There were always lots of dogs around the Aga in winter and lots of tea in the gardens in summer.

‘When my father was touring or recording in the studio, my mother, being an artist herself, would often take the opportunity to rearrange furniture, bring in new pieces, paint a room a different colour or even change the floor. She loved creating and designing and making their house a home, but knew that Charlie wasn’t fond of change — particularly if it involved decorators coming into the house.

‘On his return, he would look around and ask with a smile if something was different — knowing full well, as he had an eye for detail and knew if a pen was out of place.’

With Seraphina and her family spending time overseas, executors are looking after the sale of Halsdon House, with its nine bedrooms and huge charm — it's a home with a sort of fairytale quality.

The house extends to more than 8,500sq ft and is arranged across three floors. On the first floor is Watts’s library, where he kept a collection of rare books — and played the air drums for that one-off performance.

Beyond the main house you'll find a self-contained annexe, several outbuildings, stabling, workshops and traditional barns, as well as the aforementioned 55 acres.

‘It’s a lovely mini country estate,’ says selling agent Greg Crosse of Savills in Exeter. ‘Although a new owner will want to come in and refresh the interiors, at its heart is a very good-looking house, attractive formal gardens, the potential for two access points, an area of woodland and excellent equestrian facilities.’

Halston House is for sale via Savills at £2.75 million — see more details and pictures.

A version of this feature originally appeared in the February 11, 2026 issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.

The north Cornish village of Mawgan Porth has earned a rather fine nickname: ‘Hollywood-on-Sea’. A whole string of articles, from a piece in the local paper (rather wonderfully named the 'Falmouth Packet' — though we're not sure why a south Cornwall paper is reporting on a north Cornwall town) to write-ups in the national press. At least one of those latter pieces refers rather snootily to the fact that 'the newspapers are calling it Hollywood-on-Sea', as if to make it clear that it's other newspapers who indulge in such wordplay, and not something they would ever do. Their headline, of course, uses the exact phrase.

Anyway, depending on who you believe, and in ascending order of implausibility, Mawgan Porth is now the Cornish home-from-home for Cate Blanchett, Jason Statham, Kate Winslet, Jamie Dornan, Stanley Tucci, one or other or possibly both of the Gallagher brothers, the Beckhams, and Chris Martin, the man famed for outing adulterous couples while performing on stage (his band has also done quite well). Blanchett's presence is a matter of public record; as is that of, er, Imogen Stubbs. Most of the other claims seem to be based on celebrity spotting tittle-tattle, and are probably about as reliable as the average UFO sighting. But it's all good fun nonetheless.

What is definitely true, though, is that the village — with its magnificent beach, superb surfing breaks, swish shops and pubs, relatively small population and spectacular sunsets — has become enormously popular. Stories abound of local residents being offered seven-figure sums for modest homes that they've lived in for years; and while there are complaints about locals being priced out, many residents are confident that their strong local community will not be unduly diluted.

Should you wish to become part of that community, an amazing opportunity has come up which will let you live close to the A-list action, but not so close that you'll have to deal with gawping tourists trying to peer through your windows (something that is apparently a concern in many of the best waterfront homes, which are right on the South-West Coastal Path).

The property in question is called Tolcarne Merock, and it's a Grade II-listed farmhouse set amid rolling hills, just over a mile from the beach. And while down at the beach the asking price (of £2.75 million via John Bray Estates) would buy you not much more than a prime plot, this property offers you a Georgian house set in 167 acres of Cornwall which are on the market for the first time in 500 years.

Though the farm has been in the same family since the 16th century, the three-bedroom farmhouse is, relatively speaking, much newer. It dates back to the early 19th century and is set in a historic walled garden, which protects it from some of the wilder weather brought by the Atlantic.

You shouldn't expect too much of what lies within: as the pictures here show, a lot of TLC is needed to return this place to its glory days, although it's entirely liveable.

Those accustomed to carrying out a bit of work may see this as an opportunity, and they'll be delighted to hear that an even greater opportunity awaits. The property has a collection of traditional stone buildings, including one that has previously had permission to be converted into two dwellings. There's vast potential here for those willing to take a chance on that permission being restored, or possibly even extended.

And the rewards at the end of any such work feel like they'll be well worth the effort. ‘Despite its proximity to some of the most prime coastal locations in the country, it feels untouched and unspoilt,' says Josephine Ashby of agents John Bray Estates, 'and yet within a few short miles are Michelin-starred restaurants and some of the country’s best surfing beaches.’

So if the village itself is Hollywood-on-Sea, then this could be Cornwall's answer to Laurel Canyon. We're fascinated to see what happens next here.

Tolcarne Merock in Mawgan Porth is for sale at £2.75 million via John Bray — see more details.

The property market in large parts of the West Country last year was, in the words of Ashley Rawlings from the Savills office in Wimborne, Dorset, ‘a bit of a damp squib’. Yet, if activity in the first weeks of January foretells what lies ahead this year, the pace of transactions should start to gather speed. ‘There is some cautious optimism around,’ reports James Toogood, who specialises in the sale of premium properties across the South and South-West for Savills. His team has already agreed sales within Devon and Cornwall for properties not openly advertised, at or in excess of their guide prices. ‘Buying agents tell me that their clients are no longer sitting tight, too. It’s a sign of good things to come,’ he believes.

With this new-found spring in their step, Savills have launched Tintinhull Court, a Grade I-listed house in the village of Tintinhull, near Yeovil in Somerset, for £1.895 million. It has already garnered a ‘good bit of interest’ from would-be buyers, says Mr Rawlings, who is handling the sale.

Standing beside St Margaret’s church — described by former Country Life Architectural Editor Marcus Binney as ‘a glorious medieval church’ — the charm of the house can be found in its range of features from different historic periods.

It's fascinating, like a sort of fantasy mash-up of archtirectural styles. Originally built as a parsonage, there are medieval corner buttresses, Tudor battlements, a nail-studded Elizabethan front door, some 17th-century panelling and, in the dining room, a stone fireplace with a vast 10ft-wide hearth that is perfect for accommodating a spit roast.

Given its age, it's not too surprising to hear that the house is Grade I listed — something that means you'll need to go into the deal with your eyes open, though it shouldn't put you off.

‘These sorts of houses tend to split the crowd,’ says Mr Rawlings. ‘The Grade I listing comes with all its limitations as to what you can do, but the good thing about Tintinhull is that it’s already sensibly laid out. I’ve come across several listed houses in my time where I just can’t imagine living there in a straightforward manner. That’s not the case with this one.’

Central to this thinking is the fact that the 9,000sq ft house already has a large, light-filled family kitchen that leads into the dining room.

There are two further reception rooms, including a splendid ‘summer’ drawing room, which enjoys triple-aspect views.

A previous owner who purchased the house in 2001 set about ensuring that almost every bedroom has a bath or shower, as well as recontouring the garden to create a more attractive approach. The interiors have been sympathetically updated by the owner and the house is ready to welcome a new family.

Outside, a high Ham-stone wall marks the perimeter of the front garden, which has well-stocked beds and borders. To the south of the property are a series of lawns and an all-weather tennis court, as well as a small orchard, a kitchen garden with a greenhouse and an oak-frame garage.

There are two acres of grounds, although further land might be available to purchase. For those needing access to the capital, the mainline station at Castle Cary is only a few miles away.

In east Somerset, the relative proximity of the now long-established private members’ club Babington House acts as an added attraction, particularly to those moving to the countryside for the first time.

It also appeals to buyers coming back to the UK from a period spent working overseas, where they might have experienced membership benefits, such as a ready-made social life in a spectacular setting. According to Mr Rawlings, one potential buyer who has expressed interest in Tintinhull said that being within a certain distance of the club is high on their list of priorities.

Tintinhull Court is for sale at £1.895 million — see more details.

Property sales in the West Country last year were 'a bit of a damp squib', according to one agent — but 2026 has got off to a fast start. Against that backdrop the agents at Blue Book are hopeful that they will soon find a new owner for Higher Waterston Farm, which is for sale at £3.75 million.

This beautiful Georgian house — with a swimming pool and tennis court — is set in unspoilt countryside in Dorset’s Piddle Valley, in the small, rural hamlet of Higher Waterston. It's a spot that sits within the rolling Dorset Downs, two miles from the village of Puddletown, which has a village shop, post office, surgery and pub.

Dating predominantly from the 1790s and extended in the 1920s, the eight-bedroom house, which is unlisted, has been a happy family home for the past 30 years. During that time, the owners have undertaken an extensive renovation and a full replumb, presenting it to the market in move-in condition.

The gardens at High Waterston Farm are a real highlight, and divided into discrete areas that include lawns, terraces, a kitchen garden, formal garden and more. There are also paddocks, stables and mature woodland within the eight acres.

There's more than just a house included in the property. Arranged around a traditional brick-and-flint courtyard set apart from the main house, are five income-generating units, all let on assured shorthold tenancies — meaning that the property qualifies for the mixed-use lower rate of stamp duty. ‘They are very separate and provide a good income that would cover the running costs of the main house,’ says the agent, Lindsay Cuthill.

Higher Waterston Farm was actually launched onto the market last summer, but has yet to find a buyer. Cuthill is optimistic that it won't be long now, though: ‘There’s a sense that things have changed,' he says.

'We’ve just organised a third viewing this month for a prospective buyer, something that I don’t think happened in the last half of 2025 — perhaps the South-West is now waking up.’

Cuthill's experience echoes that of others — that last year was a struggle. ‘The West Country is always quick to respond to downturns and slow to recover. That’s particularly true in this increasingly polarised country market where there is the Cotswolds, which gets all the focus, and then everywhere else.’

Higher Waterston Farm is on the market for £3.75m — see more details.

It hasn't just been an up-and-down year in the world of property. It's been an up-and-down decade. Nick Leeming of Jackson-Stops put it perfectly in our piece on property price predictions for 2026, talking about the ‘six years of exceptional volatility driven by Covid, fiscal shocks and political uncertainty'. From Brexit to the 'race for space', and from the Pandemic to the financial shock precipitated by Liz Truss's short-lived stint at 10 Downing Street, some wonderful homes have failed to find buyers. Some vendors have been able to wait, but many have responded by trimming their asking prices in recent months. But things are changing.

The much-anticipated 2026 Budget is now in the rear-view mirror, and turned out to be far less unsettling for the country house market than feared beforehand. Interest rates are coming down too, as is inflation. Leeming added that he thinks we're not seeing 'a return to a more stable and recognisable housing market', with gently rising prices in 2026. As the pressures on the market ease it could be a good time for buyers who've been holding back.

Kent — Was £2,500,000, now £2,250,000

Rarely have we seen a house so calculated to appeal to the average modern family. There's a beautiful open-plan kitchen-diner, separate utility room and walk-in pantry for the chef of the family; a swimming pool and a huge garden for the sporty type; and a study, a boot room for those who keeping mind and body healthy; and a £250,000 discount for whoever pays the bills. What could be better?

With bags of mid-20th century period charm, this house is set close to the sea in Broadstairs, with its sandy beach and direct trains to London. That is a LOT of boxes ticked.

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

Gloucestershire — Was £2,250,000, now £1,950,000

In the rolling Cotswolds hills just north of Cheltenham, and close to a pretty village called Gretton, this five-bedroom farmhouse comes with 16 acres of land. Despite the peaceful and secluded surroundings, the M5 is less than ten miles away making it potentially commutable to places such as Bristol and Birmingham.

The whole place has been expertly refurbished, albeit in places with a few modern touches and, in places, an exotic colour scheme that won't be to everyone's taste (although we do love the green billiard room). But for those who share the taste, or don't mind a spot of redecorating, this seems a great prospect. Especially with a price cut a couple of weeks ago which takes it below the mansion tax threshold.

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

Cumbria — Was £2,000,000, now £1,750,000

It's hard to believe that this Cumbrian home near Cockermouth hasn't been snapped up, even at the original £2 million asking price. The value on offer for an 11-bedroom home set in 11 acres of land in one of Britain's most beautiful areas is quite something.

There is work to be done at Tallentire Hall, but this home — whose oldest parts date to the 16th century — is surely worth the effort, particularly since a lordship title is available via separate negotiation. And given the £250,000 price cut, you'll have some spare change to negotiate with.

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

London — Was £6,250,000, now £5,950,000AND London — Was £9,750,000, now £8,750,000

Proper country houses within London are rare beasts, but that is what is on offer at Oakfield House, a vast mansion in almost four acres of lawns and woodland that's just over half a mile from the station at Mill Hill East.

It's quite the place, and a little affordable following a £300,000 price cut. Seven bedrooms and almost 7,000 sq ft of space set over three floors, with more outbuildings within the grounds. And all just 20 minutes on the Tube from the centre of London.

It's for sale via Marcus Parfitt — see more details and pictures.

If you're looking for something even bigger — both in terms of discount and property size — we've got you covered. Nearby Highwood Hill is for sale at the moment having recently relaunched on the market at £8,750,000. That's a cool £1 million less than its original asking price when it was put up for sale in March 2024.

The estate's 16 acres are a true rarity in London, and the stables are hugely impressive: there are 14 loose boxes, pasture and accommodation for grooms.

It's for sale via Savills — see more details.

West Sussex — Was £1,850,000, now £1,750,000

A delightful house in the heart of Bosham, the village just outside Chichester that's one of the most sought-after spots on the south coast. It's been cleared out and is ready for the new owners to come straight in; we suspect that's the reason for the £100,000 price reduction (a discount which, assuming you buy this as your primary home, will cover most of the Stamp Duty).

For whoever ends up living here, it'll be a dreamy home where you can go sailing or paddling in Chichester Harbour, enjoy the village ambiance, or spend time in the pretty garden.

For sale via House — see more details and pictures.

Dorset — Was £1,950,000, now £1,650,000

What was once a Victorian schoolhouse in a heavenly, bucolic setting is now a 21st century home in a heavenly, bucolic setting. Why the price cut? We suspect it's the unusual use of space. The heart of the house is a huge living space, the old school hall, some 36ft-long room with a vaulted veiling; yet the three bedrooms are all fairly modestly sized.

It's wonderfully done, however, and those who are happy with the place as it is will be delighted to own a grand home in a blessed swathe of Dorset, near Shaftesbury. And if you feel it could do with some tweaks? The £300,000 saving should more than cover architects, builders and any back and forth with Historic England about potential changes to the layout of this Grade II-listed home.

For sale via Savills — see more details and pictures.

Two centuries ago, in a village that forms part of an estate granted by Henry VI to King's College, Cambridge, the former vice-provost of the college — a man named John Tomkyns — came to settle in Dorset. For a man of such standing a fine new rectory was deemed appropriate.

The result was the house you see on this page, now called Stour Provost Manor, but it's a place that was for many years known as The Old Rectory. As the house approaches its 198th birthday, it's for sale via Knight Frank — and the present owners have dressed it up to be the most extravagant Christmas present imaginable.

There's tinsel and trees, poinsettias and baubles, holly and ivy and angels and fairy lights, turning this Grade II-listed home into the sort of place that you'd love to host a Christmas party.

The house has been on the market for a little while (and was also for sale for a spell in 2022), so it's perhaps not surprising to see this clever little bit of marketing — although the £5.5 million asking price puts it out of last-minute Christmas shopping impulse buy territory.

It's probably also a doubly clever move. Stour Provost Manor is one of those houses that is very evidently a dream home in summer: there are wonderful grounds, a tennis court and lawns that stretch down to the River Stour. At this point in its path, the river is wide enough, deep enough and slow-moving enough for wild swimming to be possible, and the house has a small wooden jetty to enable you to get in and out of the water easily. So it's nice to show buyers that this home is ideal year-round.

Inside, the house is the very picture of late Georgian charm and grace. It was designed by William Wilkins, professor of architecture at the Royal Academy, who modelled it on his own house in Cambridge — a home which, sadly, was demolished in 1955.

Wilkins had actually worked with Tomkyns during their time together in Cambridge, collaborating on several new buildings and other words at King's College, including the entrance screen and gateway next to the chapel.

Stour Provost Manor is for sale at £5.5 million via Knight Frank — see more details.

‘An absolute gem of a Georgian farmhouse,' says agent Ed Seth-Smith of Savills. 'Utterly beautiful and full of character’.

And it's hard not to agree, because the house he's talking about is the Grade II-listed West Farm, for sale via Savills at £1.225 million, in the charming and ancient village of Knook, on the River Wylye and at the foot of Salisbury Plain.

Sitting at the foot of Knook Horse Hill and only a mile east of Heytesbury, it was built in the early 19th century and, thanks to sympathetic restoration, it is charmingly characterful throughout. In the 14ft by 16ft kitchen/breakfast room, for example, the original flagstone floor is still in situ and there is a black, oil-fired Aga for cooking and warmth.

This kitchen/breakfast room is sandwiched between a spacious utility room and dining room — ensuring that family life and dinner parties alike can move effortlessly from prep to plate. And there's a cellar below, accessed via stairs just across the hallway, for when you need to pop down to pick out another bottle of claret.

Additionally, on the ground floor, there is a sitting room — like the dining room, it has a curved bay window — as well as a drawing room and study.

The six bedrooms are all on the first floor, and unusually for this day and age none of them has an en-suite bathroom. That said, the principal bedroom does have a dressing room, and shares a wall with one of the smaller rooms, so it does feel that the layout could be changed fairly easily.

And speaking of making changes, the sellers already have permission in place to expand the house with a rear extension, which — according to the approved plans — would allow for a new kitchen and family room on the ground floor, as well as an additional guest bedroom (with en-suite bathroom) on the first floor.

West Farm comes with about 1¾ acres, mostly laid to lawn and dotted with fruit trees, which you pass through as you approach along a carriage driveway. An old brick pumping room has been turned into a very fancy shed, while just away from the main grounds is a timber-framed, three-bay garage with a room above.

If you need a bit more, outside space, further land is available by negotiation — among which is a walled garden nearby.

West Farm is for sale via Savills — see more details.

West Sussex — £3.75 million

This might be the most interesting mix of styles we've seen all year: a mansion on the South Downs that blends 1930s Art Deco with traditional country house elements, and plenty of modern twists. A real one-off, and a place built for fun: there's a pool, tennis court, stables and more, while it's an easy walk into the village.

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

Cornwall — £3.5 million

On a glorious and secluded sandy cove on the south coast of Cornwall, this really is a seaside dream home: a 4,300sq ft main home with spectacular views, plus a Georgian cottage and 11 acres.

For sale via Savills — see more details and pictures.

Herefordshire — £2.75 million

What was once a monastic abbey, and then a derelict farmstead, is now a spectacular home with almost 1,000 years of history to tell, and 26 acres of charming countryside as its setting.

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

Buckinghamshire — £3 million

From afar you'd think this had been here centuries, but it's deceptively new — it was actually only built in the 1960s. It's a country home with five bedrooms, a separate three-bedroom cottage, a gym in a separate outbuilding and much more. Plus it's just half an hour on the train to Central London.

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

Hampshire — £2.5 million

In the lovely market town of Emsworth, 100 yards or so from the waterfront of Chichester Harbour, this 3,496 sq ft house has been brilliantly remodelled to make a superb kitchen/dining/living space at the heart of the house.

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

Lancashire — £4.25 million

Fancy a house that looks like a cross between a country farmhouse and the sort of ranch you'd see in 80s TV show Dallas? Eight bedrooms, views for miles across the Ribble Valley, and almost 15,000 sq ft of space. Quite a place.

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

Buckinghamshire — £1.495 million

An 18th century home with a wonderful village location, with a huge garden, a thatched barn and an indoor swimming pool — an extraordinary blend at this price and in this location between High Wycombe and Aylesbury.

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

Carmarthenshire — £1.2 million

The house of comedian, actor and writer Robert Webb, painstakingly restored from a complete wreck (read that story here), is now on the market.

For sale via Savills — see more details and pictures.

Suffolk — £1.995 million

Sitting at the end of a long, tree-lined drive, this grand country home is packed with period charm — we particularly love the dining room with its timbered ceiling and inglenook fireplace.

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

Somerset — £795,000

A stylishly restored cottage in a popular village with three reception rooms, kitchen/breakfast room, three double beds and a pretty courtyard.

For sale via Stags — see more details and pictures.

Devon — £1,680,000

A highly appealing Edwardian property with two letting cottages set in a large plot with an attractive outlook over open fields.

For sale via Wood and Pilcher — see more details and pictures.

Yorkshire — £1,750,000

How's that for a view from the living room? This superb Georgian home, recently restored, comes with outbuildings and two-thirds of an acre of gardens and grounds.

For sale via Bentons — see more details and pictures.

Kent — £1,250,000

A 4-5 bedroom detached home with period features, requiring full refurbishment, set in large gardens with scope to extend (STP).

For sale via Blenkin & Co — see more details and pictures.

Gloucestershire — £1,400,000

A spacious four bedroom detached Cotswold stone family home, with pretty gardens, double garage and parking.

For sale via Hayman Joyce — see more details and pictures.

Kent — £895,000

Stunning barn conversion within an impressive mews enjoying countryside views across protected farmland.

For sale via Hobbs Parker — see more details and pictures.

Buckinghamshire — £1,100,000

A unique barn-style home with gardens and recreational paddocks of three acres within the historic setting of Crawley Grange.

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

Somerset — £650,000

A gorgeous three-bedroom house in the fine village of Wedmore.

For sale via Sandersons — see more details and pictures.

Up in north Hampshire, the countryside around Basingstoke is a magnet for country-house buyers who are drawn to the area by its choice of excellent schools and ease of access to the capital. It is also Jane Austen country, which this year has been celebrating the 250th anniversary of the much-loved novelist’s birth in December 1775.

By happy coincidence, the event coincides with the launch onto the market of a splendid former rectory, the Old Rectory at Dummer and Oakley House at Oakley, located a hop, skip and jump either side of the village of Steventon, where Austen’s father, the Revd George Austen, served as rector from 1765 to 1801.

The Austen link at The Old Rectory in Dummer — being sold through Savills at a guide price of £3.4m — isn't based purely on proximity. The author was close friends with the Terry family, who lived here at the time, and Austen was a regular visitor. The Terrys had daughters called Jane and Eliza, not far off two of the Bennet daughters names in Pride and Prejudice, and it's been suggested that the Terry sisters' marriages tally with the love matches made in Emma.

All that said, the rectory that stands in this charming village is a very different beast to the one that was here in Austen's day.

Approached through a large set of electric oak gates, the handsome former rectory was built in 1850 to the design of the eminent architect William Donthorne, drawings for which are housed in the V&A Museum.

The design is the very height of Victorian Gothic style and combines Tudor-patterned chimneys with the unusual use of square knapped flints and Bath-stone dressings — the flints thought to be the discarded remains of old flint stones cut in an earlier age for use in flintlock rifles.

Beautifully maintained by the current owners, who have lived there for 14 years, the main house offers 7,158sq ft of generous family accommodation on two floors, including a spacious entrance hall, a drawing room/former music room, a dining room, library, study, recently refitted kitchen, breakfast/family room and boot room on the ground floor.

A fine oak staircase leads to the first floor where a grand principal bedroom wing comprises a large bedroom, a dressing room and a luxurious en-suite bathroom; four further bedrooms and three bathrooms are located on this floor.

Additional accommodation is provided in the one-bedroom coach house and beyond the breakfast/family room is a splendid indoor swimming pool and gym, for which the new knapped flint used in its construction was sourced at great length from Dorset.

The Old Rectory in Dummer, Hampshire, is for sale £3.45 million — see more details.

For almost 100 years, the Bantham Estate in Devon — 10 miles from Salcombe, one of the jewels of the South Hams AONB, and boasting one of the best beaches in Europe, according to Lonely Planet — had a pretty quiet time of it.

It was bought in 1922 by Lieutenant Commander Charles Evans, whose family owned and ran the estate until 2014, with the place if not quite frozen in time, then certainly preserved in spirit. Even a 2013 application to park a 'gastrobus' in the car park, selling refreshments to beachgoers, provoked furious complaints by some.

So it's fair to say that the estate's £11.5 million sale to Nicholas Johnston had local residents worried. Johnston and his family own the Great Tew Estate in the Cotswolds, and the people of Bantham worried that his arrival would herald new development, and that the 'Soho House effect' could change the village, and their way of life.

We won't go into the gory details of what happened next — a quick Google will offer up all manner of claims and counter-claims — but many of Johnston's ideas for change didn't come about, and at the tail end of 2024 the estate went on the market once again, with an asking price of £30 million. At the start of 2025 it was bought for an undisclosed sum by Chilton HomeFarms, owned by Harry Aubrey-Fletcher and his family, who said in a statement that 'the family have visited Bantham for many years and look forward to looking after this very special part of the South Hams'.

One thing the new owners don't want to do with the estate, however, is make wine — one of the things that the previous owner Johnston did successfully start up at Bantham. And so the estate's award-winning vineyard is now on the market via Knight Frank, with an asking price of £650,000.

The vineyard was only planted four years ago, in 2021, with 25,000 vines going into the ground in 11 blocks, all south-facing, and featuring a mix of Pinot Gris, Pinot Noir, Pinot Meunier, Pinot Noir Précoce and Chardonnay grapes.

It's all started off extremely well, and the 2023 Pinot Gris — the produce of the first harvest — won a silver medal at the 2024 WineGB awards. The 2024 Pinot Gris was recently released, and the estate also produces a vermouth and, more unusually, a canned rosé spritz.

If you're wondering why they haven't produced a sparkling wine, well, they have: made via the traditional method, the bubbly is currently in tank and yet to be released to the market. The thought of new owners hosting a celebration (a vineyard-warming party?) with their own stuff sounds too good to be true.

The vineyard is actually split over two sites: the 19.85-acre West Buckland, which will be sold outright, and the 10.1 acre Lower Aunemouth, which is being sold on a leasehold basis. All the machinery is included, as is the stock from the latest harvest.

Clearly, buying and owning a vineyard of this size is not something for the amateur to attempt single-handed — but the idea of owning a slice of this beautiful land, and creating something equally wonderful from it, will be a dream for many.

The Bantham Vineyard is for sale via Knight Frank — see more details.

A vineyard of one's own?

English wine has been having a moment for at least a decade now, with our home-grown sparkling wine winning countless awards.

But if your wine-based dream is red rather than white, then a vineyard on the Continent, or even further afield, is the only realistic way forward for now.

There are actually a number of vineyards for sale through the Country Life International Property Portal at the moment.

For the high-roller, this €9.8 million Bordeaux estate — with 40 acres, a 10-bedroom property, three swimming pools and all sorts of other wonders — is a well-established producer of Bordeaux Supérieur that operates as both wine maker and hospitality business.

It needn't cost that much to break in to the business, however: in Tuscany this house with both a vineyard and an olive grove is for sale at €1.795 million, though the wine production is very small scale, with just under an acre of vines.

At the other end of the scale on the wine-making side, Savills are selling a real rarity: a Cru Classé wine maker with almost 100-acres of vines in Provence, where producers including LVMH, Champagne Roederer and Groupe Pernod Ricard will be among your neighbours.

And finally, if you want an option that lets you swap your suburban semi for a new life, this Portuguese property includes a fine five-bedroom house, a small vineyard of 1.5 acres, a pair of warehouses and a wine cellar in the renowned Douro Valley. The price? Just €750,000 — that's around £640,000 — via Christie's International Real Estate.

Some cottages are pretty. Some are quaint. But every so often you come across one which brings a tear to the eye, and that's what we have today in the shape of Manor House at Old Manor Gardens, in Devon. This traditional thatched cottage, with roof hewn from Devon reed, is a wonderful example of the picture-perfect thatched cottage. It's on the market with Knight Frank, with an asking price of £875,000.

That sum buys you a home tucked neatly away in its own mature walled garden in the village of Colyford — venue of the famous Goose Fayre — and only a seven-minute drive from the shingle/sand Seaton Beach, on the south coast of Devon.

Cottages like these are often pretty but a little too small for family life, but not in this case. It's a four-bedroom, stone-built Grade II-listed cottage with almost 3,500sq ft of living space.

Downstairs is a sitting room — one of three reception rooms — with a large inglenook fireplace and woodburner, the perfect spot for cosy winter nights in.

There's also a study — currently used as a gym — and a large hallway as well as a huge kitchen/dining room that's almost 27ft long, perfect for family gatherings or weekends with friends. There is also a separate utility room and a boot room.

Upstairs, there are three double bedrooms on the first floor, and another on the second floor. Two are en-suite, the other two share a family bathroom. All have lovely views over the walled gardens.

As you've probably guessed from the name — once formed part of a much larger manor house that was eventually divided; the cottage is actually semi-detached, though the layout and secluded gardens mean that isn't too much of a compromise here.

Manor House, Old Manor Gardens is for sale at £875,000 via Knight Frank — see more details.

In a quiet corner of west Dorset, carpenter Guy Mallinson has created a magical realm. Ancient trees bent double and luminous green tunnels open into woodland glades with still pools overhung by bespoke handcrafted treehouses. It's the stuff of JRR Tolkien's imagination.

Master craftsman Guy built the first rustic, luxurious structure — Woodsman's Treehouse — in 2016, having spent years teaching heritage craft courses in his 13-acre private woods. Two more followed in 2021, and together they're now part of an eco-friendly mini-resort, Mallinson's Woodland Retreat, a luxury eco-haven close to the hamlet of Holditch where the counties of Dorset, Somerset and Devon meet.

Almost a decade on from that first construction Guy has decided it's time to move on, and the whole site – including the woodland, meadows and planning permission for five more treehouses – has gone on sale this week for the first time for £2 million.

When Woodsman's Treehouse was first unveiled, it shook the branches of the architectural community in the UK, winning awards and earning a great reputation. Kevin McCloud labelled it a 'glamourous woodland funfair' when it appeared on Channel 4's Grand Designs: House of the Year programme in 2017.

Guy didn't create the treehouses alone, but nor did he bring in the sort of help you might expect. The design was a collaboration between him and BEAM Architects, a practice known for large-scale bridge projects across the world rather than the sort of house where Robin Hood and Maid Marian might have set up home. Yet it was a huge success: the project won a pair of awards from the Royal Institute of British Architects, one for the best build in the South West, and another as small project of the year. The treehouse was also featured on George Clarke's Amazing Spaces.

The original treehouse was built in a gap between two old oak trees and held up by stilts fashioned from sweet chestnut — and it's beautifully dramatic and fun. Guests staying here access the dwelling via a rope bridge, and enter the living space though a submarine-style airlock instead of a traditional front door. Getting back down is easier, but no less entertaining: there's an adult-sized slide which leads down to the woodland floor.

The crowning glory of the treehouse is a rooftop sauna and Jacuzzi, while a separate terrace space has a pizza oven. Inside, it's not big at less than 400sq ft, with a cylindrical living area plus, off to one side, a bedroom and a bathroom, complete with a gleaming copper bath. There is even a window in the floor from which you can watch a stream flow by.

Following the popularity of the first treehouse, two more followed: Pinwheel Treehouse and Dazzle Treehouse. Pinwheel Treehouse sits in a clearing in the centre of a circle of mature oak trees in a corner of the woodland which is carpeted with bluebells in early spring. The living space is glass topped just below the treetop canopy.

Dazzle Treehouse is a design departure from the previous two, inspired by the pattern used to conceal naval ships in the First World War. It has a gangplank walkway, roof top funnels, and a yacht deck floor.

Guy, with his wife and sons (now in their 20s), lived on a neighbouring farm and owned the private woodland where Guy taught woodcraft and the boys played. It was full of yurts, tipis and shepherd huts for the course attendees to stay in. So, the next step was a treehouse, of course. Guy, together with local craftsman and course tutors, and his sons, crafted the three treehouses as a tribute to the forest.

'Building in the middle of a woodland presents its own challenges getting materials deep into the forest,' Guy says.

'We have always had a policy of treading very gently on the forest floor with no chemicals or concrete,' he adds. 'We used screw piles instead of concrete foundations which enabled us to secure the treehouse stilts between the tree roots with minimal soil disruption.'

As the boys grew up the Mallinsons moved to Bridport, Dorset, around 30 minutes away.

'I am very proud of what we have created but feel it is time to pass it on to someone else who can take this business to the next level while I return to my workshop,' Guy says.

Mallinson's Woodland Retreat is on sale for offers exceeding £2 million. Interested parties should contact Guy Mallinson via email guy@mallinson.co.uk or visit the Mallinson website.

Devon — £2.95 million

A townhouse right on the waterfront in Dartmouth, set in one of the prettiest estuaries in Britain.

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

Buckinghamshire — £1.95 million

This barn conversion in two and a half acres comes with pool, paddock and wonderful views over open countryside.

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

Cornwall — £3.4 million

With a breathtaking position on the edge of Polruan-by-Fowey, and with gardens running down to the water and your own private mooring, this is the stuff of fantasy for house buyers looking for a dream home in Cornwall.

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

Surrey — £2.69 million

In the hills of the North Downs near Dorking, this is an Edwardian house that has been magnificently refurbished: seven bedrooms, sauna and gym, a converted stable and landscaped grounds with a pool.

For sale via Savills — see more details and pictures.

Oxfordshire — £4.4 million

Up to 347 acres of land are part of the deal (depending on which of the available lots you choose to go for) at this charming farm, which has productive land, a wooded valley and an eight-bedroom principal house as well as several other cottages and buildings. All that plus a location close to Chipping Norton, where some of the most celebrated spots in the Cotswolds are to be found.

For sale via Savills — see more details and pictures.

Buckinghamshire — £2.5 million

This gorgeous period house with six bedrooms is charming inside and out — particularly in the gardens, with summer house, re-wilded orchard and a hidden pool.

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

'When we first set eyes on Brimptsmead, it felt like a dream — a place of history, beauty, and deep tranquillity,' says the present owner of the Brimptsmead Estate, an Arts-and-Crafts home set in nine acres of Dartmoor, near the village of Dartmeet.

More than 30 years later they're moving on, and a new family will have the chance to live in this gorgeous home, which is up for sale at £4.5 million via By Design Homes. And when it comes to getting the go-ahead to buy, the new owners will probably have a slightly easier time of it than the vendors.

Back in 1993, they bought this house from The King while he was still The Prince of Wales and Duke of Cornwall, and there were some unusual hurdles to clear.

'When we enquired about purchasing it in 1993, we never imagined the journey it would take us on,' the seller says.

'We were invited to London for an interview, and only once approved were we granted the opportunity to buy Brimptsmead on the strict condition that we exchanged contracts within ten days. We did just that, and so began our 30-year love affair with this extraordinary home.'

Extraordinary is a fair description indeed, for this house of almost 6,000 sq ft is built on an unusual and almost square floorplan. Downstairs you'll find a series of reception rooms, from the usual — drawing room, ball room, library and so on — to the more unusual gun room and 'Gentleman's Room'.

Upstairs, there are half a dozen bedrooms, including a master suite with a huge bathroom. There's also a hydro pool room — a very unusual thing to find on the first floor — while above is an attic room.

As the photos show rather beautifully, the house has been treated quite magnificently by the present owners, who describe their work on the place as 'a ten-year project: one of craftsmanship, patience, and meticulous attention to detail.' There are hand-made leaded windows, bronze door handles cast by the workshop that created the metalwork for Ridley Scott's Oscar-winning epic Gladiator, polished granite floors and cosy, charmingly-furnished spots — not least the Turret Room, with window seats built in beneath the stone-mullioned windows.. And while it's old in style, this is no cold, drafty moorland house: there are nine working fireplaces, cast-iron radiators and underfloor heating as well. You need not fear the Dartmoor winter here.

As well as the main Edwardian house, there's a pair of cottages that are ideal for guests — and you'll want to invite people here to enjoy the main house, the direct access to Dartmoor, and the party barn with a balcony looking out onto the National Park.

Dartmoor itself is effectively your garden, but the nine acres of private grounds at Brimpstead include mature woodland that's carpeted with bluebells in the spring, lawns and terrace areas, and a wildflower meadow.

The house also has private access to the River Dart, and includes fishing rights for two rods... which brings us to the house's most unusual 'feature'. According to the vendor, The King apparently loved fishing here when he owned the house, and when it was sold he requested that he might still have the right to come and fish here with 24 hours' notice.

Apparently His Majesty has yet to do so, and after 32 years it's probably less and less likely all the time — but I suppose you never know, and the very fact that he could feels like a lovely snippet to save for dinner parties.

The Brimptsmead Estate is for sale via By Design Homes at £4.5 million — see more details.

A few weeks ago on this website, we took a look at a string of homes that had escaped listed building inspectors, to see what can be done when an owner and their country house experts can work with a free hand. Then, last weekend, we had an example of the exact opposite: a Grade II*-listed home where it's clear a string of custodians have been at pains to preserve things just as they have been for generations.

Today, we swing back again with a 220-year-old Georgian home so shiny and modern in places that you'd believe us if we told you it had been built five years ago. The house in question is in Somerset, where Chris Clifford of Savills in Exeter seeks ‘offers over £3m’ for the imposing, Georgian Werescote at Whiteball, near Wellington.

The house — which is unlisted — stands on land acquired in 1800 by London banker Ellis Were, who began construction of the house known as Were’s Cott in 1804, but died before it was completed; it was finished in 1805 by his son and heir, Thomas Waltham Were.

The house survived the 19th century intact, but by the start of the 20th century it was being rented out, and in 1921 it came up for auction in Country Life. A fascinating account of the house's history recount that after the Second World War — during which time US troops were stationed in the area — it was bought by a local farmer, who lived and worked the land here until retiring in 1995, at which time the house, now in need of a lot of work, was sold again.

Those efforts preceded slowly, and the present owners, bought the house as an unfinished shell in 2011.

Since then they have completely refurbished the interior, which now offers more than 12,200sq ft of luxurious and versa-tile accommodation, including six fine reception rooms, 12 bedrooms and 10 bathrooms located on three main floors.

The look and feel of the place is extremely impressive, with polished floors, fine fabrics and high-end fittings throughout, giving it something of the vibe of a swish hotel.

And the modernisation is more than skin deep: the whole place is up to modern spec, to the point of featuring a biomass boiler that qualifies for the RHI payments scheme.

The lower ground floor is arranged as a separate self-contained annexe, games room/studio and indoor swimming-pool suite. Outside, the gardens and grounds offer privacy and seclusion, with large areas of level lawn, terraces, borders, a kitchen garden, orchard, paddocks and woodland.

One thing hasn't changed: the glorious setting. Werescote stands in more than 21 acres of immaculate gardens and grounds, and enjoys spectacular views to the south, east and north over the Blackdown Hills National Landscape, the Wellington Monument and the Taunton Vale, with the Polden Hills and Glastonbury Tor in the distance.

Werescote is for sale via Savills — see more details.

In the summer of 1937, a group of Surrealist poets, writers and painters gathered at a beguiling house in Cornwall; among them were the painters Dora Carrington, Max Ernst and Man Ray, the sculptor Henry Moore and his wife, the Belgian Surrealist poet and dealer Edouard Mesens and the American photographer and model Lee Miller, with whom Penrose had fallen in love and later married. The infamous house party that followed at Lambe Creek House — known as the ‘Surrealists in Cornwall’ — inspired exhibitions, books and films, including Carrington (1995) and Lee (2023), the latter based on the wartime exploits of Miller.

Today, the ambience at Lambe Creek House is altogether more serene, as it comes to the market for the first time in 60 years, with Falmouth-based agent Jonathan Cunliffe quoting a guide price of £3m.

That buys you this idyllic, Grade II-listed house at Old Kea, near Truro, which stands in some six acres of lawns and woodland overlooking a tidal creek of the Truro river, a tributary of the Fal.

Its exceptional waterside position offers sweeping views along the river to Malpas and the spires of Truro Cathedral, with a long drive that winds across farmland and down to the sleepy creek.

Its white-painted stone façade, draped in wisteria and framed by sash windows, highlights its elegant proportions and hints at the characterful interior, where a bright hallway rises to a galleried landing with barrel-vaulted ceilings.

The main reception rooms — drawing room, sitting room and games room — are arranged around a central kitchen/breakfast room. Upstairs, seven bedrooms include a vast, light-filled principal bedroom suite, together with a good-sized study and a family bathroom.

Old outbuildings dotted throughout the grounds include a former farmworker’s cottage, a pavilion beside the upper lawn, a stable yard, garaging and stores. Pastureland to the north-east is divided into smaller paddocks and punctuated by majestic oaks and walnut trees. To the east lies the historic Tregothnan estate — a private sanctuary where the only sounds are those of the resident wildlife.

This enchanting waterside house was the treasured family home of Dr John Murrell, for many years the consultant haematologist at Treliske Hospital, Truro, and a renowned local yachtsman. He lived there until his death, aged 96, in October 2024, which was followed by that of his wife, Jane, shortly afterwards.

According to its Historic England listing, the house, said to have been an inn in the 18th century, underwent ‘a successful early-19th-century classical remodelling’ by an Admiral Temple. In the 1930s, the artist, historian and art collector Roland Penrose, whose grandfather made his fortune as a Quaker banker, leased Lambe Creek House, which soon became a haven for actors, writers and artists.

In 1936, Penrose was one of the organisers of the London International Surrealist Exhibition, which led to the establishment of the English Surrealist movement — hence the invitation to Carrington, Ernst, Ray et al, which gave this wonderful home its most famous moment.

Lambe Creek House is for sale at £3 million — see more details.

From Cornwall to Somerset, there has been a welcome surge of activity in the market for coastal and country houses, reflected in the launch of some notable West Country properties in Country Life this week. The most dramatic of all comes via Ian Lillicrap of Truro-based agents Lillicrap Chilcott, who seeks ‘offers over £4 million’ for the The Gate House, near Mavagissey in Cornwall.

This celebrated Grade II-listed house sits atop Chapel Point, and is one of three remarkable coastal houses that were designed and built by the Arts-and-Crafts architect John A. Campbell between 1934 and 1939.

The sale follows the death in 2020 of the internationally renowned architect John (‘Jack’) Bonnington, who, with his wife, Esme, bought The Gate House through the same agents in 1987, having seen it advertised in the pages of Country Life.

An article by the magazine’s then Architectural Editor, Christopher Hussey (October 19, 1945), reveals the motivation behind Campbell’s dream of building a coastal village of 20 houses on the wild Cornish headland he bought in 1932. According to Hussey, the forward-thinking architect’s primary aim was to discover whether good masonry and carpentry were still economically viable for a small house in 20th-century England.

He explains the thinking behind Campbell’s remarkable undertaking:

‘The first requirement for his experiment was a site with plenty of stone available. He chose Cornwall, and a spot which, because it was remote, was both beautiful and cheap. He set off ill-equipped as a practical builder, with no knowledge of stone quarrying but with plenty of warnings from friends of inevitable ruin.

‘Two years of hard thought and hard manual work followed, with a few men: carpenter Harry Bell, stonemason Arthur Ball and Campbell himself. No modern appliance within reach of his limited resources was over-looked; a couple of sticks of gelignite saved many man-hours in preparing the rocky site and blasting the material; a donkey handled by his young son provided the chief source of motive power for haulage and transport’.

In the event, only three houses were built at Chapel Point, the Second World War having intervened to stop construction in 1939. After the war, Campbell returned to Mevagissey to complete his project, but the planning permission had lapsed and he was forced to re-submit the plans. After months of updating and redrawing, he finally completed the revised plans in August 1947. Returning along the coast having delivered them to the planning office by hand, he lost his footing, fell into the sea and drowned. Ironically, the plans were approved, but never implemented.

According to the American Home Style magazine (1993), The Gate House was ‘in a bad way, having been lived in by two families, when Jack and Esme Bonnington bought it with a view to refurbishing it as a weekend retreat. Eventually they decided that the only option was to demolish part of the property and rebuild it, which entailed removing all but one of the floors, stripping back the stonework and grit-blasting the walls.

It took three years to complete the work, which saw the interior transformed into a practical and extremely modern space, where uniformity is key. Most floors are finished in marble; almost everything else in white’.

Approached from the sea, as Hussey did in 1945, the three very unusual houses, of which The Gate House is the largest, seemed to him ‘detached from anything else in England, as if occupying a Utopian island in some fairy sea. They share that quality with two of Edwin Lutyens’s most appealing and successful realisations of the improbable — Lindisfarne, and the houses on Lambay Island off the coast of Ireland — although those were both to varying extents reconstructions of existing buildings’.

For Mr Lillicrap, the approach by land from the end of Chapel Point Lane over a sweeping private gated drive is a setting like no other in Cornwall, ‘intriguing, mysterious and enthralling all in one’.

The Gate House, completed in 1937, is the most elaborately designed of Campbell’s three houses — a tower house with steeply pitched Delabole-slate roofs, arched windows with semi-circular balconies facing the beach and sea, an arched loggia, large sheltered inner court and whitened stone walls with a semi-circular staircase tower flanking the main entrance door.

The accommodation divides into two interdependent units to either side of the entrance. A long hall is flanked by cupboards containing boilers, electric meters and kitchen appliances, all cleverly concealed behind a wall of white melamine doors and panelling — a device used by Bonnington throughout the house to create interiors inspired by the Bauhaus architect, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, who encouraged ‘the elimination of superfluous detail’.

Accommodation on three floors includes entrance and main halls, an unusual slate staircase, a study, drawing room, dining room, kitchen/breakfast room, ground-floor bedroom and integral annexe.

There are two en-suite bedrooms on the first floor and a barrel-vaulted living room or fourth bedroom on the second floor.

The Gate House stands in 1¾ acres of gardens and grounds, with frontage to mean high water on Colona beach, the rockery foreshore and the north side of Chapel Point. Elsewhere in the grounds, an old summerhouse, a croquet lawn and sheltered lawns face out across the foreshore, the beach and the spectacular Cornish coastline.

The Gate House at Chapel Point, Mevagissey, is for sale at £4 million — see more details.

A petition has been launched to prevent the sale by Age UK of a Grade ll*-listed Regency villa originally gifted to the residents of the south Devon resort of Salcombe on the basis that it ‘be used, in perpetuity, as a residential home for elderly people’.

Woodcot, which has extensive grounds that are sometimes open to the public, is made up of 14 retirement flats that members of the local community can apply to live in for the remainder of their lives. The 18th-century building was donated to the Plymouth Guild of Social Services by Elizabeth Jennings, a local philanthropist, in 1976, before being passed on to Help the Aged (now Age UK).

The charity is blaming exorbitant running costs for the decision to sell, but petitioners, concerned at the possibility of multiple developments on the sweep of land and the breaking of a supposedly legal covenant, are requesting that it is transferred to another charity: 'Age UK didn't pay a penny for Woodcot. If they can't make a go of it, the moral thing to do is to pass it on to a new charity in the spirit in which they themselves got it, not sell it for profit.' The petition had garnered more than 2,500 signatures last week.

The town’s council — who describe Woodcot as having ‘the best views imaginable — told Country Life that they are worried that the sale might be off-putting to similarly generous donors and would like to better understand the charity’s financial constraints. They added that they are open to facilitating any kind of conversation that will stop elderly residents — some of whom were told they would never have to move — from being forced out.

Woodcot, which is estimated to be worth several millions of pounds, was built in 1797 by James Yates, a London merchant. It was later owned by James Froude, one of the best known historians of his time, who invited his friend, the poet Tennyson, to stay with him.

James Torgood of Savills is overseeing the £5.95 million sale of Grade II-listed Stanbridge Mill at Gussage All Saints, eight miles north of Wimborne Minster.

This is a pretty 18th-century red-brick building set in 52 acres of water meadows and woodland on the banks of the River Allen — it comes with 1,066 yards of double-bank fishing on this well-known trout stream. The mill is surrounded on all sides by wonderful gardens designed by Arabella Lennox-Boyd.

James quotes a guide price of £5.95 million for the impeccably renovated former mill complex, which offers 5,790sq ft of beautifully arranged accommodation on three floors.

There is a vast, oak-panelled reception hall, dining room, snug, large kitchen, china room, breakfast room, water wheel and Mill Room on the ground floor.

The first floor is dominated by a spectacular 42ft-long drawing room with a vaulted ceiling, exposed beams and views of the gardens, woodland and river, plus the principal and guest bedroom suites; there is a third bedroom and bathroom on the second floor.

Further accommodation is provided in a courtyard of three cottages: the four-bedroom Guest Cottage, two-bedroom Keepers Cottage and three-bedroom Courtyard Cottage.

Opposite the cottages, a former farm building has been re-purposed into a splendid library, study and reading room, an ambitious project that merited a prestigious RIBA award.

Stanbdridge Mill is for sale via Savills at £5.95 million — see more details.

Down in Dorset, James Toogood of Savills Country Department quotes a guide price of £2.95m for the distinctive and historic Manor House in the charming village of Hammoon in Hardy country, four miles from Sturminster Newton and nine from Blandford Forum, within the sought-after Blackmore Vale.

Widely recognised as one of Dorset’s most picturesque houses, the Grade II*-listed Manor House, set in just under eight acres of gardens and paddocks with frontage and fishing rights on the River Stour, dates from the 16th century with a 17th-century wing and alterations from the 19th and 21st centuries.

Built partly of stone and part timber-frame under a mainly thatched roof, the house was the subject of a major renovation undertaken in 2014 by the current owners. This included renewal of the electrical, plumbing and heating systems, and the repair and re-ridging of the entire thatched roof.

The three floors of the main house provide more than 6,400sq ft of atmospheric living space. On the ground floor are a large reception hall, impressive drawing and dining rooms, a study, snug, kitchen/breakfast room, utilities and garden room.

The first floor houses the principal and guest bedrooms with bathrooms en suite, four further bedrooms and a family bathroom; a games room and storage occupies the second floor.

In 2019, two adjoining barns were converted and are run as holiday lets, but could serve as family or guest accommodation, having a total of four double bedrooms, three en-suite bathrooms, two kitchens, under-floor heating and wood-burning stoves.

The Manor takes its name from the De Mohun family, who held numerous West Country estates after the Norman Conquest. In the late 15th century, it passed by marriage to the Trenchard family, in whose hands it remained until 1818.

Later owned by Viscount Portman, then Capt William Brown and, from 1937, by the Baptist Union, it was home to the Frampton family from 1946 until 2012, when it was bought by the present owners.

The Manor House in Hammoon is for sale at £2.95 million via Savills — see more details and pictures.

In 1997, Ebberly House became the first country house in Devon to sell for more than £1 million. By the time I visited in 2010, the guide price was £4 million and I was shown around by Martin Lamb, who, in the course of a 40-year career, sold the property three times. Now, the estate is on the market for £6.95 million with Will Matthews of Knight Frank’s country department and Florence Biss in Exeter.

The hamlet of Ebberly, some two miles north of the village of Roborough, on the plateau between the Torridge and Taw rivers, sits in a pastoral landscape of rectangular fields, high hedges and scattered farmsteads.

In the early 19th century, Henry Hole, a builder and wood-engraver from Liverpool, inherited the estate from his uncle, whose family lived at nearby Combe. In about 1816, Hole rebuilt Ebberly House on the site of an earlier manor house, reputedly to the designs of Thomas Lee of Barnstaple, a pupil of Sir John Soane.

Pevsner’s Devon describes it as an ‘unusual and attractive house’ with distinctive rounded ends that ‘hint at the variety of room shapes inside; a provisional echo of the interest of contemporary architects such as Nash and Soane’. In fact, the quality of the interior design, plasterwork, joinery and intricate architectural detail — all original and unaltered, as its Grade II* listing confirms — is of a standard usually only found in much larger historic houses.

The setting is quite magnificent, with views to the south across Dartmoor and no other building in sight; the darkness at night is total, with not a gleam of light to dull the clear skies.

Mr Lamb’s first sale was in 1991, when, having just joined Knight Frank, he sold it on behalf of John Arkwright, who had lived at Ebberly with his wife and children. The Arkwrights sold to Mr and Mrs Kit Pemberton, who carried out much-needed restoration and, in turn, sold to Henry and Serena Whitbread in 1997. The Whitbread family lived there until 2010, when Mr Lamb, by then with Savills, handled its sale to the present owners.

The Whitbreads carried on where the Pembertons left off, installing a modern heating and electrical system, rebuilding the roof and generally overhauling the house, the Victorian pleasure gardens, the lakes and the woodland.

They also built a heated swimming pool, pavilion and tennis court within the Grade II-listed former walled garden.

The house is immaculate, with Soane’s influence evident in the elegant octagonal entrance hall, the top-lit oval stair hall, with its fine wooden staircase and curved doors, and the pretty, oval drawing room divided into three parts by shallow arches.

Another Soane device is the use of a window placed above an open fireplace, notably in the library and the kitchen.

The main house offers some 11,000sq ft of living space on two main floors, with three additional loft rooms on the second floor.

There are four fine reception rooms, a well-equipped kitchen/breakfast room, domestic offices and wine cellars, a splendid principal bedroom suite, eight further bedrooms and five further bathrooms.

The gardens, originally laid out by Lee, have been significantly improved by the present owners, with a profusion of snowdrops, bluebells and rhododendrons providing early and late spring colour. They blend into the woodland and lead to the Victorian pleasure garden, where a stream runs down to two lakes.

Formal gardens around the house are a mix of pristine lawns, planted beds, shrubs and hedging surrounding the former walled garden, swimming pool and pool house.

Ebberly House is more than just the main residence, though: it also comes with seven cottages, rich partureland and farm buildings, which at the time of the Whitbreads produced an estate income of some £50,000 a year. Today, significant income is still generated by the seven cottages, with the biomass boiler also contributing.

Ebberly is for sale at £6.95 million via Knight Frank — see more details and pictures.

Set in a landscape of wooded creeks and rolling farmland, much of it owned by the National Trust, the North Helford area stretches along the north bank of the lovely Helford River and is knitted together by the charming villages of Constantine, Port Navas and Helford Passage. Port Navas has its own Yacht Club and restaurant (said to serve ‘probably the best food on the Helford’), which plays host to the annual Port Navas Regatta.

Here, Falmouth-based agent Jonathan Cunliffe quotes a guide price of £1.5 million for Grade II-listed Helland House in the tranquil hamlet of Treverva, between Mabe and Constantine.

This is a classic, handsome Georgian farmhouse built of the local granite and steeped in 700 years of Cornish history. First recorded in 1323, the farmstead is believed to stand on the site of a priory linked to Glasney Abbey, which was destroyed during the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1548, after which the monks are said to have moved to Helland to live and run the farm there.

The house is set behind an early-medieval burial mound fronted by an exceptionally rare, pre-Norman Celtic cross, intricately carved on all four faces. Beside it, a stone topped with an egg-shaped finial is said to mark the burial place of a cardinal, a nod to their traditional pom-pom-topped hat.

The house’s Grade II listing protects not only the Georgian façade, but also the front gateposts, burial mound and an 18th-century goose-house set into the boundary wall.

Sympathetically restored and extended in conjunction with Marraum Architects of Penryn, Helland House combines period character with Danish flair throughout the courtyard complex, which offers a total floor area of more than 4,900sq ft.

The space on offer is split between several separate buildings, including the four-bedroom main house, the renovated medieval cottage and a number of characterful outbuildings that include the garden studio (a successful holiday let), and a converted piggery that is now a rustic garden room.

There is also a partially-completed two-storey barn suitable for conversion to a studio, workshop or further accommodation.

The grounds on offer are just as compelling as the buildings. Helland House stands in 1¼ acres of south-facing gardens, which unfold around the courtyards; opposite the house, across the gravelled drive, is a pretty paddock with a spring-fed pond, ideal for a small wildflower meadow, an orchard or further planting.

According to research supplied by the owners, only four families have called Helland House home since 1708. Most recent are the current owners, who bought the property in 2009 and also run the Port Navas Yacht Club. Before that, the Sizer family lived there for 40 years, firstly as tenants and then as owners, having bought the freehold.

They were preceded by the Tylders, who bought the property from the Hext family, prominent local landowners who owned the farm from 1708 to 1960.

Helland House is for sale via Jonathan Cunliffe — see more pictures and details

Much has been written about what men want. Arguably, too much has been written about what men want. Even more arguably, too much has been written about men. Some men like to consider themselves as complex emotional beings, that can never be understood. I am quite the opposite. I am easily understood and my desires are very simple: I would like to live a peaceful life by the sea, where I can stand on a cliff with my arms behind my back, looking wistful.

Good news for me then, because the Count House exists. Overlooking Holywell Bay in Cornwall, it is hard to imagine a better property for standing on cliffs and looking wistful than this one. Hear the waves crash under your feet. Think deep thoughts. The bad news (for me) is that it is for sale for £2 million with Lillicrap Chilcott. My intrusive thoughts and I will be entering the lottery once again.

As well as the obviously amazing 1.6 acres of Cornish excellence that comes with the Count House, you also receive a five-bedroom Grade II-listed former Mine Captain’s house, and a separate one-bedroom annexe. I also don’t see many neighbours, so you can play your music as loud as you like, for as long as you like.

The important thing when you have no neighbours and a lovely if isolated home on a Cornish cliff is to make sure that the house itself is very nice to live in. The good news is that the property has been renovated to an excellent standard, as you can tell by the very many nice pictures accompanying this article.

Set over three floors, the property is immensely versatile, but also a bit greedy. Versatile in that there are lots of entertaining and sleeping spaces on the ground and first floors; greedy in that the entire second floor is the principal bedroom suite. Good for you, current owners of the Count House. You deserve a treat.

Is there anything nearby? Not really, no. But then that’s kind of the point I suppose. The South West Coast Path is moments from the doorstep, and the village of Holywell appears to be a reasonable walk (but a walk nonetheless). The sublime beaches of Perran Sands are directly to the south, in case you get bored of cliffs and crashing waves and fancy some sand.

The Count House is for sale with Lillicrap Chilcott for £2 million. For more information and pictures, click here

Mount Farm, on the edge of Bremhill in Calne, Wiltshire, is an 11-bedroom country home with 170 acres of luscious parkland, landscaped grounds and fields to boot. And it is now on the market with Knight Frank, for £8,750,000.

As well as views of North Wessex Downs, an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, Mount Farm boasts proximity to the local, dog-friendly gastropub, the Dumb Post Inn. The village itself has an impressive history: it was mentioned in the Domesday Book (1086) and was recorded even before that when Athelstan, King of the Anglo-Saxons from 924-927 and King of the English from 927-939, gave Bremhill to Malmesbury Abbey in 935.

Inside the property, there are wide hallways, a dining room with roughly-hewn stone walls, and a wooden-beamed living room, flooded with natural light courtesy of roof windows.

Our favourite part, the modern, open plan and airy kitchen, is well set-up for casual suppers, but it is the interconnected ‘party barn’, complete with a bar and cinema, that looks to be where the fun could really get going.

The wine cellar means that there’s plenty of room for supplies to keep your guests thoroughly watered, and you could house them all in either one of the eight rooms in the main house, or in the further three in the surrounding buildings: a one-bedroom annexe, Mount Farm Cottage, and a two-bedroom partly-converted barn, Stable Cottage.

Then there are the grounds, comprising, among other parts, a courtyard garden — featuring an RHS Chelsea Flower Show award-winning water feature designed by Giles Rayner — a full-size croquet lawn, elegant swimming pool, bountiful vegetable and cut flower beds, glass house, productive fruit-tree orchard and hard tennis court.

The estate’s agricultural land consists of approximately 95 acres of pastureland, 36 acres of woodland and 34 acres in arable production, plus a family shoot that is currently in operation for up to 10 days a year.

We are positive that interest will mount quickly, so register your interest fast if you fancy tennis and croquet at one of the nicest properties for sale in Wiltshire.

For more information on Mount Barn visit Knight Frank's website

Inverness-shire — £5,500,000

Over 1,500 acres of Scotland for sale, with fishing rights, farming, a shoot and potential for both peat and woodland restoration and creation.

The house at the heart is a grand, 10-bedroom lodge, while there are also five cottages and a string of working buildings.

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

Perthshire — £3,975,000

A grand home right on the shores of Loch Rannoch, with five bedrooms, an orchard, separate cottage and 1km of waterfront.

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

West Sussex — £2,500,000

Gnarled beams, oak panelling and leaded windows add huge character to this house on Aldwick Bay, just along the south coast from the Pagham Harbour nature reserve.

There are six bedrooms, a summer house and a boat house as part of the package within this private estate.

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

Oxfordshire — £3,300,000

43 acres with a Grade II-listed farmhouse at the centre of this secluded rural home not far from Banbury.

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

North Yorkshire — £1,500,000

A distinguished Victorian coastal house, formerly a hunting lodge, with remarkable interiors, sea views and extensive gardens.

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

Cornwall — £850,000

A Grade II listed five-bedroom residence benefiting from fishing rights on the River Tamar, set within 16.77 acres of grounds.

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

Kent — £900,000

Backing onto a golf course, this immaculate home with sea views offers the perfect blend of modern comfort and coastal lifestyle.

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

Dumfries and Galloway — £270,000

A traditional whinstone farmhouse with an outbuilding, in a peaceful rural setting with views over the surrounding countryside.

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

Kent — £695,000

A stylish and elegant period property beautifully situated with stunning views across the golf course and a short walk to the beach.

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

Cumbria — £425,000

The Coach House is a beautifully presented semi-detached residence with four-bedrooms, set on the edge of the peaceful hamlet of Outhgill.

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

Cornwall — £890,000

A period six-bedroom home with ancillary accommodation and garage, set in 3.3 acres including gardens, adjoining paddock and field.

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

Leicestershire — £1,900,000

A magnificent three-storey individually styled residence with six bedrooms, set in a plot of approx. a third of an acre in an elevated position.

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

Estate agents use many different measures when it comes to valuing houses. Where is the house? How big is it? How many rooms? How much work needs doing? What is the price-per-square-foot in this particular neck of the woods?

So far, so relatively scientific... but the best agents also admit that there are a fair few intangibles at work in the calculation too. Is the place unique? Does it put a smile in your face, or butterflies in your stomach? What — for want of a better word — is the vibe?

All these things can move the valuation up, down, or sideways. While usually it's a bit of a nudge, sometimes there's so much going on that they simply rip up rules and go with their gut.

And so it is that a modest, three-bedroom bungalow in Dorset, extending to 1,800sq ft. and which hasn't been redecorated since the 1970s, is now on the market at £4 million.

Take one look at the pictures on this page and I doubt there is anyone at all who'd be remotely surprised at that price, because Shipstal Point is one of the most fabulous locations we've seen at Country Life this year. Set in the RSPB Arne Nature Reserve, accessed via an unmade road behind high, electric gates and protected from view by mature trees and shrubs, it's as private and secluded a spot as you could ever hope to find on the south coast — in stark contrast to the homes at nearby Sandbanks, for example, where most homes are shoulder-to-shoulder with their neighbours.

Yet as with the homes in Sandbanks, you have access to the water and the beach. Shipstal is just one of three private homes to have direct access to Poole Harbour, yet it's also tucked off to one side along the Arne Channel. Do we need to spell out that there is a private slipway? A boathouse? There is, and as you step past them you'll be straight out on to the beach.

The house itself is, as mentioned earlier, something of a timewarp — yet incredibly well kept and completely charming, the sort of place you'd imagine serving as a set for a Netflix series. There are wooden floors and floral curtains, 1970s-style ceiling tiles, unpainted wooden doors on the kitchen cabinets and more. The clever trick here is that it's been subtly updated (you'll note the huge gas hob and eye-level cooker, for example) without losing its period look.

In a similar vein, there's an original sauna room in the garden which, like the house itself, was built in the 1960s. The summer house has a similar look, with its painted wooden walls and sofa bed.

The big question is, how much of it will stay this way? Perhaps it's nostalgia speaking (I grew up in a house of a similar vintage) but it doesn't feel hard to love the quirkiness of the place just as it is. Yet the reality is that at this end of the market (that price-per-sq-ft works out at over £2,000, which is central London levels), and especially when dealing with an unlisted house, it's likely that whoever moves in will want to replace the house that stands here with their own vision for what Shipstal Point should be, particularly given that this is an area with good schools, lovely restaurants nearby, and a local station that gets you to Waterloo in just over a couple of hours. Let's hope that whatever its future holds, this place stays just as fun, fresh and beautiful as it has been for the last 50 years.

Shipstal Point is for sale at £4 million — see more pictures and details.

Polruan-by-Fowey, Cornwall, is the very archetype of the Cornish coastal settlement. This ancient seafaring and ship-building village is surrounded by water on three sides, and clings to the hillside on the east bank of the River Fowey, just inside the entrance to Fowey harbour. Polruan’s association with the sea goes back to at least the 14th century, when it was recorded as having sent a ship and 60 men to join the siege of Calais in 1346.

Today, people come not to build ships or cross the Channel to take part in the Hundred Years’ War. Instead, it’s the lifestyle that is the big draw: ‘It’s all about the view across the water,’ says Oliver Custance Baker of Strutt & Parker, joint agents with locally based May Whetter & Grose in the sale of The Garden House, in a quiet Polruan road whose very name evokes some of those long-ago conflicts: Battery Lane.

Launched onto the market in today’s Country Life with a guide price of £3.4 million, this charming stone-built house is set in more than an acre of walled gardens that run all the way down to the water’s edge.

There is direct access to the beach and harbour, the famous sailing waters of south Cornwall and lots of wonderful coastal and inland walks, many of them owned by the National Trust.

The Garden House, which dates from the 1880s, has been owned for the past 31 years by the same family, who renovated it throughout when they first bought it and have since extended it to the rear. According to the agents, it was bought as their UK home when they lived in Hong Kong and has been their primary residence in recent years.

In all, the house offers some 4,000sq ft of light-filled living space on three floors, including, on the ground floor, three good reception rooms, a kitchen/breakfast room, wine cellar, walk-in larder and laundry.

The first floor provides three double bedrooms, one of which could be used as an office, while the principal bedroom suite has a large panoramic bay window, with wonderful views across the water.

Also on the first floor are a home gym and a family bathroom, while there are two further bedrooms on the second floor.

Outside are a summer house, greenhouse and off-road secure parking for three vehicles in a double garage and on an adjoining platform.

And one more thing to mention: the new owners can rest assured that they won’t be the only newcomers. The house next door — an 1877 property called The Old Vicarage, despite being built for a local sea captain — found a buyer last year after coming to market with a guide price of £2.5m, also through Strutt & Parker.

The Garden House is for sale via Strutt & Parker and May Whetter & Grose. See more pictures and details.

There are people in the world who are against the gentrification of the Glastonbury Festival. Who insist that unless you sleep in a tent, survive on a diet of alcohol, fried food and, er, pharmaceutical supplements, that somehow you're not experiencing the 'real Glastonbury'.

It's a bit of a ridiculous argument, to be honest, akin to saying that you haven't been to Venice until you've had your handbag snatched, or that you haven't been to Paris until you've been charged £13.40 for a tiny coffee by a sneering waiter.

Thankfully, most of us now understand that this is total rubbish. Things don't have to be bad to be good, and the blossoming of charming, beautiful and elegant spaces at festivals like Glastonbury is both a logistical marvel and a very welcome development.

One of the finest of those spaces to appear at Glastonbury in recent years is At The Festival, a pop-up version of a charming hotel/restaurant/bar in nearby Bruton called At The Chapel. And the designer behind the conversion and decoration of this former church is now selling her own Somerset home for £3.25 million — and it's even more lovely than you could imagine.

Except that you don't have to imagine, because of the gorgeous pictures on this page.

The house itself is a picture-perfect Georgian manor house in a village called Hinton Blewitt, about five miles from Wells in the Chew Valley. It's a huge home: over 9,500 sq ft, with seven bedrooms and four acres of gardens. That makes it big enough for the biggest of families, or perhaps multi-generational living: the tick-shaped floorplan mean that this is very much a house of two halves, while there's also a summerhouse, barn and converted stables, the latter currently set up as a home office.

The agents call the house a 'masterclass in understated luxury, blending historic architecture with contemporary comfort', and that really does seem an apt description here. It's modern and cool without losing its homely feel, and it's simultaneously characterful and traditional without ever seeming old-fashioned.

The kitchen is a prime example: an Aga sits happily next to dark units that could be in a swish metropolitan restaurant, while the view through the huge sash windows, or out of the glazed door, reminds you that this is very much a country house.

The dining room and other reception rooms have a similar feel.

Upstairs, the bedrooms and bathrooms are spacious and bright.

It's also a house built for fun, with a cellar converted into a cinema room.

It's hard to think of a box they haven't ticked here: everything just feels right. And it's further proof that sometimes, like a posh festival experience, you can have the good things in life without having to compromise.

The Manor in Hinton Blewitt is for sale at £3.25 million — see more pictures and details.

The Dartmoor landscape is to be given ‘new life to its wilderness’ in an effort to restore nature and protect it from climate change. The ‘Vision’, convened by the Duchy of Cornwall and the Central Dartmoor Landscape Recovery Project, will bring together dozens of collaborators and proposes new approaches to grazing, biodiversity, conservation and hydrological restoration and is part of the largest project of its kind in the UK.

‘Dartmoor is a magnificent and complex ecosystem — the balance between nature and people has evolved for thousands of years to shape the landscape we recognise today,’ the Prince of Wales writes in the foreword to the Vision. ‘To keep Dartmoor special, we must respond to the twin challenges of global warming and the requirement to restore nature, while ensuring the communities on Dartmoor can thrive.’

Three key areas of focus have been identified by the Duchy of Cornwall. Firstly, closer, practical partnerships between landowners, farmers and wildlife teams will aim to foster collaboration and mutual respect in what has historically been a contested landscape. Second, a holistic strategy to address Dartmoor’s priority habitat challenges, which will see investment in peatland restoration and upland mosaic habitats. Finally, agri-environment schemes at the catchment level will connect river headwaters with their onward journey to the sea.

It’s hoped these three pillars will help realise and deliver on the principles set out in the Vision. While specific to Dartmoor, they lay out a foundation for other UK wide environmental management plans.

‘The Dartmoor Vision shows us what might be possible and how that might be achieved,’ adds the Prince of Wales, who is also the Duke of Cornwall. ‘It is bold and ambitious and something that I hope, by working together, can be delivered for not just the current generation but for generations to come.’

Many of Cornwall’s most rewarding coastal spots require effort to reach them. Such is the case with Nanjizal Beach (which also goes by the more prosaic name of Mill Bay), a narrow, handsomely higgledy sea inlet that can only be accessed along the coastal path. It sits about half an hour’s walk south of Land’s End, although the contrast between the two sites could hardly be greater.

If headline-hogging Land’s End has become a theme park, hill-hidden Nanjizal lets you experience a very different Cornwall — a place where the seabirds serve up the soundtrack, where a set of steep wooden steps provide your entry point to the stony sands and where your chances of finding a pasty or cream tea are non-existent.

Parts of a now-missing episode of Doctor Who from the mid 1960s were filmed here, but many visitors today come to enjoy the so-called Song of the Sea, a tidal pool that fills an open-air fissure in the rocks at high tide. For sea swimmers looking to unleash their inner mermaid, it’s perfect

For an island that is inherently quite small, there sure is a lot of stuff in the UK. It’s pretty amazing, when you think about it, that you can go from the flat fields of Suffolk to the harsh mountains of the Highlands in a single day. And, from there, to the cliffs and coves of Cornwall in another 10 hours or so.

There is something enchanting about the cove. It’s one of those words that sounds exactly like it should, such as ‘parched’, ‘rasp’ or ‘drench’. When I hear the word cove, I can instantly hear the gulls squawking overhead, smell the salt and see the Atlantic ocean stretching out from the cliffs underneath my feet. I would like to live in a house by a cove. A house such as Tregwyn.

For sale with John Bray Estates for £1.5 million, Tregwyn is one of those homes that I could look at for hours. With four bedrooms, three bathrooms, a small garden and plenty of parking, you will want for nothing.

But that’s not the point is it? The point is the views, and the situation. Parked on the edge of a hill overlooking the natural harbour of Port Quin and 50 yards from the Southwest Coast Path. I mean just look at it.

The accommodation is arranged over two floors, and features a vast reception/dining room that occupies most of the ground floor, which is complemented by a sun room, a galley-style kitchen and a snug. There is also a single bedroom, which could be converted into a home office, if doing emails and not enjoying the views was your kind of thing. Three further bedrooms occupy the first floor.

Port Quin itself is a small hamlet that was once a fishing village. Equidistant between Port Isaac and Polzeath, the property occupies one of the finest locations of the north Cornwall coast and, indeed, one of the finest locations in the British Isles.

As mentioned, there is a lot of ‘stuff’ on this small island. This might be some of the best of it.

Tregwyn is for sale with John Bray Estates for £1.5 million. For more information and pictures, click here.

Down on Dartmoor, four miles from Mortetonhampstead, there's a fine old manor house with a wonderful claim to literary fame. Wingstone Manor was for many years home to John Galsworthy, the writer who created The Forsyte Saga — an iconic series of novels that was inspired by this wild, dramatic setting. That house — with its setting little changed by the passage of over a century — is up for sale.

Galsworthy and his wife, Ada, lived between 1906 and 1924 at Wingstone Manor, the house at the heart of its own 363-acre Wingstone Manor Farm. The village it's in, Manaton, is four miles from Moretonhampstead, five miles from Bovey Tracey and 22 miles from Exeter. Chris Johnson of Strutt & Parker’s Exeter office is handling the sale, and he quotes a guide price of £4.5m.

That price buys you a gloriously scenic estate, its land a mix of pasture, ancient woodland and moorland, lovingly maintained by its dedicated owner, who has long been a dynamic member of the local Dartmoor Commoners’ Association.

Having acquired Wingstone Manor Farm with 110 acres of pasture some years ago, she later acquired the adjoining 250 acres of moorland with a further detached five-bedroom farmhouse (subject to an agricultural occupation restriction), thereby returning the farm to its original layout.

At the estate’s heart is the main Grade II-listed, five-bedroom farmhouse with 16th-century origins, which comes with a three-bedroom holiday cottage, traditional and modern farm buildings and spectacular views over Dartmoor, onto which it enjoys direct access.

Wingstone Manor Farm is for sale at £4.5m — see more pictures and details.

Let’s voyage offshore to a savagely windy night in 1669. Dark waves pounded the hull of a passing Spanish galleon trapped in the eye of the tempest. The ship, which went by the name San Salvador, could only cope for so long. By daybreak, it was wrecked on the rocks, its crew lost and its bounty of silver coins sunk. Over the centuries that followed, these dollar pieces washed up on the coast around the hamlet of Gunwalloe, ghostly monetary mementoes of a long-gone storm.

Thus runs the legend around Dollar Cove, in Gunwalloe, Helston, on the Lizard peninsula’s north-west shoreline. Its history, however, stretches back even longer. Gunwalloe is one of Cornwall’s very oldest settlements, being the region’s first entry in the Domesday Book of 1086, and even has remnants of Bronze Age archaeology among its tussocky dunes and slopes.

Fans of Aiden Turner's rather rugged turn in the BBC hit series Poldark may remember the scene where he brought sailors and goods ashore after a shipwreck. That was filmed at Dollar Cove.

Today, the cove itself is a wild, rocky place, backed by low-slung hills. Its beauty is of the craggy kind and, as somewhere to find relative calm, it’s usually a safe bet. Does shipwrecked coinage still appear on the sands? There’s only one way to find out.

Visiting Dollar Cove

With a large National Trust car park nearby, Dollar Cove is perfect to visit if you're driving. While you're at it, it may be worth paying a visit to A its next-door neighbour, Church Cove, which, alongside the former location, makes us Gunwalloe Beach. Church Cove also has a small café and toilets and Loe Pool isn't very far away if you wanted to make a day of it.

Everyone should endeavour to live in a castle, because castles are cool. They do, however, have practical downsides — notably that they are very large, very expensive, and prone to be quite old and therefore annoying to look after.

It’s why we here at Country Life are always on the lookout for castles on the more manageable side of things. Castles that look like castles, but are not exactly like castles, if that makes sense. If it doesn’t, perhaps have a look at St Petroc, which is currently on the market with Fine & Country for £895,000.

It ticks many important boxes. Box number one, in my opinion the most important box, is crenellations. Any castle without crenellations is not a castle at all, but thankfully no such issues here. Does it survey its surrounding land? In a way, yes. Also very pleasing.

On the more practical side of things, the property offers four bedrooms over two floors, with two bathrooms and three reception rooms. The secluded setting in the hamlet of Charles in north Devon is improved by 1.39 acres of gardens. Not exactly a kingdom, but perfectly manageable.

What’s it like on the inside? Full of lots of old suits of armour and great stone fireplaces and ancient wood? Not quite. What we have here is a castle on the outside, and a modern contemporary home on the inside.

The kitchen is large and spacious, with an island and a jazzy green range cooker. The sitting room has some kind of dome in the roof, but it’s hard to tell, because it appears to be some kind of optical illusion. Either way, it’s very cool. More rooms should have unknowable and unfathomable ceiling features. Chandeliers have been done.

The four bedrooms occupy the second floor, along with one of the bathrooms, and there is plenty of balcony space on either side of the property from which to sit and laugh at your enemies as they struggle to breach your defensive walls.

St Petroc is approached by a gravel drive, as all decent castles should be, and the gardens are perfect for hosting and entertaining. The rear lawn area is extensive and features a large terrace sunk into the gentle hill. Rich shrubs and woodland create a sense of privacy.

St Petroc might be that rare thing, a castle as imposing as any other, with none of the downsides. One worth fighting for, at any rate.

St Petroc is for sale with Fine & Country for £895,000. For more information and pictures, click here

Down in north Devon, the historic, Grade II*-listed Hudscott Manor at Chittlehampton has come to the market at a guide price of £3.25m by Oliver Custance Baker of Strutt & Parker.

Located near Umberleigh — three miles from South Molton and 10 miles from Barnstaple — the property comes with 63 acres of formal gardens, paddocks, woodland and wildlife ponds, with a further 113 acres of level, undulating farmland of significant agricultural, amenity and agroforestry value available by separate negotiation.

The house has at least four centuries history (of which more later) but at present house offers more than 10,000sq ft of elegant and light-filled living space on two floors, including an impressive reception and dining hall, three further reception rooms, a kitchen/breakfast room, cellars, domestic offices, five double bedrooms and five bathrooms.

Additional accommodation is available in a self-contained first-floor apartment and two cottages.

To the south of the house, beautifully maintained lawns are interspersed with rhododendrons and a variety of mature trees and shrubs, complemented by formal landscaped gardens and inviting seating areas. Beyond the gardens, paddocks extend to the south of the house, with additional grass paddocks laid out around the house and outbuildings.

The estate also includes former parkland and a charming small copse with a pond that add to the natural beauty of the surroundings. By maintaining diverse habitats, Hudscott Manor estate supports a wide range of plant and animal species and is heavily involved in regenerative farming practices, with the woods and grassland playing a vital role in carbon sequestration.

Hudscott Manor has a long and fascinating history dating back to at least medieval times. The manor was largely rebuilt in the 17th century by the Lovering family and later served as a refuge for Presbyterian clergy who refused to use the Book of Common Prayer that, following the Restoration of the Monarchy in 1660, was restored for compulsory usage in 1662.

As a result of this edict, some 2,000 clergy were ejected from their livings and forbidden to preach within five miles of a town. By 1700, Hudscott had passed to a junior branch of the influential Rolle family. Samuel Rolle, who was MP for Barnstaple, purchased the manor of Chittlehampton in 1737, making Hudscott its principal estate.

According to its Historic England listing, ‘no clear visible features survive to date Hudscott Manor before the early 17th century, but its complex plan would suggest that successive remodellings in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries have very probably obscured considerably earlier fabric’.

Hudscott Manor is for sale via Strutt & Parker — see more details and pictures.