Do you ever look at things and wonder how they got there? As a cat owner, I do this quite often. But the things that really surprise me are houses. I imagine building a house on a flat piece of land in the middle of the city would be quite difficult. I imagine building one into the side of a hill overlooking the sea would be extremely taxing.

That is also assuming that you could do it now, with modern technology and building methods. Looking at Rockton, which is for sale with Blue Book Agency for £2.5 million, the most impressive feature about it is that it was built in the 1870s. On the side of a hill. Next to the sea.

Originally a coach house and ancillary accommodation for a Victorian mansion, Rockton has been extensively renovated by its current owner to create a five-bedroom family home with perhaps some of the finest views in the West Country. 

But there’s more. Because Rockton is not just one house. It is, in fact, two houses: Rockton House (three beds) and Rockton Mews (two beds).

Both properties feature lashings of original features and modern comforts, and, looking from the outside, there is very little to give away that the interiors are achingly contemporary, with the restored spire and reclaimed roof tiles cleverly disguising the redesigned properties.

Both feature elegant open-plan kitchen/dining rooms on their lower floors, with balconies to take advantage of the imperious position on the north Devon coast. Both feature top-of-the-range appliances throughout, from DeVol fixtures to Esse log burners. 

But lots of houses have those things. What lots of houses do not have is these views. The north Devon coast has long been an inspiration for visitors and residents alike, from Lorna Doone to the Rime of the Ancient Mariner.

It would be difficult not to be inspired by these views, expanding out towards the Foreland Point and over the Bristol Channel to Wales and the Brecon Beacons. So when you think about things and how they got there, the answer in Rockton’s case is, because where else would you rather be?

Rockton is for sale with Blue Book Agency for £2.5 million. For more information and pictures, click here

Credit: Knight Frank

An exquisite home tucked away in Surrey Hills woodland that blends Arts-and-Crafts with a touch of Versailles

Penny Churchill takes a look at Charles Hill Court, a magnificent home up for sale in a hugely popular spot.

Credit: John D Wood

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Today on the Country Life Online Property Desk we take a trip down to the sunny south coast where, in the East Sussex town of Lewes, we have the rather wonderful Undercliffe House. Gaze upon its Gothic presence and strap in. There is much to discuss.

First things first, the name. Undercliffe House would suggest that the house would be situated under some kind of protrusion. It would suggest that the house might be under some kind of cliff. This is, of course, incorrect. If anything, it is the opposite. The property, which stretches to some 3,356sq ft of living space, in fact occupies an elevated position of some 2.2 acres, with unrivalled views over the surrounding countryside and town, and Lewes Castle, Malling Coombe and the South Downs are all easily seen from the higher rooms. 

The property — for sale with Hamptons for £3 million — was originally built in 1865 in the aforementioned Gothic style by the local architect and builder James Berry. It has towers, as it should. It has an octagonal porch, as all good Gothic buildings do. It is described by the agents as one of Lewes’s ‘most recognisable and unusual properties’. I would agree with this analysis.

Inside, the house boasts a number of character features that give it quite the personality. Among the five bedrooms, four bathrooms and four reception rooms, you will find porthole windows, Victorian style toilets, wooden floors, exposed beams, original fireplaces and crown mouldings. Combined with this period charm is the light touch of modernity where required, making the property functional for the 21st century, which we can all agree is a good thing.

How about this bath tub though? Referred to as a ‘soaking tub’, it is perfectly round, made of copper and just quite cool. I have never considered having a bath in a different direction depending on the day of the week, but now I feel like I have missed out.

Outside, the property is approached up a well-hidden driveway through woodland, adding to its Gothic charm. The 2-ish acres of grounds consist of said woodland and lawned areas, and are bordered by Malling Down Nature Reserve and the adjoining Lewes Golf Club, with private access to both. There is also a detached study/office, an outdoor heated swimming pool and a hot tub.

Situation-wise, things continue to be great. Lewes is obviously quite a popular and well-liked town. There are good schools, plenty of shops, restaurants, bars, and so on. The town centre is 10 minutes walk away, as is the train station from which London is an hour by train.

Undercliffe House is for sale with Hamptons for £3 million. For more information and pictures, click here

Credit: Strutt and Parker

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Some 20-odd miles to the south of Bewl Water, the historic Cinque Port of Rye stands at the confluence of three rivers — the Rother, the Tillingham and the Brede — where the high land of the Weald reaches the coast. In medieval times, Rye was an important port for the shipment of Wealden iron. It was later a haunt of smugglers, who met in the town’s Mermaid Inn until, in the late 18th century, the notorious Hawkhurst Gang was finally dispersed and its members hanged.

In the 19th and 20th centuries, the town was much favoured by writers, playwrights, artists and musicians. Today, its location on the edge of Romney Marsh, less than two miles from the sea, ensures that it remains one of the remotest and least populated areas of South-East England.

For Christia, Lady Ampthill, who, in 1998, bought one of the town’s landmark houses, Grade II-listed Mountsfield House on Rye Hill, from the owner of the Mermaid Inn, Rye is quite simply ‘the ideal place to live’. Mountsfield House, now for sale through Will Peppitt of Savills at a guide price of £3.95m, was built in 1776 by Thomas Phillips Lamb, who was MP for Rye and the son of Thomas Lamb, a long-time mayor of the town, who lived at Mountsfield Lodge next door. In the early 1800s, the house was owned by the South Eastern Railway company, which billeted workers there before selling in 1849 to a Mr Plomley, who removed the top storey when putting the house back in order.

Mountsfield House had been on the market for years and was in dire need of renovation when Lady Ampthill moved in and embarked on a root-and-branch programme of repair and modernisation. She also created the property’s 2½ acres of lovely gardens and grounds, including the secluded walled garden, which is a particular source of delight; local designers were commissioned to create a large orangery to improve the original kitchen and the back of the house.

Approached along a tree-lined drive, the house stands on the outskirts of the historic hilltop town with views towards the citadel of Rye. Originally timber-frame with mathematical tiles to create the illusion of a grand, brick-built house, it later saw the addition of stone and stucco details and porches. Mountsfield House offers some 6,500sq ft of elegant, well-planned living space, including four main reception rooms, six bedrooms and six bathrooms. Further accommodation is available in the two-bedroom garden flat and the converted stables.

Mountsfield House is for sale with Savills for £3.95 million. For more information and pictures, click here

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Credit: Knight Frank

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There's something irresistible about the idea of owning your own island. Some hanker after dots on the map in mystically-beautiful locations; others see things differently, caring not for beauty and charm but instead looking for independence and an escape from the usual rules of society, as in the case of Sealand.

Without either factor at play, though, islands can still exert a powerful draw. Take the example of the two ports which have come up for sale in the Solent. There is no nature or beauty, and the city of Portsmouth is little more than a stone's throw away; yet who can look at the images on this page without wondering in awe what life on the fort (on shore? on board? it's hard to say) would be like.

Decommissioned after the war, the forts were sold off in the 1980s. Spitbank Fort was converted into a museum, and later hosted TV programmes and weekend raves.

Spitbank Fort and No Man’s Land Fort and were bought by businessman Mike Clare’s Clarenco, which has invested an estimated £8m on restoring the properties. They came up for sale a few years ago at around £4m each; now, they're for up for auction through Savills, with a bargain guide price of £1 million each.

'Throughout my career as an auctioneer I’ve seen several sea forts hit the market that have achieved impressive prices as buyers have sought to pursue these trophy assets,' says Robin Howeson, head of Savills Auctions.

'Having been carefully restored by the current owners, No Man’s and Spitbank Fort represent exceptional market value, each guided at £1 million. Both offer an opportunity like no other; a waterfront location, up to 99,000 sqft of space and a chance to champion the heritage and legacy of these iconic maritime structures.'

This type of fort has a long history. In the early 16th century, Henry VIII built an extensive set of coastal defences at either end of the Solent, part of his network of Device Forts that effectively controlled access to east and west.

In the late 1850s, a perceived threat of invasion by France led to the commissioning of a fresh series of forts in the Solent by the Prime Minister, Lord Palmerston. The massive, armour-plated structures took 15 years to build, by which time the French threat had receded and they were no longer required.

During the Second World War, the forts were used to defend the Portsmouth dockyards. Life on site was grim; those serving were deliberately chosen for their inability to swim, to avoid any attempt to escape.

That's far from the case these days. The mix of quirky boutique hotel with a nautical theme is oddly charming, particularly when you throw in some of the original Victorian details which remain to this day.

Clearly as it stands these properties are business opportunities rather than homes for sale, yet we see no reason why Spitbank in particular couldn't work as a private home. Especially for those looking for somewhere from which they can hop in the helicopter to work.

Savills will auction Spitbank Fort and No Man's Fort for a guide price of £1 million each on June 18. Follow the links to each for more details and pictures.

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At the northern end of the county of Surrey, on the east Berkshire border, stands Windsor Great Park, a 4,800-acre landscape of forests, grasslands, lakes and gardens. It is part of the Windsor estate and acts as a large rural lung for those living within its proximity.

In a relatively built-up part of the world with easy access to the capital, it's no surprise that many people are keen to live close to this huge expanse of rolling countryside.

Generally speaking, however, the choice of houses consists of a steady supply of large new-build or late-20th-century houses that dominate the area.

Every so often, however, a historic property comes to the market. This is the case with the dolls’-house-handsome, Grade II-listed The Gate House in Englefield Green, which is on the market with Strutt & Parker in Windsor at £3.95m.

How close is it to this treasured green space? Well, part of the property is literally in the park itself: the standout feature is the fact that the western section of the gardens is held on a Crown lease and enjoys direct access to Windsor Great Park via a private gate. The new owners will be able to walk, cycle and ride (subject to obtaining the necessary permit) through the glorious parkland.

The Gate House is believed to date from the early 19th century and features Flemish-bond brickwork and large, characterful sash windows.

The five-bedroom house (the sixth room is currently used as a study) is laid out over three floors and comes to the market in excellent interior condition.

The kitchen, which is to the rear and looks out over the gardens, is designed by Plain English and centred around a four-oven Aga.

‘The gardens are particularly noteworthy,’ observes selling agent Jo Chadwick. ‘They have been designed and landscaped to create a secluded sanctuary with a series of linked outdoor rooms.’

The Gate House in Englefield Green is on the market with Strutt & Parker in Windsor at £3.95m — see more details and pictures.

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Vauxhall is one of those places that you always seem to be passing through, but never really bother to stop in. The first time I spent time in Vauxhall, as a 20-year-old, I remember being completely overwhelmed by the hidden Latin community that existed there, and I (just about) remember having a really good time. 

One of the issues with Vauxhall and next-door Nine Elms is the seemingly endless row upon row of new build apartment blocks that have been erected in every square inch of the borough. From the outside, it doesn’t feel like anything other than glass towers and MI6. It is, however, an extremely vibrant area, that is very well connected — you just need to know where to look.

Luckily, I know where to look. I would start with this four-bedroom penthouse apartment for sale with Knight Frank for £2.5 million. Titled the Vat House, the property is on the market for the first time since it was converted 40 years ago. This means two things: whoever lived there liked living there very much and that it probably needs a bit of polishing up.

The penthouse occupies the top floor of the former Beaufoy Vinegar Factory, which began life in 1812. In 1941, the factory was partially destroyed by a bomb, and eventually closed its doors for good in 1970, after producing millions of gallons of vinegar each year and employing some 300 people. The factory was converted into flats in 1985, when the Vat House was purchased by the current vendor.

Set over two floors, the property retains a wealth of industrial-age period features throughout, no more apparent in the open-plan reception/kitchen/dining room on the top floor. Original ironwork is still on display throughout, lending the place bags of character that you don’t often find in flats in the area (see previous paragraph complaining about glass boxes).

Four good-size bedrooms occupy the lower/entrance floor, and the split level nature of the property means that a substantial roof terrace of about 500sq ft provides more than enough space for enjoying the London skyline and entertaining your friends. As part of the development, purchasers will also have access to a concierge service, parking, pool and gym. 

The Vat House is for sale with Knight Frank for £2.5 million. For more information and pictures, click here

Credit: Strutt and Parker

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Credit: Strutt and Parker

One of Suffolk's great country house estates — 12 bedrooms, 1,763 acres and 36,000sq ft — comes up for sale at £19 million

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Credit: Strutt and Parker

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Sometimes a house comes on to the market which seems to offer so much, for so little, that it's genuinely hard to believe.

Not often, but sometimes — and it's emphatically the case with Oaklands House, on the edge of the small Somerset town of Chard, which has appeared on the market with a £650,000 price attached. To see a property of such immense charm, full of such lovely period details, at the price you'd pay for a semi-detached bungalow on the outskirts of London is astonishing.

The house was built in 1883 by James Gifford, a lace manufacturer — though he didn't live here long. Soon after the place was finished, he died, leaving Oaklands to become the family home of his son and daughter-in-law, James and Emma Gifford, who as well as raising four children in the house, were scientists and pioneers in the field of X-rays, a tale fascinatingly told in the local Chard Museum.

James and Emma Gifford had both a laboratory and an observatory built at Oaklands House; and while both are now gone,the rest of the house feels as if they'd still recognise it. There is a wood-panelled sitting room with a wonderful plaster ceiling; a glorious hallway with original tiled floor still in place; there are sash windows, grand light fittings, a beautiful meandering staircase and much more.

To be sure, there is a lot of work to do. The kitchen, for example, has a touch of the 1980s about it — and not in a good way — while the bedrooms are feeling tired and dated.

The price leads us to the first caveat: it's a guide price, since the house is going up for auction on April 18th, via Symonds & Sampson. They're a well established agent of fine reputation, and know the market well... but it's always possible that a bidding war could push things much higher.

The other caveat, naturally, is the fact that buying a property at auction means that you need to have all your metaphorical ducks in a row before you even think about aiming that meaningful wink at the auctioneer — because a winning bid is a binding contract. So don't get carried away by the wonders of the lake and bid without checking your bank balance.

Assessing the condition of the house is the first job. There isn't necessarily something wrong with a house being sold via auction — most are put up by local authorities, investors, or banks prioritising a quick sale — but you do need to satisfy yourself ahead of time about the condition of the place, and the remedial work that might need doing.

On top of that, you'll also need your finances in place: you don't necessarily need cash to bid, but you'll need to pay 10% deposit before leaving the auction, and the rest inside 28 days.

It's not hard to imagine potential bidders getting over those concerns, however, for this is clearly a very special house with superb gardens at a price which is likely to have bidders from all over get excited at the prospect. We can't wait to see what happens at the auction on April 18th, and wish the best of luck to all who go for it.

Oaklands House is for sale via auction through Symonds & Sampson with a guide price of £650,000 — see more details and pictures.

Credit: Strutt and Parker

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Listed Grade II, the moated Victorian The Clock Tower sits in some 2½ acres of secluded gardens and grounds within the parkland of Old Hunstanton Hall, yet within easy walking distance of the sea.

For sale with Jackson-Stops in Burnham Market, agent Carolyn Hayward quotes a guide price of £1.8m for the impeccably maintained main house and grounds. A refurbished two-bedroom former coachman’s cottage — currently a popular holiday let through Norfolk Hideaways — is available by separate negotiation, but only to the buyer of The Clock Tower.

The Historic England listing for The Clock Tower, dated 1873 and originally known as Stable Court, tentatively attributes the building’s High Gothic design to the Victorian architect Frederick Preedy, whose cousin Henry Styleman Le Strange inherited the Hunstanton Hall estate in 1839; he is best remembered as the developer of Hunstanton as a Victorian coastal resort. Preedy also designed and manufactured his own stained-glass windows, 400 of which are installed in churches up and down the country from North Yorkshire to Devon.

After centuries of Le Strange family ownership, Grade I-listed Old Hunstanton Hall, which dates from the 15th century, was split up and sold off in the late 1950s. In 1984, the previous owners of the former stable courtyard engaged eminent Norfolk-based architect Charles Morris to redesign and renovate the building, which they renamed The Clock Tower.

A quiet private road sweeps through the Hall parkland and crosses a small bridge over the moat to arrive at The Clock Tower, where the original large wooden doors open onto the enclosed courtyard garden with its brick paving and raised feature pond; the building wraps around the courtyard with most rooms opening onto it. The River Hun, the source of which lies within the grounds of Hunstanton Park, forms the moat that borders the property on two sides.

Under the entrance archway, the front door leads into the reception hallway, which has a bespoke bookcase designed by Morris, with stairs leading up to the split-level master suite. Further along the hallway is a cosy sitting room, the original harness room. Next comes the library/music room, fitted with bookshelves and a stable door leading onto the courtyard.

The exceptionally large kitchen/ dining room offers wonderful views over the moat and garden. Leading off the kitchen is The Clock Tower’s pièce-de-résistance, the truly spectacular drawing room with its full-height windows, doors to the courtyard, and —perhaps inspired by Preedy—a dramatic full-height, Gothic stone-mullioned window designed by Morris on the garden side of the room. The bedroom wing houses three double bedrooms, a family bathroom and a further bathroom and utility room.

The present vendors, who bought The Clock Tower in 2018, carried out a programme of light refurbishment that included electrical work, complete redecoration and the installation of some wooden flooring. They also replaced the old scaffolding bridge over the moat with two new painted Iroko wooden bridges.

They confess to falling in love with the courtyard setting, the original working clock and the building’s unique historic character, with its moat fed from a natural chalk spring. Once sold, they say they will miss The Clock Tower’s ideal location so close to the beaches of the beautiful North Norfolk coastline, yet so private and peaceful, and teeming with wonderful wildlife.

The Clock Tower is for sale with Jackson-Stops for £1.8 million. For more pictures and information, click here

Credit: Knight Frank

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Credit: Strutt and Parker

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Historic, Grade II-listed Stanfield Hall, set in 35 acres of historic parkland near Wymondham, south Norfolk, offers grand country living at its finest. Selling agents Strutt & Parker in Norwich quote a guide price of £5m for the impressive, partly moated country house.

Today, it's as grand and impressive a place as we've seen all year – particularly with the truly stunning staircase hall.

The first recorded reference to which was in 1249, when Richard Curson, Prior of Wymondham, had his house and chapel there. Stanfield Hall was later home to a succession of gentry owners before passing to various members of the Preston family between 1752 and 1848. It was the Revd George Preston who, in 1792, rebuilt the hall to a design by Norwich master-builder William Wilkin.

Partly constructed of reused monastic stonework and with ceiling beams from 1580, the house has Tudor-style brick elevations, with a magnificent Gothic-style stone staircase hall under a Cumberland slate roof. Bricks for the construction were carted from Holkham, 40 miles away.

The building, which took five years to complete, left Preston in serious debt and, in 1838, Stanfield Hall estate and contents, plus a large quantity of building materials, were offered for auction by James B. Rush on behalf of George’s son Isaac Preston; that same year, Isaac changed his name to Jermy. Ten years later, Stanfield Hall was the scene of a double murder that shocked Victorian Britain.

On the night of November 28 1848, Isaac Jermy left the Hall to take the evening air after a dinner party. He was ambushed and shot by a masked man, who shot Jermy’s son, his wife and a maid. Jermy and his son were killed, and the two women were badly injured.

James Blomfield Rush, who was heavily in debt to Jermy, was arrested, found guilty and hanged at Norwich Castle on April 21, 1849. Special train services were run from London to Norwich for the occasion and Charles Dickens later observed that ‘it was a grand place for a scoundrel’s exit’.

Between 1848 and 1920, Stanfield Hall was owned by the Gwyn family, who sold the 700-acre estate to George Rackham in 1920. The hall was in poor condition after the Second World War until, in 1947, it was acquired by Dr Harold Hudson.

He completely refurbished the house and installed mains electricity in the house and farm buildings before selling to the Stearn family in 1983. In 2004, the Stanfield Hall and estate were offered for sale at £1.5m and subsequently acquired by the present owners.

Approached along an 765-yard-long drive and surrounded by the wooded south Norfolk countryside with no near neighbours, Stanfield Hall offers 15,228sq ft of elegant accommodation on three floors, including, on the ground floor, reception, central and inner halls, and four main reception rooms.

There is also a snug, kitchen and domestic offices, plus an indoor swimming pool, gym, sauna and shower room.

The first floor houses the principal bedroom suite, four double bedrooms with en-suite bathrooms, a further double bedroom and a cinema; there are three more double bedrooms, three bath/shower rooms, a sitting room and a dressing room on the second floor.

Outside, a large terrace leads around the side of the hall to landscaped gardens centred on a pond with kitchen gardens and a tennis court beyond. To the north of the main house are a pretty two-bedroom cottage and a substantial steel outbuilding, alongside field shelters and fenced paddocks. The parkland enjoys a wide variety of mature broadleaf trees.

Stanfield Hall is for sale via Strutt & Parker at a guide price of £5m — see more details and pictures.

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It may shock you to learn that Station House was, indeed, once the home of the local station master.

Built in the late 19th century, the property was next to the railway, which had passenger and freight trains running until 1966, with the line finally closing in 1971.

The unique home is now on the market via Norton-Rickett with a guide price of £1.5 million.

The ethics of the work of Dr Beeching are still being argued over today, but we can at least thank him for this delightful and unusual five-bedroom home on the edge of Nassington, which was fully refurbished in 2010 to create a delightful and secluded family home situated in more than two acres of gardens and grounds.

Although being beautifully fitted out everywhere, the highlight of the interiors has to be the orangery/snug extension, which benefits from triple-aspect views of the gardens and a skylight, and is connected to the farmhouse-style kitchen.

The accommodation is set over three floors with the main living space on the sunken lower ground floor and ground floor. The principal bedroom is also on this level and the four remaining bedrooms set out across the first floor.

Outside, the gardens are mostly set to lawn and contain a detached workshop and a summerhouse, with planning permission granted for a double garage and an office.

Nassington is about six miles from the historic town of Oundle, eight miles from Stamford and 12 miles from Peterborough (where you’ll find rail services to London in under an hour). Within the pretty village is a well-regarded primary school, pub and shop/post office.

The River Nene also flows near to the village meaning there is plenty of pretty countryside and riverside walks to explore.

Station House is currently on the market via Norton-Rickett with a guide price of £1.5 million — see more pictures or enquire with the agent for further details.

Credit: Strutt and Parker

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Archibald Primrose, later 5th Lord Rosebery, reputedly had three aims in life: to marry an heiress, to win the Derby and to become Prime Minister. Archibald — who once lived at The Manor House, which we look at today — managed to achieve all three.

In 1878, he married Hannah de Rothschild, the sole heiress of banker Mayer Amschel de Rothschild, and the wealthiest British heiress of her day. In 1894, he became Prime Minister following Gladstone’s retirement, but resigned a year later.

As a result of his marriage, Rosebery acquired the Mentmore Towers estate and Mentmore stud near Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire, and the Crafton Stud in Buckinghamshire. He went on to win the Derby in 1894, 1895 and 1905, and was a major force in racing for 40 years. His fortune bought him houses in Scotland, Italy and England — among them The Manor House at Postwick, near Norwich, which apparently served as a hunting lodge before the First World War and was eventually sold by the family in 1945.

The classic late-Georgian house, built by Francis Gostling in 1831 — which is, surprisingly, unlisted — is now for sale through the Norwich office of Savills for the first time in more than 40 years. Selling agent Natalie Howlett-Clarke quotes a guide price of £2.2 million for the wonderfully private, 9,284sq ft manor house set in 7½ acres of gardens and grounds, and surrounded by mature woodland.

The house stands close to the medieval church of All Saints on the edge of the village of Postwick (pronounced ‘pozzick’), which sits amid narrow winding lanes in the gentle hills above the River Yare, four miles east of Norwich. The property lies within the Broadland district of Norfolk, which, incidentally, boasts the lowest violent-crime rate in the UK.

During their tenure, the owners have retained the essential Georgian character of the interior, which has been cleverly adapted for modern living, notably in the kitchen with its adjoining dining room, and the elegant drawing room, the focal point of which is an exquisite period fireplace imported from a French château.

There are eight bedrooms and four bathrooms: two of the bedrooms are reached by a separate staircase and could be used as a self-contained wing for guests or family members, or incorporated with the games room below to create an independent holiday let, subject to planning.

Outside, double wrought-iron gates lead to a courtyard with a central island, a large garage, workshops, stores and stabling.

The gardens are mainly laid to lawn, with a terrace around the outer perimeter of the house providing an impressive vantage point from which to view the grounds.

A swimming pool and tennis court are located to the east of the property, well away from the main house.

The Manor House is for sale at £2.2m — see more details and pictures.

Credit: Strutt and Parker

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Credit: Strutt & Parker

Best country houses to rent across Britain

Renting doesn't have to mean compromising on space, style or history.

The Elms at West Pennard is a 19^th century joy in an ancient part of England, sitting as it does close to Glastonbury, Wells and the Isle of Avalon. It’s one of three large Victorian family houses in the village mentioned in British History Online as being built in the Victorian Gothic style and worthy of note. The Wells office of Fine & Country is handling the sale of this fine home, and quotes a guide price of ‘excess £1.75m’.

The Elms, which stands in three-quarters of an acre of mature gardens on the edge of the village, with views over Glastonbury Tor, has been completely renovated by the present owners, who bought it in 2014.

In the past 18 months alone, the house has — deep breath — been re-roofed, rewired, replumbed, had a new central heating system with new radiators and boiler, and windows swapped out for high specification replacements.

For all the work that’s been done, the house still retains such classic Gothic Revival features as stone mullion windows, marble and cast-iron fireplaces, fine plaster cornicing, stained-glass windows and, of course, servants’ bells.

The village of West Pennard itself, which sits halfway between Glastonbury and Shepton Mallet in the Mendip district of Somerset, was granted to Glastonbury Abbey by the king of the Mercians in 681 and was held by the abbey until the Dissolution in 1539.

The village, which lies between Glastonbury Tor to the west and the equally dominant Pennard Hill to the east, takes its name from the Old Welsh for ‘high hill’ — these being something of a rarity in these parts.

Although country house prices in the area are generally less daunting than elsewhere in the county, the village boasts excellent mainstream connections, being 24 miles from Bath, 26 miles from Bristol and eight miles from the cathedral city of Wells.

The Elms at West Pennard is for sale at £1.75m — see more details and pictures.

Credit: Strutt and Parker

Best country houses for sale this week

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

A walk from Glastonbury Tor to Wells Cathedral

Glastonbury Tor and Wells Cathedral have long gazed at each other across the historic Somerset Levels.

Glastonbury, Somerset: The place where the Holy Grail came to Britain

The ancient town of Glastonbury is synonymous without spirituality, mysticism and legend — and it's an unmissable stop-off on our list

12 fascinating facts about Somerset, from to King Arthur’s Avalon to the skeleton at the bottom of Cheddar Gorge

From the watery Levels and mystical Glastonbury Tor to the wild, heathery hills of Exmoor, Somerset is a vast, mainly

The 45ft-long orangery at Whiteways at Whitchurch-on-Thames—only 10 minutes’ walk from Pangbourne and within easy reach of Reading and Oxford—dates from the 1920s and is believed to have been designed by Frank Loughborough Pearson, who designed Truro Cathedral in Cornwall.

It runs all the way along the back of the house, with terracotta floors and four sets of doors opening onto the terrace. The leafy surrounds beyond include a croquet lawn, a koi-carp pond, wildflower meadow and a kitchen garden and the house itself is a Victorian ‘hidden jewel’ with six bedrooms.

It is one of the most important houses in the Thameside village, say agents Singleton & Daughter, who are currently overseeing the sale of Whiteways with a guide price of £2.75 million.

Whiteways is currently on the market via Singleton & Daughter with a guide price of £2.75 million — see more pictures or enquire with the agent for further details. 

Whitchurch-on-Thames: What you need to know

Location: 7 miles Northwest of Reading and just over 20 miles south of Oxford. The nearest train station is located at Pangbourne where fast services run to London Paddington, Oxford and Reading.

Atmosphere: The area is home to many scenic footpaths and bridle tracks as well as two well-regarded pubs (conveniently located within walking distance of the property). The village of Pangbourne is situated just across the river and is home to a number of award-winning shops, a supermarket, restaurants, riverside pubs and a health centre.

Things to do: Explore the surrounding countryside and the river meadows that form this lovely corner of the country. Pangbourne is home to an adventure centre offering climbing and canoeing courses, and there are tennis courts and football pitches in the area to keep the active entertained. Young families will enjoy Beale Wildlife Park and Gardens, and National Trust Property, Basildon Park, is also in the area.

Schools: Pangbourne College, Bradfield College, Downe House, The Oratory and Cranford House are all good options and Whitchurch Primary School is rated 'outstanding' in Ofsted reviews.

See more property for sale in the area.

Credit: Strutt and Parker

Best country houses for sale this week

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

In Cranleigh — famously the largest village in England and within hopping distance of the Surrey Hills AONB — these 4½ leafy acres contain an immense amount of character.

The three wildly unique properties, plus the woodland and gardens are currently on the market via Strutt & Parker at a guide price of £2.25 million.

First, there’s the historical arboretum planted by the grandson of renowned planthunter Robert Fortune.

Sculptures are scattered among mature palm trees, rhododendrons, azaleas and camellias in gardens that are criss-crossed with little paths stretching down to the lake and Tea House.

The main dwelling here is pretty 16th-century Newhouse Farm Cottage, with five bedrooms.

There is also the two-bedroom Inglenook Cottage, with separate access and planning permission for a three-bay garage in place, which overlooks a pretty Victorian pond.

Finally there is a one-bedroom home, The Chalet, which could be used as a studio or home office.

Newhouse Farm Cottage is currently on the market via Strutt & Parker at a guide price of £2.25 million — see more pictures or enquire with the agent for further details. 

Cranleigh: What you need to know

Location: In Surrey, approximately 8 miles southeast of Guildford, near the Surrey Hills Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.

Atmosphere: As the largest village in England, there are a wealth of shops, restaurants and country pubs; an art centre, weekly market and renowned cricket academy.

Things to do: Explore the large village with its range of eclectic and high street shops. Nearby Guildford offers further amenities including several theatres, and is home to fascinating historic buildings and a gloriously cobbled high street. The Cranleigh Cricket Academy is well-renowned, as is The Cranleigh School Equestrian Centre for sporting enthusiasts. The Surrey Hills AONB is perfect for those looking to adventure either on foot, bike or horseback.

Schools: There are some fantastic schools in the area including: Cranleigh School, St Cuthbert Mayne Primary and Guildford High.

See more property for sale in the area.

Credit: Strutt and Parker

Best country houses for sale this week

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

Godden Green House, near Sevenoaks, is a substantial Victorian house for sale through Will Peppitt of Savills with an eye-opening price tag of £10m.

Originally built in the Gothic style for Thomas Usborne in 1879, the house was sold by him to London stockbroker, Francis Forbes, whose daughter, Janet, married the Arts-and-Crafts architect C. R. Ashbee. On her father’s death, the couple moved to Godden Green in 1922.

For Ashbee, the house, with its enormous slate roof, twisted mock-Tudor chimneys and stone porches, was ‘a monstrosity’ and he immediately set out to remodel it, demolishing the roof, chimneys and various arches, and redesigning the windows and much of the interior.

Last seen on the market in 2014, today’s Godden Green House is a handsome country house set in 16¼ acres of lovely parkland grounds, with a swimming pool and pool house set within former walled kitchen gardens, close to the pretty hamlet of Godden Green.

It comes with a self-contained one-bedroom cottage, garaging, garden stores and a greenhouse, with further summerhouses and pavilions laid out around the grounds.

Carefully modernised and refurbished by its present owners, the main house offers 9,200sq ft of well-proportioned accommodation on three floors, including three main reception rooms: a striking drawing room with a wide bay window, an impressive dining room and a double-aspect sitting room.

There is also a study, a charming family room adjoining the kitchen/breakfast room, and various domestic offices.

A splendid guest suite with double doors opening onto the garden completes the ground floor. The first floor houses the principal bedroom suite, comprising a double aspect bedroom, two dressing rooms and a luxurious bathroom.

There are three further en-suite bedrooms on this floor, and a sixth bedroom on the floor above.

Godden Green House is for sale via Savills at £10m — see more details and pictures.

Credit: Strutt and Parker

Best country houses for sale this week

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

Credit: Marshall & Clarke

Best country houses for sale in Kent, from townhouses and mansions to a home atop the White Cliffs of Dover

From a beautiful Tunbridge Wells townhouse to a clifftop home in a stunning location, here's our pic of some of

Set in West Dulwich, within easy reach of both some of the area’s best schools and the shops and restaurants of Dulwich village, this large Victorian home on Lovelace Road is perfect for a family. For sale through Knight Frank at an asking price of £2.25 million, it originally dates from 1899, and has kept intact many period features, from decorative plasterwork to fine fireplaces.

The about 3,500sq ft interiors span three floors. On the ground floor are five reception rooms have six bedrooms, five reception rooms, including a formal drawing room, an elegant dining room and a large, lovely conservatory, as well as the kitchen. There’s scope to extend, too, subject to the usual consents.

The first floor features five well-proportioned bedrooms. A magnificent, vaulted billiard room and one more bedroom take up the top floor.

Outside, the gardens are beautifully landscaped and house a detached triple garage.

This house in Lovelac e Road is for sale at £2.25 million via Knight Frank — see more pictures or enquire with the agent for further details.

West Dulwich: What you need to know

• Location: West Dulwich is about 13 minutes by train to Victoria and nearby Tulse Hill is about 20 minutes to London Bridge
• Atmosphere: First mentioned in 967, the entire Dulwich area is rich in history, although much of the village grew from the 17th century, after Edward Alleynbought the Manor of Dulwich, and even more during the Georgian and Victorian era, when the area became a magnet for wealthy buyers in search of green space. Find out more on Dulwich
• Things to do: Visit the Dulwich Picture Gallery, take a walk in the many local parks, including Dulwich Park and enjoy shopping and entertainment in nearby Dulwich Village
• Schools: The area has huge selection of high-performing schools, including Dulwich College. Find more properties in the area.

Credit: Boomin

The home of Captain Bligh of Mutiny on the Bounty fame is for sale — but safe to say he might not recognise it if he woke up there today...

The notoriously severe naval captain who inspired the most famous mutiny in history — the Mutiny on the Bounty — lived in

South Kensington defies geography. No amount of fiddling with compass and northings can explain why stately Queen’s Gate or the museum-lined expanse of Exhibition Road are labelled as South, yet Young Street, at the same latitude, is bundled with the rest of Kensington. But if the geography is muddled, the identity of this stuccoed slice of London is clear: this is where the Victorians made their mark.

Of course, a village stood here long before Victoria’s Coronation; indeed, more than one — the hamlets of Brompton, clustered around today’s Old Brompton Road, and Little Chelsea, now the handful of streets between Thistle Grove and Redcliffe Gardens. But neither was populous, so nurseries and market gardens took up most of the land.

It’s here that Baroque master George London opened his Brompton Park Nursery in 1689, after having ‘assisted at the Revolution in carrying the then Princess Anne to Nottingham, from the fury of the Papists’, and here that, 100 years later, Quaker apothecary William Curtis moved his botanic garden, after lamenting that ‘the smoke of London... constantly enveloped [his] plants’.

In the 19th century, however, trees and shrubs were increasingly replaced by streets, houses — and even hospitals. A beacon to Victorian charitable spirit, the Royal Brompton Hospital owes its existence to the determination of solicitor Philip Rose, who campaigned tirelessly for it after one of his clerks caught tuberculosis and was denied admission everywhere else in London.

Opened in 1846, after Victoria herself sponsored a fundraising event, the hospital remains a specialist in lung disease, although it’s long moved to nearby Chelsea. The original South Kensington building is now a luxury development, soaring red and turreted above Fulham Road and still catching the eye 175 years after being built.

It’s at the time that the Victorian zest for development really changed South Kensington, peppering it with pretty brick terraces and larger stucco-fronted houses. A mark of the area’s growth was the consecration, on October 22, 1850, of the Church of St Mary, in almond-shaped The Boltons, which became the first parish outside the older (and uglier) Holy Trinity Brompton.

"This stuccoed slice of London is where the Victorians made their mark"

The building, by architect George Godwin, raised eyebrows for its interior arrangement (sadly, long since changed), with The Ecclesiologist writing: ‘We were, we own, not a little scandalised to see a central block of inferior free seats up the middle of the nave.’

The area — which now tops the chart of London’s most expensive addresses — also had strong literary connections: Beatrix Potter, who lived until 1913 in Bolton Gardens; Agatha Christie, who in the 1920s moved to the impossibly pretty 22, Cresswell Gardens, which might have inspired her to write Murder in the Mews; Dame Paddy Ridsdale, Ian Fleming’s secretary during the Second World War and the likely inspiration for Miss Moneypenny.

Another luminary, Carlo Marochetti, lived further east at 32, Onslow Square. The French sculptor, with a penchant for gigantic equestrian statues (his Richard the Lionheart stands in Westminster’s Old Palace Yard), was a favourite of Queen Victoria’s and commissioned to create the main sculpture for the Albert Memorial in Kensington Gardens, but his first attempt was rejected by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott and the French artist died before he had a chance to complete a revision.

John Henry Foley took over the commission and, a mere £130,000 later, the statue was unveiled on March 9, 1876, a gilded, showy tribute to the man who shaped South Kensington in death as much as he did in life. Prince Albert had first put the spotlight on the area with the Great Exhibition and money from that event was used to buy the land that today forms the Exhibition Road’s cultural quarter.

One of the first institutions to open there, in 1857, was the South Kensington Museum, the precursor of both the V&A and the Science Museum.

Almost 25 years later, it was joined by the Natural History Museum, the monumental scale of which, combined with Gothic Revival and Romanesque features, ensured it looked the part of the ‘Cathedral to Nature’ envisaged by the institution’s greatest supporter, Sir Richard Owen.

Originally the natural-history department of the British Museum, it opened to the public in 1881 and was (unusually) free to visitors. ‘Part of the reason for a move was to give far greater access to the public in new galleries, with displays that reflected contemporary scientific understanding,’ explains head of science policy and communication John Jackson.

Albert would have been delighted to see how successful his plan to educate the masses turned out to be, not only thanks to the museums, but also through the central hall he had envisioned as a means to promote technology, science and the Arts: the Royal Albert Hall.

The original aim for the institution, explains archivist Liz Harper, had been to stage everything from opera and concerts to conversations about horticulture, but over time, ‘it surpassed anything they could have imagined: now, there are more events than there are days in the year’. Indoor marathons (in 1909), mass baptisms (in the 1920s and 1930s), séances (not least the one held by Arthur Conan Doyle’s family in 1930) and even sumo wrestling have all been staged at the hall.

"It feels as if there’s a special energy here and everyone is trying to explore the world"

‘The sumo was quite funny: lots of guests turned out in their finest outfits to find the seats were blue cushions surrounding the ring; plus, because of the sheer size [of the competitors], they had to weight-test all the facilities, including the loo seats,’ recalls Miss Harper.

Such a rich history has propelled South Kensington’s culture quarter to fame, but the area still plays a key part in local life: the Natural History Museum’s garden is a quiet place for families to escape, the Science Museum doubles up as indoor playground, the V&A is as valued for afternoon tea as for its collections and the Royal Albert Hall hosts the graduation ceremony for students of Imperial College.

The Exhibition Road institutions also put on an annual festival — one of the many occasions in which they join forces. ‘There’s lots of collaborative work,’ says Miss Harper. ‘It feels as if there’s a special energy here and everyone is trying to explore and understand the world.’ This, 160 years after his death, is perhaps Prince Albert’s greatest legacy — and South Kensington’s greatest charm.

At home in South Kensington

Courtfield Gardens, £3.195 million

This lateral apartment sits on the first floor of a period building overlooking a private garden square (to which the new owners will gain access). It has a large living room and a magnificent kitchen and dining area, complete with panoramic balconies. Two double bedrooms occupy the rear of the property, which spans 1,574sq ft. Winkworth

Queen’s Gate, £3.95 million

Set on the first and second floor of an imposing building, this pristine 1,949sq ft apartment has four bedrooms (three of which are on the second floor, including an especially large one), a contemporary kitchen with Gaggenau appliances and an impressive reception room with an 11ft 9in ceiling and full-height French windows that open onto a pretty balcony. Chestertons

Roland Gardens, £2.6 million

Spanning the top two floors of a period building, this 1,504sq ft apartment has three bedrooms on the third floor (one opening onto a delightful private balcony) and a vast open-plan kitchen and living room upstairs, plus a study that could double up as fourth bedroom. There’s also a south-west-facing terrace that looks out across the rooftops. Marsh & Parsons

Little black book

The Anglesea Arms Perfect for people watching, according to Henry Synge of Winkworth (15, Selwood Terrace, SW7) A favourite of Chestertons’ Jack Osmond, this Spanish restaurant is a local institution (163, Old Brompton Road, SW5) www.angleseaarms.com Cambio de Tercio A favourite of Chestertons’ Jack Osmond, this Spanish restaurant is a local institution (163, Old Brompton Road, SW5) www.cambiodetercio.co.uk The Science Museum’s shop The place to source gifts for curious children (Exhibition Road, SW7) shop.sciencemuseum.org.uk Maitre Choux This patisserie’s éclairs rival France’s best (15, Harrington Road, SW7) www.maitrechoux.com Macellaio Edward Bensted of Marsh & Parsons loves this butcher’s ‘rustic, gargantuan steaks’ (84, Old Brompton Road, SW7) www.macellaiorc.com

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Hackney's journey from bucolic open space to one of London's great melting pots: 'It's the friendliest place I know in London'

Over the centuries Hackney has morphed from a land of gardens and streams to a vibrant, artsy and welcoming community,

Property in the country still soaring as London lags behind, but are cities fighting back?

The big story in the property markets over the past year has been the shift from city to country. Will

What do you think of when you picture your dream home in your mind? High ceilings, lots of space and a prime location? Maybe on days when you're feeling whimsical you imagine living in a converted church with stain-glass windows, or in a house with its own home gym and spa facilities.

Whatever your fantasy, it's a safe bet that you never pictured living in a converted Victorian Turkish bathhouse with a bowling alley in the kitchen, a cinema room with a wall-length sofa and a healthy dash of carnival decor.

Luckily for us, one person did, and that is why The Bath House in St. Leonards-On-Sea exists. It came to the market a couple of years ago, but appears not to have found a buyer; and we think it's fair to say that it's probably because they might have to wait a little while for just the right person to come along for a home like this...

Surprisingly for a house which has lived so many lives (from the Victorian bathhouse which gave it its name, to a school swimming house and a glass factory), there is nothing to suggest that The Bath House does not have all of the attributes one looks for in a four-bedroom family home.

An open-plan living room and kitchen open out from the main hall through a lively corridor, with a plethora of natural wood and high ceilings, benefiting from several skylights.

Space is ample, divided into separate areas for cooking and relaxing, with a large dining table sitting under a mezzanine floor in the middle of the room.

A full-length functioning bowling lane runs along the side of the social space, with a light-up clown's face peering down at you while you aim at the pins. This is going to be divisive, let's face it: some people will love the kitsch appeal of a feature like this; others will have nightmares for weeks.

The sense of fun continues arcade games surrounding the office space dotted throughout the room.

The kitchen is, in a word, wonderful: driftwood cupboards blend (we won't say seamlessly) with polished concrete worktops and a diner-like set of lockers... We say 'diner-like'... you could equally picture these having been lifted from a WWII-era military prison.

The mezzanine floor is another world, sitting calmly above the organised chaos and decorated in neutral tones, a place to sit, read and listen to the pins tumbling down below.

Also on the ground floor are two of the bedrooms, sitting either side of the entrance hall and accompanied by a bathroom and a shower room. The exposed brick, wooden floorboards and the bathroom tiles reminiscent of Spain are absolutely charming – it's safe to say that the cross motif and burlesque signs are a matter of taste.

The master bedroom sits above the rest of the house, with a polished metal bath tub next to the bed, a beautiful stained-glass door leading to the landing and views of the seaside from the many windows.

A stone's throw from the sea, the property is ideally located to access the many bars, restaurants and galleries which the St Leonard's seafront have to offer.

Less than half a mile away is the mainline station which leads into London Charing Cross and London Bridge, and across the road the St Leonard's gardens provide a green haven away from all the excitement, should the new owner need it.

So, what would you do? Strip it back to it's wooden floorboards and Victorian brick and start over, or maintain one of the most unique houses we've seen here at Country Life this (or any) year? The option lies with the next owner of The Bath House.

Of course, they may decide, as others have before, to completely change the purpose of the building once more. Is St. Leonards-On-Sea in need of a new tea house?

The Bath House is on the market with Platform Property via OnTheMarket.com for £1.5 million. For more more information and images, click here. 

Bathtub in the bedroom: Should you try it at home?

Arabella Youens examines the growing trend for baths in bedrooms.

Credit: Cathpole & Rye

The joys of a shower which offers a touch of luxury and theatre on a daily basis

A beautiful bathtub is a splendid feature for any bathroom, but given how often you use the shower it makes

Credit: Strutt & Parker

Five country homes with breathtaking sea views, from the top of Scotland all the way to South Cornwall

Stretching from the top of Scotland right down to the tip of Cornwall, these wonderful properties boast some of the

Feeling brave? Six beautiful fixer-uppers with extraordinary potential

A serious amount of work will be needed on any of these places – but it'll all be worth it in

The first house built on the island given to Lord Nelson after the Battle of the Nile, with a heated swimming pool and a 90ft mooring

Sphinx, one house of a small community built on Pharoah's Island, is set on half an acre of land and

It's not often that the inside of a home creates such a contrast with its exterior as in the case of The Old School Works, in the Bedfordshire village of Aspley Guise, near Woburn. The house was once the old village school: built in 1847, it existed as a school until 1940 and was used as a shelter for children from the local area during World War Two, after which it became an engineering factory before being exquisitely (if not painstakingly) renovated in 2008.

The six year project transformed this well-used building, steeped in history with period features and original stonework, into a unique and spacious home which is now on the market with Michael Graham for £1,875,000.

The Grade II-listed, four bed, three bathroom home sits in a 0.36 acre rural setting, surrounded by paddocks, woodland and open countryside. The main house is comprised of 4,600 sq ft of adaptable living space with a show-stopping 52 ft open plan living/dining area which is flooded with natural light, emphasised by tall ceilings and restored mullioned stone windows.

A traditional sandstone fireplace in the sitting area contrasts beautifully with the steel and glass showstopper staircase that leads to a snug / TV room on the mezzanine floor.

The kitchen/breakfast room is designed to ensure a natural, balanced flow throughout the downstairs space, perfect for families and entertaining as it opens onto a private rear courtyard and comes with further planning permission for an orangery if desired.

The kitchen is a perfect example of old blending with new, using traditional materials such as oak units and granite surfaces in a contemporary style with a multitude of high-tech appliances hidden behind for a clean finish.

Upstairs in the newer part of the house is the master bedroom, which boasts exposed beams and a vaulted ceiling, with an en-suite bathroom (complete with a free standing bath) and dressing area. The three other bedrooms are located in the old school teachers' area of the property and can be accessed via a separate front door.

Two are on the ground floor with views out onto the garden and the other is an en-suite on the first floor with windows either end to the room to allow for as much natural light as possible. There's also a 480 sq ft self-contained annexe, suitable as guest accommodation, a small granny flat or maybe even a home office.

The Old School Works is for sale at £1,875,000 via Michael Graham — see more pictures or enquire with the agent for further details.

Aspley Guise: What you need to know

Location: Located in West Bedfordshire. 11 miles from Milton Keynes and 2 miles from Junction 13 on the M1.

Atmosphere: An attractive, rural village with a Thai restaurant and gastro pub. 1.5 miles from Woburn Sands which has a range of shops and amenities.

Things to do: Situated perfectly within rural countryside but close to shops and amenities, not least the famous Woburn Safari Park. Golfers are well catered for: the Aspley Guise & Woburn Sands Golf course is close by, while the world-renowned Woburn club is a short drive away. Milton Keynes is also situated nearby, home to one of Europe's largest indoor covered shopping areas, indoor skiiing and fast rail links to London.

Schools: Aspley Guise has its own primary school, Ofsted-rated as outstanding.

Find more property in Aspley Guise

Credit: Strutt and Parker

Best country houses for sale this week

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

Greyfriars in Dunwich, Saxmundham, sits in an enviable cliff top position with gardens extending all the way to the coastline.

The seven-bedroom Victorian home in one of Suffolk’s quieter coastal villages is listed with Strutt & Parker with a guide price of £1,950,000. 

With red brick elevations and magnificent chimneys, the property's period features include high ceilings, large sash windows, carved wooden fireplace surrounds, intricate ceiling plasterwork and wooden parquet flooring.

The two main reception rooms are the substantial drawing and dining rooms, both of which have floor-to-ceiling bay windows.

On the first floor there is a library and two double bedrooms, both of which are ensuite and feature south-facing sash bay windows looking out across the gardens, grounds and the sea beyond.

To the western wing and accessed by a separate staircase is the annexe. This comprises of a sitting room, kitchen, double bedroom and shower room.

The front of the property is approached via a tree-lined driveway, with ample parking and turning space.

To the rear of the house is a covered veranda with over-hanging wisteria, wooden columns and shaded paved seating, leading down to the more formal garden.

Mature trees, box-hedging and a variety of palm trees grow to the rear of the property. The six-acre gardens extend through a meadow, to an open field which leads directly to the cliff above the beach.

A summer house provides the perfect vantage point for enjoying the sea views.

Dunwich, Saxmundham: What you need to know

• Location: The popular coastal town of Southwold is nine miles to the north and has a wide range of shops as well as pubs and restaurants. Darsham Station is four miles to the west and offers branch line services via Ipswich to London Liverpool Street Station. The house is 92 miles north-east of London.
• Culture: Dunwich sits within the Suffolk Coast & Heaths Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. Once an important Anglo-Saxon port, it is now a small, picturesque village with a smuggling past and thriving pub.
• Things to do: The area provides ample opportunities for walking. Ramblers can follow the Suffolk Coastal Path towards the RSPB Minsmere Reserve, Walberswick and Southwold, as well as Dunwich Heath.

Greyfriars in Dunwich, Saxmundham, is for sale with Strutt & Parker with a guide price of £1,950,000 — find more houses in the area

Credit: Watt & Morgan

A charming period property in a rural Welsh village, yet with city, seaside and airport all in easy reach

The Old Vicarage combines elegant interiors with lush grounds in a rural village within easy reach of Cardiff International Airport.

A 15th-century farmhouse complete with Tudor barn and equestrian facilities

Penny Churchill shares details of this pristine country estate in Hampshire.

This magnificent edition was first published in 2019, but is now being reprinted by popular demand. 

It contains 120 pages of glorious photography and superb explanations of the history and context of these buildings.

'Country Life has played a crucial role in the popular revival of interest in Victorian architecture,' explains editor Mark Hedges. 'This magnificent collector’s edition illustrates the astonishing variety, interest and quality of Victorian buildings.' 

'Victorian Houses: Masterpieces of 19th century architecture' is available from all good newsagents and other retailers including Waitrose, WHSmith, Tesco and Sainsbury's, priced at £9.99. 

Should you have trouble finding a copy, you can purchase Country Life's Victorian Houses: The Masterpieces directly from www.magazinesdirect.com and have it sent to your home.

Below, John Goodall talks through some of the houses featured in the articles, and why he has chosen them.

This year is the 200th anniversary of the birth of both Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, respectively in May and August, 1819. Their marriage 21 years later in 1840 was long arranged and, after a difficult beginning, grew to be unexpectedly happy. With perfect symmetry, it lasted 21 years, until Prince Albert’s early death in 1861.

During that time, the couple established a completely new mode of Royal Family life and redefined the role of Britain’s constitutional monarchy. All of this happened as Britain developed at an astonishing speed into the most powerful nation in the world. When the Queen died in 1901, there was no question that a remarkable age of British history had come to a close.

First published in 1897, Country Life is itself a late-Victorian institution. What could be more appropriate, therefore, than to celebrate this anniversary with a collector’s issue of articles and photographs from the magazine’s archives?

An opening timeline offers an overview of the Victorian Age, but the focus of what follows is exclusively architectural. The coverage of country houses has always been central to the magazine, but it can also claim to have been a pioneer in the study of Victorian architecture through the work of two former Architectural Editors, Mark Girouard and Michael Hall. Their labours, and other writers for the magazine, notably the late Gavin Stamp, have played no small role in the modern revival of interest in Victorian buildings.

The articles presented in the supplement were all published since I became Architectural Editor and I have taken the opportunity of expanding them with additional illustrations. Every week, Country Life commissions photography of the highest quality to illustrate its architectural pages. For reasons of space, however, there are often outstanding photo-graphs that are never published. It is a great pleasure, therefore, to have the opportunity to reproduce several images that have not been published before.

In addition, I have chosen to punctuate the pages with a series of photographs in black and white taken from the unfailingly fascinating archive of the magazine. These compelling images show the Victorian world through Victorian eyes.

Three of the expanded articles reproduced here deal specifically with the architectural legacy of Prince Albert. In 1841, he was appointed chair of the Fine Arts Commission responsible for the redecoration of the Palace of Westminster, the interiors of which are illustrated in an introductory photographic essay.

He went on to organise the Great Exhibition of 1851 and then to oversee work to two family houses: the seaside villa at Osborne on the Isle of Wight and Balmoral in the Highland. Both were important places of retreat and helped to popularise, respectively, the Italian Renaissance and Scottish Baronial styles.

The bulk of the articles, however, illustrate the development of the Victorian country house. Throughout the 19th century, these grew inexorably in size to accommodate large house parties and assumed historic styles, such as the Tudor at Highclere or Harlaxton or Gothic at Cardiff. The British indulged in similar fantasies abroad, represented here by Monserrate in Portugal.

By the end of the 1800s however, there was a reaction against these spectacular creations. Under the influence of the Arts-and-Crafts Movement, country houses such as Standen began to grow smaller and lifestyles to assume a degree of relative informality. It also became popular to restore historic buildings rather than merely revive their styles. The advent of the motorcar in 1895 further accelerated these changes. Finally, the selection of articles represents, in St Pancras and Keble College, Oxford, examples of industrial and institutional Victorian architecture.

This collector’s issue makes no claim to completeness, but it is hoped readers will find reflected here a sense of the ambition, interest and quality of the Victorian architectural achievement. Britain would not be the same without it.

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Credit: Will Pryce/©Country Life Picture Library

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How do you balance out your competing desires for grandeur and cosiness?

It's a question that has occupied most property buyers at some stage. High ceilings and stone floors offer plenty of wow factor, but smaller rooms with lower ceilings, carpets and real fires flickering in a corner are far cosier. Some of us will prefer the former, others will lead towards the latter. And somewhere between the extremes, we each try to find a place which satisfies our own sensibilities.

For those who lean more towards grandeur, a house is currently on the market in Gloucester which is just about as grand as they come, certainly at this price bracket. Hillfield House is for sale with Charles Lear & Co via OnTheMarket at £1.6 million, an incredibly impressive Victorian building where the main hall alone will convince the right buyer to pull out the cheque book.

This Grade II-listed building, in the Wotton area just north of Gloucester's centre, was built in the 1860s and is filled with period touches, from the fireplaces and ornate cornicing to stone pillars and the extraordinary stained glass windows.

The reception hall, more than 30ft long and 20ft across, has a chessboard stone floor, and as you can see from the pictures here is big enough to swallow a grand piano — and make it look small as it does so.

Just as grand is the first floor, accessed by a stone staircase, lit from a skylight above and ringed by an ironwork balustrade that looks out onto the space below. All your fantasies of hosting a Bridgerton-style ball can finally be fulfilled.

For all this grandeur, the living rooms themselves do offer cosier, more intimate nooks. Off the main hallway and the corridor beyond are a drawing room, sitting room, study, kitchen-breakfast room and seemingly-endless series of reception rooms.

Hillfield House was once used as an office for the local Trading Standards; rooms that were once full of desks and filing cabinets are now full of soft furnishings and bookshelves.

Above are nine bedrooms — eight on the first floor, and one in the tower above, the latter just off a winding staircase which leads up to a tower room that has views across the city.

The master bedroom has a dressing room and an en-suite with a free-standing bath, while elsewhere on the first floor is a games room big enough to take a pool table. That's if you can resist the urge to put a full-size snooker table in that astonishing main hall, of course...

Add in the string of cellars below and there's over 12,500 sq ft of space on offer in a building that also has lovely gardens, yet is still within easy reach of the city centre and the railway station.

As big a home as this is, there's even scope to make it bigger: the agents note that more accommodation could be built in the grounds, subject to permission from the authorities.

Hillfield House is for sale with Charles Lear via OnTheMarket at £1.6 million — see more details and pictures here or enquire with the agent.

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Credit: Alamy

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It is a charming, but disconcerting anomaly that the Earl of Rosebery lives at Dalmeny House in West Lothian, whereas his son Lord Dalmeny lives at Rosebery House in Midlothian. The Rosebery estate, although not continuously owned by the family, was acquired in the 17th century as an augmentation of the Roseberys’ original land holding nearby at Carrington. Then called Clerkington, it was bought in 1695 by Archibald Primrose (1664–1723), Commissioner for the county of Edinburgh to the Scottish Parliament, who changed the name to Rosebery after Roseberry Topping, a hill in Yorkshire.

It was from this that he took his title when he was created a viscount in 1700 and 1st Earl of Rosebery in the Scottish peerage in 1703, in honour of his heiress wife, Dorothea Cressy, who owned land near Wetherby in the North Riding.

By acquiring Clerkington, the 1st Earl was emphasising the origins of his family in Midlothian. This was before the acquisition of the baronies of Barnbougle and Dalmeny on the shore of the Firth of Forth near Edinburgh, which, in turn, became the main family seat in the 18th and 19th centuries.

The property was alienated by James, the 2nd Earl of Rosebery, in 1749, a spendthrift who wasted the family lands and fortune, but it was re-acquired after a gap of 70 years in 1821 by Archibald, the 4th Earl, a more prudent and financially astute man. To emphasise the restored connection, when he was given a UK peerage in 1828, Archibald took the title Lord Rosebery of Rosebery.

Despite this, the house at Rosebery is not a large historic seat, but a relatively simple late-Georgian house. The Buildings of Scotland: Lothian describes it as ‘nondescript’. It is, however, of considerable interest on three counts: for the remains of 17th-century Clerkington House; for the improved estate with rule-straight roads, plantings of beech and a wonderful farmsteading opposite the entrance gate; and, not least, for its associations with the Victorian prime minister 5th Earl of Rosebery.

He commissioned several unexecuted plans for a grand Baronial house at Rosebery and built the handsome Gothic Revival Episcopalian chapel in the policies. When eligible for the traditional earldom after being prime minister, he added Midlothian to Rosebery. His RM monogram is inscribed on the keystone of the front door under a carved panel of his arms.

Today, the Rosebery estate is the property of the current Lord Dalmeny, UK chairman of Sotheby’s, and has been since he came of age in 1988. Following his marriage to Caroline (Daglish) in 1994, he revived the house and gardens and it remains his Scottish home, where he and his five children spend holidays and weekends. The steading has been restored over the past two years and converted for holiday and corporate letting.

The 17th-century house that was bought by the 1st Earl was U-shaped in plan and stood to the south-east of the present house. Part-demolished in about 1804–12, the ruins lasted into the 20th century and the foundations can still be traced under the lawn. The house overlooked a rectangular forecourt and was the centrepiece of an ambitious formal garden layout in Franco-Dutch style created by Robert Hepburn I (1698–1756), a lawyer and Commissioner of Customs, after he bought the estate from the 2nd Earl of Rosebery in 1749. This layout incorporated axial lime avenues to the north, south and east.

The north avenue was the main approach and the vanished entrance there is still marked by a solitary, Georgian, stone-built lodge. This was originally one of a pair, but its twin has disappeared. It is not known who designed the lodges and avenues, but the latter appear on John Laurie’s 1766 map A Plan of Edinburgh and Places Adjacent.

The surviving lodge was converted to a library in about 1900 by the bookish 5th Earl, who kept specialist collections of books in his different houses and enhanced its historic interest by incorporating a salvaged 17th-century carved-stone doorway from old Clerkington House. Sydney Mitchell (1856–1930) the Edinburgh Arts-and-Crafts architect who produced designs for a completely new house at Rosebery, was probably responsible for this sensitive restoration work.

He was a pupil of Rowand Anderson and specialised in the Scottish Baronial style, working officially for the Commercial Bank of Scotland and the Board of Lunacy for Scotland. He was influenced by William Morris and designed country houses and social tenement schemes, such as Well Court in the Old Town, as well as restoring the Edinburgh Mercat Cross. He practised in partnership with George Wilson, a fellow pupil of Anderson’s, and his sensitive architecture and respect for old buildings obviously appealed to the historically minded Rosebery.

Mitchell was not the only architect to present designs for a new house at Rosebery. Over a period of 50 years between 1867 and 1915, the 5th Earl commissioned no fewer than eight remodelling proposals in styles that transmuted from full Scotch Baronial to neo-Georgian. The first of these was drawn up by the fashionable Edinburgh firm Wardrop & Reid, which proposed a Scottish tower house, with a stone cartwheel main staircase and asymmetrical wings. The plans included a billiards room, business room and dining room on the ground floor, a large drawing room on the first floor and numerous bedrooms for family and guests there and on upper floors.

Wardrop & Reid designed an even larger house in 1880, more like a French château, symmetrical, with mansard roofs. The same year, the practice produced an intriguing English Classical alternative in the style of Ashdown in Berkshire, the central block copying that doll’s-house-like Carolean house, magnified with symmetrical matching wings. It was presumably deemed to be not Scottish enough. Instead, Wardrop & Reid was diverted to the reconstruction of Barnbougle Castle on the Dalmeny estate and Lord Rosebery changed architectural horses, transferring his patronage to Mitchell and George Wilson in 1894.

They produced a relatively modest project, keeping the Georgian shooting lodge for service accommodation and adding the inevitable Scotch tower, as well as a compact wing with a two-storeyed hall, large dining room, smoking room, morning room and business room for the owner. There was no drawing room, the hall serving as a general sitting room.

This plan, which was devised after the death in 1890 of Rosebery’s wife, Hannah, has something of a Victorian bachelor air about it, intended for shooting parties. Any thought that Lord Rosebery was holding back, however, is belied by the grandiose project he commissioned in 1907 from Mitchell and Wilson for a very large house on a completely new site on the estate in full-blown Baronial tenor, with bartizans, pepper pots and corner towers and a stone crown of St Giles’s Kirk derivation on the central square entrance tower. Most astonishingly, the ground plan, with the office courts, formed the letter R for Rosebery, like an Elizabethan architectural conceit by John Thorpe.

This fantasy exhausted Lord Rosebery’s architectural ambitions. The sixth and last scheme in 1915 was for a neo-Georgian enlargement of the house with a new wing of main rooms and a ‘Glass Room’ to the south. Only the latter and a modest enlargement of the entrance front with a new entrance hall and dining room were carried out, rather an anti-climax in the circumstances.

The long Glass Room, not quite a conservatory as it is of masonry with 13 large windows rather than being fully glazed, faces south and is a much appreciated amenity in the Scottish summer — indeed, in spring and autumn, too. Mitchell’s design for the garden was carried out in 1910 and a new Episcopalian chapel in Gothic Revival style was built to the east of the garden in a walled enclosure approached through wrought-iron gates. The date 1913 is marked on the iron door handles. The interior has fine ashlar walls and a timber barrel-vaulted roof borne on an elaborately carved timber cornice.

Unpretentious Rosebery House survived as a Georgian shooting lodge with two-storeyed ranges around a court, the main rooms to the east, the Glass Room to the south and the kitchen offices on the north side. It was built by Robert Hepburn III in 1805 after the demolition of old Clerkington House, according to The New Statistical Account of Scotland, Volume I (1845), of rubble stone with ashlar dressings, including quoins, architraves and sash windows. There is a canted bay at the south end of the main east wing, lighting the drawing room.

As remodelled by the 5th Earl, the compact main rooms comprised a dining room, a study or sitting room, library and drawing room with bedrooms above, all with simple plaster cornices and marble chimneypieces, plus a staircase with cast-iron bannisters. Hepburn, an Advocate as his father and grandfather had been, had married Catherine, granddaughter of the 5th Earl of Balcarres in 1800. His father was a friend of James Boswell from Edinburgh University days and his mother gave her name to the traditional tune Mrs Hepburn of Clerkington’s Reel. After three generations and energetic agricultural improvements, the Hepburns sold the estate back to the Roseberys, who changed the name back to Rosebery from Clerkington.

Architecturally more interesting than the main house is Rosebery Steading, the model farm also built in about 1805. It is a perfect example of its type, the symmetrical front in semi-Gothic style with central entrance and incorporating a farmhouse, dovecote and clock tower with octagonal spire on top, flanked by castellated walls and end pavilions. All this formed an eye-catcher opposite the new gateway to the house, which frames it with its Gothic gateposts topped with obelisk-like pinnacles inspired by 17th-century Moray House in Edinburgh. The court with additional farm buildings to the rear was added by the 4th Earl of Rosebery in 1855.

This wonderful building has been fully revived, the work being completed this year, with later utilitarian accretions removed and the stonework and windows restored. The interior of the steading has been adapted for commercial and residential uses, including the turbine hall installed by the 5th Earl to produce electricity for the estate that also forms a large reception room. The architects for the recent works were Pollock Hammond and the builders Lock Contracting.

The restoration of the steading completes a programme of works over the past 20 years. Rosebery House had been let before Lord Dalmeny took it on and required structural repair and refurbishment, as well as refurnishing and decoration. The aim has been to maintain the understated character of a shooting lodge, with the odd flourish. The west garden outside the drawing room windows has been replanted as a geometrical parterre of lawn, topiary and low box hedging and the Glass Room has been enhanced with painted murals on a warm stone ground.

Rosebery House, although not an architectural masterpiece, is of more than usual fascination on account of its history, what has gone or was never built at all and its present condition. It is one of a group of old buildings of great charm, in a beautiful setting: house, lodge, chapel, Steading, garden, gateposts and ancient avenues add up to a whole that is more than the sum of its parts.

Barnbougle Castle: A book-filled haven in Edinburgh where the water laps up to the garden’s edge

The waterside retreat of the Earl of Rosebery & Midlothian — a celebrated Victorian politician, sportsman, antiquarian and bibliophile —

Credit: Paul Highnam/Country Life Pictur

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In Northumberland, successful Victorian industrialists chose the towns and villages of the scenic Tyne Valley as the setting for many of their most impressive country homes. The ancient village of Corbridge — where Springfield House is for sale — sits on the banks of the Tyne, four miles east of Hexham and 16 miles west of Newcastle, was known to the Romans as Coria, the most northerly town in the empire.

Here, in 676, Saint Wilfrid, the founder of Hexham Abbey, is supposed to have built the village church of St Andrew, using stone taken from Hadrian’s Wall. And here, in the 19th century, a number of grand Victorian houses were built to house successful businessmen looking to commute to Newcastle following the arrival of the railway in 1838.

Such a house is Springfield House in exclusive Spoutwell Lane, Corbridge, now on the market through Finest Properties at a guide price of ‘offers over £5m’.

Built in 1874 and recently renovated to 21st-century standards of layout and comfort, the striking Victorian house stands in 2.8 acres of manicured gardens and woodland with views over open countryside.

The accommodation — an impressive mix of classic and contemporary design — includes five reception rooms, six bedrooms and seven bathrooms.

Contrasting with the period features of the elegant reception rooms is the dramatic open-plan kitchen, dining and family room, which is the real heart of the house.

Approached through a private pillared gateway with secure electronic gates, Springfield House comes with a detached, 8,100sq ft garage, an all-weather tennis court and zip-wire.

There is one more highlight, and it’s the pièce-de-résistance: an impressive twin tree-house erected by the builders of the famous tree-house in the gardens of Alnwick Castle.

The agents describe the house as 'a home that is expansive yet warm and inviting' and that is something well worth mentioning: it's clearly a home designed and fitted out with entertaining guests in mind. The cinema and games room has a bar with a real ale hand-pump for pulling pints of proper draught beer, and the beautiful wine cellar suggests a real love of the good stuff.

Springfield House is for sale via Finest Properties for offers over £5m — see more pictures and details.

Credit: Strutt and Parker

Best country houses for sale this week

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

Some days, there's just no point messing about with niceties when talking about properties. Today is one of those days, for the home on this page is completely bonkers.

Brilliant, yes. But crackers. If ever there was a home to put a smile of wonder and joy on your face, it's this one.

In the unlikely event that you haven't already scrolled down the page for evidence of what we're talking about, the property in question is a pair of magnificently beautiful Victorian water towers for sale with Heritage via OnTheMarket in the town of Halstead, a few miles east of Colchester, and on the road up to Bury St Edmunds.

The older of the towers was built in the middle of the 19th century, with the second, larger tower added in 1888, originally to supply a local yarn factory. Both are wonderful examples of that great Victorian quality of making the functional beautiful.

The towers' days of hard labour have long gone, but their conversion into a home — effectively split between a four bedroom main tower and the two bedroom tower annexe — has been done in quite breathtaking style. Which we mean literally: some of these images made us gasp.

The heavily-themed rooms are reminiscent of a quirky restaurant rather than a family home, yet the whole thing has been done with such great panache and sense of fun that it's hard not to grin. After all, how many people do you know who'd have giant 'WIZARD OF OZ' lettering installed in an otherwise spacious and comfortable living room?

The fun starts from the off, as you enter the tower to find a huge hall with a vintage motorbike, grand piano and a Wurlitzer jukebox in one corner. There are vintage advertising signs, film posters, antiques, modern furniture and perhaps the largest cheese plant we've ever seen outside an RHS greenhouse.

As you go up via one of the two staircases — one 'normal', the other a secret, hidden spiral staircase with direct access to the 5th floor — the fun continues. There's a Wizard of Oz room, a Les Miserables room (which is the fifth-floor atrium) and a huge kitchen-diner with extravagant purple lighting that gives it a 1950s American diner vibe.

That said, the owners' clear love for kitsch clearly doesn't mean they have no common sense: while the living spaces are reminiscent of Tom Hanks's apartment in Big, the bedrooms are a little calmer.

There is a virtual tour available from agents Heritage and it's well worth a look for the things that you wouldn't otherwise see: a 1950s Coca Cola machine, antique clocks and barometers lining the walls of the stairs, and so on. You can also take a look at the view from the roof, which looks out across the town to one side and across to fields and trees on the other.

The smaller tower is a two storey building with an open plan living space downstairs (which includes a glazed panel peering into the 300ft well fed by the River Colne), while upstairs the bedroom still has some of the original pipework remaining from when the tower was still in use.

Outside, there's a double garage, garden, patio and a pizza oven within the gated plot which the towers sit on.

There's no price on the house — how could there be, really? — but you'll be looking into seven-figure territory. The big questions, though, will surely be over the fixtures and fittings. After all, once you've seen a hallway with an immaculate vintage Norton parked in it, can you really go back to a motorbike-free living space?

For sale with Heritage Estate Agents via OnTheMarket — see more details and pictures.

Credit: Dylan Thomas

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Growing your own food is one of life’s little pleasures, and something which more people are bound to be looking into once the world gets back to normal again. However, it’s an undertaking, which requires a decent amount of arable space, or at least a vegetable garden.

The Coach House, near Bury St Edmunds, is currently on the market with Bedfords at the cool price of £569,950. For that sum, you get a gorgeous Victorian home (which unsurprisingly used to be an old coach house) with three bedrooms, two bathrooms and a gorgeous open place space on the ground floor. For an old property, The Coach House has a remarkable amount of natural light, due to its sympathetic updating and a good deal of feature windows.

A cosy conservatory leads out from the reception hall and wraps cosily around the house, offering beautiful views of the garden from two aspects.

The crowning jewel of The Coach House’s property is without a doubt the spectacular Grade II-listed ‘crinkle-crankle’ wall. Accessed via a wrought-iron gate, the walled garden measures some 135ft by 90ft, with the wall 8ft high.

The garden is criss-crossed by walkways, which separate miniature wildflower meadows, and young trees. Thankfully, it’s still as practical as it was the day it was built, and will serve the next family who owns it extremely well.

Tostock is a wonderful village in Bury St Edmunds, with all the features (pub, village hall and green), which make villages a lovely place to live. Nearby, there’s even a Co-Op. Exciting stuff.

Stowmarket is also very easy to get to, linking The Coach House to London Liverpool Street via Ipswich.

The Coach House near Bury St Edmunds is on the market with Bedfords at a guide price of £569,950. Click here for more information and images.

Credit: Franklin&Franklin

A converted university building becomes a Hampstead mansion, with a price tag to match

The Chapel at the Hampstead Estate is a gorgeous restoration project, completed to the highest standard. Alexandra Fraser takes a

Credit: Fine & Country

An absolutely idyllic stone farmhouse, buried in the Caldbeck Fells of the Lake District

Claybottom Farm is exactly as it should be, with a price tag that reflects the love and care which has

Credit: On The Market

Picture-perfect country cottage with a dreamy English country garden

Church Cottage is the idyllic countryside family home for everyone, including Alexandra Fraser, who takes a look at its many

Credit: Sowerbys

A curiously-shaped country cottage in East Anglia, with a beautiful orchard and a scandalous history

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If you’re looking for a tucked-away property with beautiful landscaped gardens, Old School House, on the edge of the pleasant mid-Cheshire village of Spurstow, looks to tick all those boxes — and is filled with charming, original touches and clever ideas.

The house comes with separate front and rear drives, delightful gardens, paddock and woodland — 1.8 acres in all, in a location five miles from Tarporley and 15 from Chester. It’s for sale through Jackson-Stops and Savills at a guide price of £1.25 million.

Inside, Old School House offers 3,165sq ft of accommodation, including an impressive open-plan drawing room and dining area — a space that was the hall of the former school itself.

Up the stairs and above the hall area is an incredibly neat idea: cinema seats attached to the walls, with a screen which comes down within the beams of the ceiling. It's a strikingly beautiful and clever way to turn what might have been merely a highly-ornate landing into a knockout feature.

There is also study, snug, four bedrooms and three bath/shower rooms, all with original features (not least the beautiful ceiling timbers) incorporated into the design wherever possible.

The house was built in 1872, by Nantwich-based architect Thomas Bower, in the Greek Revivalist style for Hungerford Crewe, 3rd Baron Crewe.

Having inherited the Jacobean Crewe Hall and large estates in Cheshire, Staffordshire and Leicestershire in 1835, Lord Crewe rebuilt the family seat and was a benevolent landlord, rebuilding farms, providing cottages for estate workers and endowing schools.

Certainly, few Victorian primary schools would have enjoyed a location and style of architecture as picturesque as that of Grade II-listed Old School House, with its distinctive blue brick detailing, white Gothic barge boarding and stone-dressed mullion windows.

Converted to residential use in 1983, the house and its outbuildings have been painstakingly modernised by the present owners, who bought it not long ago as their ‘forever home’, but now find themselves having to move for work reasons.

The Old School House is for sale through Jackson-Stops and Savills at a guide price of £1.25 million — see more details and pictures.

Credit: Strutt and Parker

Best country houses for sale this week

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

Credit: Alamy

10 terrible but terribly funny school reports of the world famous, from Einstein to Churchill

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St Luke's Chapel is in The Bromptons, London SW3, and despite its prime location has lain empty for almost 30 years.

Those days are about to come to an end, however, as the chapel is now on the market with planning permission to turn it into a five-bedroom house — one which could be worth as much as £25 million.

Dating to 1850, St Luke’s was originally built to serve the Brompton Hospital. The hospital was converted into luxury apartments by Northacre in 1997, and now its Grade II*-listed, Gothic-Revival chapel will follow suit.

The asking price for this lovely old building — which sits in its own grounds — is £7.5 million, but that's just a portion of what the buyer will have to lay out. The total cost of the redevelopment — which will have to be undertaken in agreement with with conservation agencies — is expected to come in at over £5 million.

That figure includes a £1.25 million one-off service charge payment that allows use of the facilities at The Bromptons, which has all you'd expect of a top-end London property in terms of porterage, security, gym and so on, and which will involve an ongoing service charge as well.

Access to the private Onslow Gardens can also be negotiated too, but at least the buyer will save on stamp duty: the property will be rated at 5% rather than 12% or 15%, due to the fact that it's not currently a home.

The current plans — which are all approved by the Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea — involve, increasing the building's footprint from 4,257sq ft to 7,330sq ft.

While that's a fairly radical change, the drawings were approved on the basis that they are a 'permanent and viable solution which is acceptable on the basis that it would secure the long-term future of the building, and safeguarding the special architectural and historic interest', according to the council's decision in 2017.

‘It is quite a rarity to have a property like this with the volume of space, set within private grounds,’ says Alan Russell, founder of joint selling agents Russell Simpson.

Full details of what's planned are available on request, but using the features will be key — think bedrooms beneath the spectacular vaulted ceiling and so on. Not that it will have to feel gloomy or gothic inside. Edward McRoberts Boden of Strutt & Parker adds that: ‘Some chapels can be a bit dark inside, but the planning permission includes 82 skylights in a reconstructed roof that will make it a very light and bright space.’

St Luke's Chapel is for sale at £7.5 million — see more details and pictures via Russell Simpson and Strutt & Parker.

When Tony O’Donnell and his wife bought a house on the Kentish coast 30 years ago, Mr O’Donnell was surprised by how difficult it was to find someone to restore its Victorian baths. His decision to do the work himself was the beginning of an exciting journey that led to him founding Catchpole & Rye, a business that now enjoys a global reputation. Over the years, Mr O’Donnell has gained an encyclopaedic knowledge of traditional sanitaryware, which informs designs that combine classic good looks and peerless quality.

Based in a former dairy in Kent, with showrooms in Chelsea and Tunbridge Wells, Catchpole & Rye manufactures baths, washstands, showers, lavatories and cisterns that have redefined the luxury end of the bathroom market. The company’s designs have been used in restoration projects all over Britain and are exported as far away as the US and Australia.

What have you learnt from the past?

As well as restoring old baths, I have amassed a large collection of antiques that informs our own designs — some of the pieces are on display at our premises in Kent. For me, the experience has taught me that it’s important to be inspired by the past, rather than to copy it slavishly. That way, you can improve designs that are relevant to the modern day.

The 19th century was a crucible of engineering innovation and much of the expertise of that period has sadly been lost. It’s only by gaining a deep understanding of Victorian plumbing that you can really create high-quality, beautifully engineered bathrooms. Compared with 21st-century technology, it might seem simple, but, in reality, achieving perfection is anything but!

Who do you regard as the heroes of Victorian plumbing?

One was George Jennings, the engineer whose flush lavatories at the Great Exhibition in 1851 kick-started the Victorian plumbing revolution (and precipitated the phrase 'spend a penny’).

The other is John Bolding, who founded the legendary John Bolding & Sons Grosvenor Works on Davies Street in Mayfair in 1891, where it remained until the 1960s (it is now Grays Antique Market and the building still bears the company’s name). Not only was he a brilliant designer and engineer, but also a natural entrepreneur. His building included workshops and a showroom, as well as a dispatch department.

I get huge inspiration from Bolding’s extensive sales catalogues, which are bound in cloth and beautifully embossed.

What are the benefits of working in Britain?

Making components ourselves allows us to benefit from the huge knowledge that we have accumulated over the past three decades. It has also enabled us to create an enormously deep skills base; some of our team members have been honing their craft for several decades and they are able to pass their experience and knowledge onto the next generation.

Those things we don’t make ourselves are produced locally, where possible, and we have developed highly collaborative relationships with manufacturers in the past two decades. That said, our aim is to bring as much of our production as possible under our own roof. The other great benefit of that it provides bespoke capability.

What are the possibilities of offering a bespoke service?

They are almost infinite. We can create highly distinctive designs in colours and finishes that are specified by the customer. There’s also a growing demand for personalised castings on baths and cisterns that bear the name of the house. It’s a unique option that creates a real sense of place.

What is your approach to sustainability?

It influences everything we do. Manufacturing our products here in Britain doesn’t only benefit Catchpole & Rye and the local community, but also reduces our carbon footprint. In addition, it allows us to recycle precious materials, particularly brass.

Other projects, such as the restoration of redundant machines, all contribute to the cause. The fact that you’ll only need to buy one of our baths is also a huge benefit to the environment!

www.catchpoleandrye.com

Credit: Joanna Wood

Beautiful bathrooms: How to design your lighting, draw the eye and make the most of your space

Bathrooms are typically the smallest room in the house - interior designer Joanna Wood shares her top tips and tricks

11 steps to creating a perfect bathroom for your house

When the interior designer Joanna Wood moved to an 18th-century manor house in the Cotswolds, she had an opportunity to

The dream of swapping city life for the country is unutterably tempting – a better environment, a healthier pace of life and the endless charm of the British countryside all exert a great pull. All of that is underpinned by the homeowner's favourite game: 'Look at what we could afford'.

It's a game played by owners of metropolitan properties comparing the price of their cramped, suburban terraces to the values of sprawling country houses with acres of land. That's stage one of the game; stage two is talking over a few glasses of win about how nice life could be; and stage three – the disappointing stage – comes as reality bites, and the thought of balancing cash, expenditure, income and work hits home. Working from home is more popular than ever, but sadly it doesn't work for everyone. Keeping a decent income while living in the country can be very, very hard.

There are ways to do it, however, as brilliantly demonstrated by the outgoing owners of the Victorian Station House at the village of Coalport, which is on the market via Strutt & Parker at £950,000. This wonderful place, located on the River Severn in the Ironbridge Gorge, has gone full steam ahead into the holiday-let business.

Looking for ways to help make their country house make financial sense, they came across the idea of adding two vintage railway carriages to the grounds of this former station – one closed after the Beeching cuts in the 1960s . The carriages have been converted for residential use, one with three bedrooms, the other with two.

The mixture of nostalgia and quirkiness proved a huge hit, and has even been featured on the BBC local news. Last year, the carriages – which are rented through their own website – brought in £40,000 net income.

Now, 14 years since they first came to this part of the world, the owners are moving on and selling up. While the carriages are the most eye-catching element of this property, the house itself is also beautiful, with five bedrooms, and set in just over two acres of woodland and lawns.

There's also what might be the grandest garden office you could wish for: a Victorian railway station waiting room, where the carriage rental business has been run from for many years.

The Victorian Station House is on the market via Strutt & Parker at £950,000 – see more details and pictures.

Britain's 100 best Railway Stations: Simon Jenkins on the gateways to our railways

Credit: Alamy

Britain's most beautiful narrow-gauge railways, from Norfolk to Wales

Credit: Alamy

Britain’s great railway stations: Victorian eclecticism, modern genius and one that is a true work of art

Simon Jenkins lauds our most romantic and architecturally significant railway stations, some of the unsung triumphs of British conservation.

The Old School House is an absolute treat of a home, a mid-19^th century building expertly converted to a tranquil, light and spacious family home by artist and interior designer Alison Hoblyn and her late husband, David, a talented architect.

This former school in the pretty village of Longworth, 11 miles south-west of Oxford, combines a Victorian chapel built in 1848 and a school building added five years later.

Following Mrs Hoblyn’s reluctant decision to downsize and move closer to her daughter in Somerset, the house is on the market with the Summertown office of Savills at a guide price of £1.25 million.

Having bought the property in 2007, the Hoblyns embarked on a quick-fire programme of improvements designed to introduce space and light throughout the building.

As Mrs Hoblyn explains: ‘The windows in Victorian schools were always sited high up to avoid the children being distracted, so we decided to double their size by extending them almost to the ground.’

The effect was instantaneous and immediately connected the interior with the colourful, south-facing gardens – Mrs Hoblyn’s area of special interest.

With more than 4,000sq ft of living space, including three main reception rooms, a kitchen/breakfast room, four/five bedrooms and three bathrooms, their redesign allows for all or part of the chapel to be used independently, perhaps as a holiday let or a home business.

The Old School House is for sale via Savills – see more details and pictures.

Top five afternoon teas in the Cotswolds

We pick five of the best places for afternoon tea in the Cotswolds, where you can enjoy traditional scones and

The Country Life guide to the Cotswolds: Where to go, what to see, where to stay and what to eat

Straddling five counties, the Cotswolds is arguably England's most famous region outside of London. Here’s our guide to what to

Credit: Alamy

Best places to live near Bristol – and what you could get for your money

Commuters working in Bristol and looking to live in the country have all sorts of fantastic options, with places that

The best places to live for commuters: Oxfordshire

There are a good number of villages and towns in Oxfordshire on our list of the best places to live

There's something marvellously bonkers about the Victorian folly. This deliciously eccentric 19th century craze saw everything from giant pineapples to faux-classical ruined temples constructed for the purposes of everything from showing off to providing employment for local artisans.

At Hadlow Tower in the village of Hadlow, near Tonbridge, construction was for a very different reason: jealousy. That's the story which flew around the village, at any rate, when local landowner and merchant Walter May had this beautiful tower built shortly after his wife had left him for another man.

May's father (also called Walter) built Hadlow Castle in the late 18th century – a chunk of which was sold last year – but the tower itself wasn't built until 1838, apparently so that he could keep tabs on his wife and the nearby farmer she'd taken up with.

May still wasn't happy: it turned out that it wasn't quite tall enough for his purposes, so he had the 40ft lantern added to the top.

It's the lantern which took the tower's height up to 175ft, roughly 6ft more than Nelson's Column – which was actually built slightly later. But while Nelson's Column has that prime Central London location going for it, Hadlow Tower has something very different: just under 3,500sq ft of living space, including four bedrooms, and lovely grounds in a beautiful part of the world that's an easy commute to London.

The home is laid out over eight floors – we've reproduced Strutt & Parker's floorplan below – and very sensibly, the main accommodation is spread across the lower tiers.

There are four bedrooms in all, the pick of which is the fourth floor master bedroom with walk-in wardwrobe, direct access to the roof terrace on the ancillary tower, and its own private bathroom above.

In addition the tower has a drawing room, dining room, kitchen/breakfast room and media room which is on the ground floor. If you're worried about climbing that many stairs to get to bed after watching a film in the evening, fear not: there's a lift connecting that home cinema to the master bedroom.

That lift only goes as far as the fourth floor, so if you wish to get any further up the tower you'll have to use the beautiful, modern spiral staircase. Do so, and you'll come across the 6th-floor gallery: a glorious space that's probably the grandest home office in Britain.

The quality of the finish in the tower will be obvious from the images on this page. After years of lying semi-derelict after the war, the Vivat Trust bought the place in 2010 and spent millions refurbishing the place with a series of grants from National Heritage Lottery Fund and English Heritage.

Sadly, the Vivat Trust went into liquidation shortly after the £4.5 million project was finished – which is how the current owner, Christian Tym, bought it for just £425,000. Having lived in the place with his family – and occasionally renting it out as a holiday let – he is now selling up for £2m.

As you might expect of a place that has had so much restoration funding, there are covenants attached for this local landmark – most notably that it has to be open to the public 28 days a year. It sounds onerous on the face of it but probably isn't – apparently (and slightly surprisingly) the vendors tell us that nobody has actually come along on one of open days since they owned it.

As well as the tower itself, the purchase price includes just over half an acre of private garden plus access to the 3.45 acres of communal grounds shared with other properties which form part of the Hadlow Castle. Those grounds include a croquet lawn and a boating lake.

Hadlow Tower is for sale via Strutt & Parker at 'offers over £2 million' – see more pictures and details.

A miniature castle in Kent that sits alongside a magnificent folly tower

In the shadow of one of Victorian England's most famous follies lies a beautiful family home in Kent that is

The former home of ‘the fastest brush alive’ comes to the market

Royal portraitist Bernard Hailstone once enjoyed this handsome house.

At upwards of 200ft, the Victorian folly at Hadlow Castle is the tallest in England – and up for sale at £650,000 is a lovely three-bedroom miniature castle which lies in its shadow.

The tower, also known as May's Folly, was built between 1838 and 1840 by Walter Barton May – son of the man who originally commissioned the castle, Walter May – and it has become a real landmark within Hadlow. The writer Robert Goodsall referred to it in his Second Kentish Patchwork as 'one of the best known, and certainly the most conspicuous folly in the county.'

Much of the original 18th-century castle was demolished in 1951; thankfully, the folly tower itself was already a listed building. Several other outbuildings survived, including the coach house, stables and servants’ quarters.

This house, known as The Keep, is one of a series of Georgian Gothic courtyard lodges built alongside the castle.

It stands across the other side of an attractive pond from the tower, a delightfully pretty castellated construction built of honey-coloured stone and complete with castellated battlements and arched Gothic windows.

Inside it’s a spacious family home – with around 1,500sq ft over three floors – that the agents describe as “a home of romance and yet one of practicality”. That seems a fair assessment to us: the kitchen is small, but there's a lovely and very large sitting/dining room that is a natural centrepiece for the house.

Upstairs are three bedrooms, each of which has some sort of further room beyond – to be used as a study, office, playroom or even a dressing room.

Outside there’s a private garden leading to a walled churchyard, beyond which lies the charming village itself. There are also communal gardens – and of course the chance to enjoy the tower itself, which is otherwise only open to visitors on Thursdays in the summer.

If you're not in the market for a delightful home in Kent – even one that's well priced, in a terrific location and an easy commute to London – but still want to visit Hadlow Tower, you can find out more here.

The Keep is on the market via Graham John at £650,000 – see more details and pictures.

Spectacular Scottish castles and estates for sale

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

A romantic cottage in the heart of the Cotswolds at the price of a small city flat

A heart-stoppingly romantic cottage in the Cotswolds has come to the market at a price which will make city dwellers

Credit: Starborough Castle - Henry & James

A picture-perfect castle for sale just outside London

Could this be England’s smallest castle? Well, not quite. But it might be the most practical.

On August 24, 1912, 600 Macleans gathered on a grassy promontory on the Sound of Mull to celebrate the return of their 14th century clan seat into Maclean ownership. Several generations of chiefs had dreamt of regaining their ancestral heartland, but only the previous year had the dream been – in part, at least – realised when the elderly Col Sir Fitzroy Donald Maclean, 10th Baronet and 26th Chief, bought the ruin of Duart Castle with a sliver of ground (later extended) from its then owner, Walter Murray Guthrie, a week before his death.

Now, as Sir Fitzroy hosted the first ever modern clan gathering, he read out a letter from Guthrie’s widow: ‘As the day draws near for you to formally hoist your banner on the Castle of Duart, so long the property of your ancestors, I feel strongly that I ought to change the name of my house and estate to what I believe it was formerly called, ie Torosay [after the parish – Torrrasach, meaning shrub-clad hill]. I wish to leave the name of Duart to you alone, who have certainly the senior right to it. I shall be glad if you will announce this desire on my part to your clansmen.’

Old Duart is a leitmotif in the story of Torosay Castle, the Victorian mansion built across the bay in 1856–58, which adopted the name of Duart in the 1860s, and which Mrs Guthrie now renamed.

Following the forfeiture of Maclean lands to the Earls of Argyll in the late 17th century, the old castle had been relegated to a military garrison and later a cowshed.

Simultaneously, under the influence of Picturesque taste, it acquired a new role as a romantic eye catcher pivotal to the re-landscaping of the estate.

Restored by the Glasgow architect Sir J. J. Burnet in 1911–16 (initially the intention had been just to consolidate it), the castle became again a clan rallying point and the home of a Maclean chief, while continuing to play a vital part in the architectural ensemble of Torosay, whose relationship to its gardens and wider landscape is its most memorable feature.

The story of Torosay exemplifies that of many Hebridean and West Highland estates colonised by incomers in the 19th century. It is bound up with the sweeping changes that transformed the pattern of landownership at a time of economic crisis, when many families were forced to sell their hereditary lands. In Mull in the 1820s, there was a ‘dance of estates’ as properties changed hands, initially between interconnected local families.

Duart, including the farms of Torgormaig, Achnacraig and Achnacroish, was the jewel in the crown of the Argylls’ lands on Mull, which the profligate 6th Duke became obliged to sell. In 1821, Charles Macquarrie bought it for £35,000 with the intention of selling it on at a profit so he could buy back his ancestral island of Ulva. This he did in 1825, when Duart passed to the first non-Gaelic speaker to own land in Mull.

Col Alexander Campbell was the son of a Glasgow sugar merchant descended from a cadet branch of the Campbells of Argyll. Having served in wars all over the Empire and inherited the Possil estate in Lanarkshire, he threw himself into the role of improving landlord. At Duart, he introduced new agricultural methods, created the wooded landscape setting of what was then the main residence – pretty Achnacroish House – and employed a gamekeeper.

Unlike many other merchants and speculators attracted by the relatively low cost of land – who then evicted their multiple tenantry and introduced profitable large-scale sheep farmers – Campbell endeared himself to the local community. He and his wife supported the kirk and, with their five daughters, did much to help the islanders at a time of unremitting poverty and oppression.

Having weathered the economic storms of the 1830s, Campbell died in 1846, leaving his property to his only son. John Campbell – ‘ the Dragoon’ – set about developing the deer forest and replacing the Georgian house on his Mull estate. With the Stevensons’ pier at Craignure newly built, he was able to import suitable materials to build a smart new mansion by the fashionable Edinburgh architect David Bryce. Achnacroish House, as it was then known, functioned as a seasonal residence and shooting lodge.

Bryce, a former pupil and partner of William Burn, had built up a successful practice best known for designing or remodelling country houses and castles in the style later dubbed the ‘Scotch Baronial’ – an inventive reinterpretation of late-medieval buildings that has become synonymous with his name.

Few sites lend themselves more dramatically to this architecture of romantic revival and Bryce responded by raising the house up over a full basement and orientating it to make the most of superb views down the Firth of Lorn and, eastwards, to the castle ruin backed by the Glencoe hills.

Torosay’s boldly massed yet compact design is mature Bryce working in his baronial mansion/villa, rather than full-scale castle, mode. It adopts one of three standard plans developed by this master of Victorian country house planning: to the north is the entrance within a projecting crenellated tower; to the east, a lower service range; the main public rooms – dining room, library, drawing room – are south-facing, ranged along a semi-symmetrical garden front that breaks out into full-height gabled bays fenestrated with big plate-glass windows; the private family wing is set back beyond the drawing room.

Notable among the repertoire of baronial detail is Bryce’s trademark two-storey canted bay corbelled up into a crow-stepped gable on the garden front, along with another bold Bryce trick: the drawing room’s panoramic double bay window, with corner bows bulging out as conical roofed towers.

The principal rooms are quite modestly scaled and typical of many Bryce interiors in having Classical plasterwork and chimneypieces; there is little attempt to create any stylistic continuity with the exterior. Only the taxidermy hints at Torosay’s principal raison d’être.

Sporting trophies in Highland shooting lodges were traditionally displayed in the public circulation spaces and male quarters, such as the entrance lobby, billiards, smoking and sometimes dining rooms. At Torosay, they are confined to the entrance lobby, where, beneath a cornice of antlers, stag heads preside over a staircase leading up to the main hall on the piano nobile. The latter was furnished as a living hall, but also functioned as a billiard room.

In 1865, with his sugar trade afflicted by the American Civil War and further debts mounting, John Campbell sold the estate to Arbuthnot Charles Guthrie, whose father had co-founded the merchant bank Chalmers Guthrie of Dundee and London.

The Guthries typified a new breed of incoming landowner – financiers and industrialists for whom a Highland sporting estate represented the ultimate status symbol. A. C.

Guthrie had no children, so, on his death in 1897, his wife retired to London with all the contents and Duart, as he’d renamed it, passed to his favourite nephew.

Walter Murray Guthrie MP, a partner in the family bank, was married to Olive Leslie, daughter of Sir John Leslie of Glaslough, an Irish baronet and artist who mixed in a fashionable literary and artistic circle that included Dickens, Marochetti, Leighton, Landseer and Thackeray. With a smart London residence (Stratford House, now the Oriental Club), Guthrie had little interest in an empty mansion on 25,000 windswept Hebridean acres and promptly put the estate on the market.

Then, he made his first visit to Mull and was seduced. Immediately, he withdrew it from sale.

The early 1900s were Torosay’s heyday. The house functioned – as did virtually every big house in the Highlands at this time – as a family holiday home and a shooting lodge big enough to accommodate parties of guests invited up for the Highland Season. The Guthries spent a lot redecorating, improving the plumbing and installing electricity, but their lasting and most impressive legacy is the terraced garden, almost certainly designed in collaboration with Sir Robert Lorimer.

Adding greatly to the drama of the site, it links the house to its 18th-century walled garden with three flights of terraces ornamented with balustraded steps, a pair of dovecote summer houses, a fountain and marble lions. Guthrie also created the Statue Walk, a parade of 18th-century figures in the style of Antonio Bonazza that he had acquired in Italy and imported as ship’s ballast.

A painting of the four Guthrie children by Frederic Whiting captures those golden summers: the exhilaration of days spent out on the hill with ponies, dogs and guns; the bracing climate and glorious scenery as sunlight and clouds scud over Loch Linnhe.

A hint of darker times to come is discernable in the expression of the older boy, Patrick, who would later die of drink in Paris, and in the imperious pose of his brother David, who would also succumb to drink and debt despite marrying an American heiress.

Paradoxically, Whiting’s painting dates from 1914, after the idyll had ended. In 1906, the bank had been plunged into crisis – notably through a disastrous exposure in Chile – and, by 1911, Guthrie was dead.

His widow, Olive, was a tough old bird, a great character and a good shot. She chaired the family bank, which suffered further financial disasters, and lost much of the rest of her fortune in 1917, having been persuaded by Count Benckendorff, the last Imperial Russian Ambassador, to invest in Russian Railways.

Patrick, the model for Mike Campbell in Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, died in 1932, leaving debts of £30,000 and, shortly afterwards, the bank took a further tumble.

Soon, Torosay was being rented out for the Season and 8,000 acres were sold off to the Forestry Commission, precipitating the slow but steady erosion that would continue throughout the century. Olive divided the estate between her two daughters and kept the house and garden, which, on her death in 1945, passed (without any funds) to her grandson.

This was before the era of the time-share country club and remote piles hosting celebrity weddings. The Tangle of the Isles Hotel, as Torosay became in the late 1940s, was at the Fawlty Towers end of the spectrum. Drinks were liberally dispensed free of charge and meals concocted by the cook from tinned food; fake advertising attracted golfing enthusiasts to a non-existent golf course and family friends would call by for tea and then sit about talking in loud, upper-class voices, much to the chagrin of the guests. By 1950, the hotel had closed.

The house now belonged to David Guthrie- James, son of the older Guthrie daughter, Bridget (who had inherited the main part of the estate), and her first husband, Sir Archibald James.

After an adventurous war, David had become a writer/publisher and MP and he and his wife, Jaquetta (née Digby, sister of Pamela Harriman), would come to Torosay with their six children for holidays and during breaks in his London career.

Meanwhile, in 1953, Bridget and her second husband, the dashing Australian colonel Geoffrey Miller, converted the kitchen wing and moved in. A big sale helped to raise funds and she and Miller struggled to keep the place going. They opened the house to the public in the mid 1970s, rescued the neglected grounds and laid out the Japanese Garden.

In 1983, having retired from politics, David and Jaquetta moved permanently to Mull and devoted themselves to redecorating, upgrading the services and developing Torosay’s tourism. After David’s death in 1986, their son Christopher took over and, with his wife, Sarah, ran the place for 25 years. Then, in 2012, they sold Torosay with just 300 acres.

Little has been seen of the new owner, Madame von Speyr, whose charity, the Dew Cross Centre for Moral Technology, is said to be based here.

Country Life’s photographs were taken in 2011, a year before the contents were auctioned off by Christies. They show the interiors well pruned, yet still with their air of Victorian grandeur and a collection ranging from a pair of 10,000bc Irish elk antlers, carved William and Mary armchairs, fine Regency furniture and an array of sporting trophies, to portraits by Raeburn, Poynter and Sargent, a collection of Australian landscapes and a bust by the Guthries’ relation and neighbour Lionel Leslie of his cousin Winston Churchill, who shot his first stag on Torosay.

The photographs convey the unpretentious and eclectic atmosphere of a Highland shooting lodge passed down through five generations of the same family. They provide a fascinating visual record of a world at Torosay that has since vanished.

Mary Miers

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Mary Miers’s new book, ‘Highland Retreats: The Architecture and Interiors of Scotland’s Romantic North’, will be published next month

The bright lights and busy streets of our capital city can only keep a Yorkshireman diverted for so long, it would appear, before he’s drawn back to his roots—or so the sales figures from Strutt & Parker’s Harrogate office would indicate. ‘Between 30% and 35% of our town-centre sales are to buyers moving back up from London,’ explains James Wort. ‘We’ve seen a good number of hedge-fund managers and professionals from the banking sector who feel that they don’t need to be in London full-time anymore. They will perhaps do four days a week there and move the family up here.’

He adds: ‘Since the Brexit vote, we’ve noticed an increase in numbers coming North. The affordability of Harrogate, York and Leeds is attractive: you can buy two or three houses for the price of one London house and get a better quality of life for your family.’ Tony Wright of Carter Jonas’s local office is upbeat about the market in Harrogate. ‘It’s like bees to a honeypot at the moment. Whether they’re relocating or downsizing from a large country house to the town centre, there is pent-up demand for houses.’

He puts this down to the cosmopolitan style of the town, which has visibly improved over the past few years, with more of a cafe culture, good pubs and restaurants and an interesting mix of independent shops. ‘Plus you’ve got 200 acres of The Stray, which surrounds the old town, and some of the finest parts of the countryside on the doorstep. It’s a really lovely place to live.’

Best addresses

Key addresses include Park Avenue, Regent Parade, York Place and The Oval, where semi-detached and terraced houses sell for bet- ween £1 million and £2.5 million. Two further areas are Fulwith Mill, on the south side of Harrogate, where houses of between 4,000sq ft and 5,000sq ft sell for between £1 million and £3 million, and the Duchy, an area of large detached and semi-detached houses developed in the late Victorian and early Edwardian periods on land owned by the Duchy of Lancaster.

For Daniel Rigg, who heads up Knight Frank’s office, the south of the town is proving very popular at the moment, driven by falling within the catchment zones of good schools and communications.

Also on the radar is Beech Grove, a street that runs along the west of The Stray. ‘It has a number of purpose-built apartment blocks that offer lateral space overlooking the park, with a lift and secure parking. It’s about as central as you can get while ticking all the boxes.’ Values in Beech Grove have gone from £400,000 up to £900,000 in the past few years, according to James. ‘They’re perfect for anyone looking to downsize.’

Schools

According to the latest analysis from Savills Research, Harrogate is the top location in its region (Yorkshire & The Humber) in terms of percentage of pupils in high-performing schools (although it’s fallen out of the top 10 local authorities nationally). Daniel believes parents are ‘spoilt for choice’. State primaries that get talked about include Rossett Acre and Western Primary and Harrogate Grammar School, St John Fisher Catholic High School and St Aidan’s CofE High School are among the best secondaries. In the independent sector, there’s Brackenfield, Ashville College and Harrogate Ladies’ College.

Butcher, baker, coffee maker

Like many other regional hotspots, Harrogate caters splendidly for those addicted to their morning cup of coffee, but the town isn’t known as the ‘tearoom Mecca’ for nothing. Crowning all others is Bettys, established in 1919 by Frederick Belmont with, in the company’s own words, a successful blend of ‘Swiss confectionery and Yorkshire hospitality’.

Today, there are more than 300 breads, cakes and chocolates to gorge on while contemplating walking it all off afterwards on The Stray (or head to the other cafe at RHS Garden Harlow Carr for further acreage to explore).

But the story doesn’t end with Bettys: ‘Over the past 12–18 months, we’ve seen the town centre go bananas with new cafes and restaurants opening,’ says James. Recommendations include Bean & Bud, Weetons, a deli and coffee shop, and Marconi. Stuzzi and Baltzersen’s are all-day cafes and William & Victoria is a nice wine bar.

Addyman’s the butcher, Leng’s the grocer and The Cheeseboard should stem the need to go to Waitrose too often.

Out and about

The Harrogate Theatres collaboration launched in 2012, linking together Harrogate Theatre, the Studio Theatre and the Royal Hall—with the more recent addition of the Harrogate International Centre in 2014. The latter attracts world-class British and international acts to its 2,000-seat auditorium. As part of the redevelopment of Station Parade, an Everyman cinema opened in the city centre last Friday. Outdoor fairs and mini festivals set up in The Stray and Valley Gardens. Finally, although not strictly cultural, the town boasts fine Victorian-era Turkish baths on Parliament Street.

Hyde Park homesick

There’s no shortage of green space in the town and the Yorkshire Dales lie a mere 15–20-minute drive away, but the best place to both dog walk and entertain children is Valley Gardens, which has recently undergone some renovation work to its large playground.

Need to know

The town is at something of a development crossroads, with pressure on to build more houses and a few sites that have been granted planning permission to build 600– 700 new homes. Locals are worried about the congestion that this might cause on a town that has no bypass (discussions are under way).

On the market

Grade II listed house for sale, £825,000

Watersmeet on Promenade Square is an attractive Grade II- listed, four-bedroom house, which has views towards Valley Gardens. The kitchen/ breakfast room overlooks a pretty courtyard garden. Strutt & Parker (01423 706771)

Spacious Edwardian house for sale, £1.075 million

Within easy walking distance from the town centre is this double-fronted Edwardian house, which has six bedrooms, three bathrooms and a small garden. There is a garage with space for additional accommodation, subject to planning. Knight Frank (01423 593708)

Stylish modern property for sale, £2.95 million

This modern, stone-built house on Fulwith Mill Lane is a sizeable 7,266sq ft, set in a garden of just under an acre with an indoor swimming pool. The house currently has five bedrooms and four bathrooms, with the opportunity to create two further bedrooms on the top floor. Carter Jonas (01423 523423)

** Search more properties for sale in Harrogate

We reveal beautiful period bedroom design ideas:

Creating a bedroom that matches the period and decorative style of your country house requires a fine balance—you don’t need every detail to be historically accurate. Instead, suggests interior designer and antique-furniture restorer Max Rollitt, it’s often best to layer pieces that secure a connection to your house’s original architecture with later elements so that it looks as if your room evolved over time.

Georgian bedrooms

The 18th century perfected the design of four-poster beds, with delicate, beautifully ornate pieces replacing both the stark Tudor designs and the excesses of the Stuart era. For this reason, a four-poster is the obvious focal point of a Georgian-inspired bedroom.

‘The bed is the key thing,’ says interior designer and architectural historian Edward Bulmer. ‘Eighteenth-century beds were constructed so you could curtain yourself in for warmth and draught exclusion. The four-poster bed still speaks to people, but you can do it in many ways.’ For example, he says, you could keep hangings to a minimum or even have none at all.

Edward also recommends creating a sense of space and elegance in your room using soft florals or plain fabrics and dressing up your walls with historic wallpapers, such as those by Hamilton Weston. ‘A lot of them have small-scale patterns that can be very effective.’

Try: A neo-Palladian wood frame dates from about 1740, with a 19th- century mercurial mirror plate. £19,500 through Max Rollitt (01962 791124; www.maxrollitt.com)

Empire

The proliferation of French Empire interiors in British country houses is one of history’s greatest ironies: ‘The Duke of Wellington popularised the style partly by defeating the French,’ according to Edward.

The style has its roots in the streamlined architecture of ancient Greece and Rome, reinterpreted in a majestic key intended to convey imperial grandeur. Bedroom furniture should feature strong lines and rich Classical motifs such as laurel wreaths, grapevines, swans and winged lions. ‘It’s a huge style,’ acknowledges Edward. ‘You almost feel as if you have to don a Grecian dress to step into an Empire room.’

Empire-style beds—whether linear and masculine or the feminine, curvy lits bateaux beloved by the Empress Joséphine—are relatively easy to find, and Edward suggests combining Empire pieces with British neo-Classical furniture: ‘They’re not the same, but you can pair them very successfully.’

The colour palette for an Empire room should be bold. Napoleonic interiors often featured black, but if that feels too harsh for a modern bedroom, consider instead rich greens, reds, gold and turquoise. Choose fabric and wallpaper in striped or geometric designs and swooping chandeliers for lighting. A Savonnerie-style rug—which Napoleon loved and almost single-handedly brought back into fashion—is the perfect finishing touch.

Try: An original Savonnerie design, but in modern colours. Aurelie rug from £1,050 per sq m through Loomah (020–7371 9955; www.loomah.com)

Victorian

A private sanctuary devoted primarily to sleep, the 19th-century bedroom was an ornate affair. Describing the beau idéal in From Kitchen to Garret, Jane Panton mentions an iron-and-brass bedstead furnished with several mattresses, a bolster, four pillows, three pairs of sheets, up to four blankets and, in winter, an eiderdown. Although modern hygiene and better-quality bedframes have made Mrs Panton’s recommendations somewhat redundant, a beautifully dressed bed remains at the heart of a Victorian-style bedroom.

Pile layers of bed linen, bolsters and pillows on a bed that can be brass, wood or upholstered and decorate the room with fabrics and wallpaper in historic patterns. ‘Damasks and large floral, bird and animal motifs were popular,’ says Farrow & Ball’s Josephine Rance. Colours, she continues, were often darker, such as rich reds or deep aubergines.

However, counters Edward, ‘there are a lot of good books that show a lighter palette and lighter wallpaper.’ The key is to work with the architectural features of your room: ‘For example, if you have a Victorian fireplace in black marble, make sure it feels an integral part of your scheme.’

An authentic Victorian bedroom would also have an antique or replica dressing table, wardrobe, chests and mirrors, but, for a more modern take, you can team fitted furniture with one or two original pieces.

Try: A Victorian-style ebonised whatnot is the perfect place to keep bedtime books. £2,220 through Jamb (020–7730 2122; www.jamb.co.uk)

French Style

The glamour and elegance of Louis XV’s France was one of the main sources of inspiration behind the French Style that became popular in British country houses in the 19th century, particularly during the reign of George IV. A French Style bedroom calls for the sinuous lines of Rococo—a bed with curved headboard, footboard and legs, for example—and gilded, elaborately carved or lavishly upholstered furniture.

In 19th-century Britain, Rococo-inspired interiors also acquired an additional layer of rich upholstery, so consider dressing your bedroom windows with fringed curtains and, if adding seating, look at buttoned chairs decorated with tassels and braids. Opt for fabrics with floral or Oriental motifs, but keep your overall scheme light: ideally, it should be opulent and ornamental, but also delicate and graceful.

A few Sèvres-style porcelain pieces and gilded or brass wall-light fittings accentuate the French atmosphere.

Try: A three-arm brass wall light, with its stylised leaves, captures the essence of the French Style. £716 through Vaughan Lighting (020–7349 4600; www.vaughandesigns.com)

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There's no denying that some of the finest houses in the UK were built in the Victorian era and it's not hard to see why; it was an age of imitation, and styles were influenced by everything from Regency fashions, decorative stucco embellishments and the gothic revival. This eclectic mix resulted in pointed roofs and matching porches, bay windows, slate roofs and gorgeous wooden fire surrounds.

If you're looking to move into a Victorian property, there are a few notable influences to bear in mind, and we've added a few tips on how to optimise this style for your new home:

Industrial Revolution

The industrial revolution greatly inspired the Victorian house-boom. Country folk moved to the city for work, and millions of new houses were needed, not just for the upper-classes but for everybody else as well. There was a surge in the growing middle-classes who took pride in their homes and the decor which they thought reflected their status. This industrial society saw an increase in iron and steel materials being used and wrought and cast-iron frames were popular - so swap that wooden bed frame for a wrought-iron one.

Oriental influences

With travel to foreign places such as India and China becoming more viable, there was a notable oriental theme incorporated into Victorian decor. Elaborate floral patterns, animals and prints had a noticeably oriental feel. To get the look, a William Morris wallpaper is perfect, or if your fireplace has tiles then expose these as a key feature for your living room. If you're looking for a Victorian-inspired fireplace then wrought iron or pine are your go-to materials. Direct Fireplaces range of quality fire surrounds will ensure that you can get that vintage Victorian feel so it's well worth a look if you want to recreate the look. In addition to your fireplace, keep an eye out for vintage oversized armchairs with button backs, pouffes and other plush furniture for your living room. Velvet was a key fabric for the Victorian era - think rich, deep jewel tones for the winter months and add an airy feel in the summer with muslin, chintz and highly patterned textiles on curtains and throws.

Rococo

The rococo look was a notorious style for ladies bedrooms and boudoirs. It features elaborate, chintzy floral prints and a flair for gold gilded, heavily embossed mirrors, wall hangings and ornaments. Today you'll see it represented in the ‘shabby-chic' style that so many home-owners have commandeered, although the rococo style features decidedly stronger colours. Look out for vintage rococo benches at flea markets - they usually scrub up well and are perfect for the garden. In your bedroom, a baroque dressing table with elaborate features will enhance the cornices in your room. A luxurious chaise longue will epitomise the rich Victorian theme and add to the rococo theme

Gothic

The gothic revival was huge in Victorian times and you'll mostly notice this influence on the exterior, manifested in pointed roofs, scrollwork, imposing bay windows and stain glass windows.

To make the most of your Victorian property once you've moved in, it's a good idea to keep the decor and furniture in a similar vein - it doesn't have to be in every room, after all this is the 21st century, and it's safe to say that the Victorian era left a lot to be desired in sanitary standards... so modern bathroom plumbing is a must!

Upalong is a substantial Victorian property dating back to the 1800s. Recently refurbished, the house has many period features including high ceilings and large sash windows.

Facing south, the house is spacious with a large kitchen/breakfast room and reception rooms for family and entertaining. The conservatory and sun room open onto a large south-facing terrace in front of the house. Upstairs there are five double bedrooms (one en-suite) on the first floor, and two family bathrooms.

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Outside the large terrace faces south - the garden room sits underneath. Gardens are for the most part laid to lawn and include borders with a wide range of trees and shrubs.

Upalong is located just outside the village of Lustleigh in Devon, on the eastern edge of Dartmoor, eight miles from Chagford and 22 miles from Exeter. The village itself has many beautiful and historic buildings as well as a Post Office, pub, dairy and tea rooms.

The guide price is £850,000. For further information please contact Knight Frank on 01392 423 111 or visit http://search.knightfrank.com.

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Well Park is a magnificent example of Victorian architecture dating back to 1870, although it remains unlisted. The property has large rooms and high ceilings giving lots of space and light.

Two large reception rooms on the ground floor overlook the gardens and feature period fireplaces, while the kitchen is relatively small (a modern family might want to relocate the kitchen to the dining room at the rear of the house for more of a kitchen/breakfast room).

Upstairs the first floor has four bedrooms, most of which have outstanding views out across the village, moorland and local farmland while the second floor has four further bedrooms which have even more impressive views. The accommodation on the first and second floors is extremely flexible.

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Outside the gardens and grounds come to around two acres and have been well maintained: to the front of the house is an old tennis court which is now a croquet lawn and there are a number of mature trees providing privacy. Above the gardens is a paddock which is currently rented out to a local farmer but would suit an equestrian buyer - the local area has some excellent riding.

Well Park is situated in the village of Lustleigh in the Dartmoor National Park. The village is very picturesque and has a good range of local amenities including the village inn, tearoom, dairy with postal counter and a church dating from the 13th century. Exeter is only 15 miles away and the A38 is just under five miles.

The guide price is £975,000. For further information please contact Knight Frank on 01392 848 842 or visit www.knightfrank.co.uk.

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Glebe Place  in Chelsea has been considered a wonderful place for painting since Victorian times - the building has fantastic large glass roofs providing northern light, considered the very best for painting. Augustus John was a resident in 1935 and William Rothenstein moved to Glebe Place in 1900.

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The house has a studio/reception room, two bedrooms, bathroom and a shower room as well as a combined kitchen/dining room, all in 1,798sq ft of space. The property comes freehold and is situated in a wonderful area just off the King's Road which has excellent communications and is within reach of many higher education institutions.

The guide price is £2,950,000. For further information please contact Savills on 020 7730 0822 or visit www.savills.co.uk.

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The University of Cambridge is selling a substantial Victorian property in a location which is regarded as one of the best in the city of Cambridge.

6 & 6A Chaucer Road is situated just off Trumpington Road, in gardens and grounds of 1.2 acres close to the University of Cambridge Botanic Garden and backing on to Vicar's Brook and Coe Fen leading down to the River Cam.

Originally known as ‘Birnam House', it was one of the first significant houses to be developed by the Pemberton family, typically for wealthy College dons, as part of the promotion of the Chaucer Road/Latham Road Estate as an area of distinguished character.

Over the last three decades, the property has been used by the University of Cambridge's Department of Architecture for the Martin Centre - as well as for its gardener's site.

The story of the property's variety of residential, educational and horticultural use is told through the features of the buildings as well as the in the grounds, according to sales agents Carter Jonas.

Retained features in the main residence include a grand reception hall and staircase with stained glass windows, glazed lantern and ornate plaster ceilings and cornices. Ceilings are approximately 12 ft with sash windows almost to the full height in many rooms.

One of the garden areas features a number of specimen trees enclosing lawns to the west of the building. A separate area adjacent to Coe Fen is screened from the formal garden that was previously used as a nursery garden area. The cottage also includes its own private garden to the rear.

£3.5 million through Carter Jonas (01223 368771)

While none of the buildings of 6 & 6a Chaucer Road are listed, they are within a conservation area and the main residence is recorded as a building of local interest.

Existing planning permission includes use as non-residential institutions such as educational and health services establishments. The vendors have submitted a planning application for change of use of the house to a single dwelling house and flat which would, if pursued and approved, bring the home back to its original residential use.

As Mark Hallam, a partner of Carter Jonas in Cambridge (01223 368771) who is handling the instruction, points out, 6 & 6a Chaucer Road tells a story typical of its style and of the passage of time. ‘The property has had a variety of uses including residential and educational yet has still retained many appealing features, typical of its age and character.

‘Its occupants down the years have shown the kind of respect, and appreciation of a very fine, very Cambridge property.

‘It's a really special instruction for us and we're anticipating a real buzz of interest locally, nationally and internationally from interested parties who will want to be the next instalment of the tale of 6 & 6a Chaucer Road.'

Guide price: £3.5 million through Carter Jonas (01223 368771)

New to the market is a charming end of terrace Victorian village home on North Road in Highgate with a 106ft west-facing garden.

The accommodation comprises: four bedrooms, two bathrooms, three or four reception rooms, kitchen/breakfast room plus a guest WC and a double length garage. The garden is fantastically large and faces west, with lots of opportunities for outdoor eating and entertaining.

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The location is ideal for village life in London with stunning green views and exceptionally good local shopping, pubs and restaurants less than 250m away, although the centre of London is under half an hour’s drive.

Hampstead Heath and Highgate tube stations are within 500m.

The guide price is £1,650,000. For further information please contact Knight Frank on 020 7431 8686 or visit www.knightfrank.co.uk.

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The Newmarket offices of Jackson-Stops & Staff and Savills have jointly been instructed to sell Holland House Stables at a guide price of £350,000.

Holland House Stables, formerly known as Lansdown House, was owned by Jack Watts in 1920 and bought by Basil Foster in 1957 and renamed in honour of chaser Joe Holland, who had given Foster his first success after he started at Enfield in 1955. The property would be suitable as a start up yard or as an overflow yard.

Holland House Stables requires a total renovation and offers the opportunity to provide further stabling subject to necessary planning consents.

Jock Lloyd-Jones of Jackson-Stops & Staff believes: 'Holland House Stables would cost about £500,000 to renovate and would then be worth in excess of £1 million, as it is rare that a horse training establishment like this comes up for sale in Newmarket’.

The property is going to formal tender on May 29 (Jackson-stops & Staff 01638 662231)

Guide price £350,000

Reaching Compton Undermount, on the south of the island, involves driving through a stone tunnel in the village of Bonchurch. At the other end, you emerge into the prettiest of gardens in front of a very unusual property, which is part of a very much larger house built in 1851 by Sir John and Lady Pringle – of the Pringle fashion company. Lady Pringle was a mistress of the bedchamber to Queen Victoria in Balmoral and the couple came to the Isle of Wight when the Queen began to spend her summer holidays of Osborne House, on the opposite side of the island.

After the Second World War, the house was divided into five with Compton Undermount being the most substantial property. Today it is for sale and the vendor, Charmian Shenton - a retired architect -- has done wonders in the 10 years she has lived there with her husband David, who died last year. They re-wired, re-plumbed and redecorated the house and more importantly re-built the substantial conservatory/winter garden, which was derelict when they bought the house.

‘The stone steps linking the two levels were still there and just a little of the original wrought iron supports, but that was all,’ she says. It’s now a third of the original length of almost 100 feet long, but just as awe inspiring. Mrs. Shenton has created a delightful paved garden following the original footprint and pattern of the old metal heating grills, which are still there.

However, the piece de resistance of the house is the fabulous drawing room with its 25 feet high ceiling. This has ornate plaster mouldings painted in deep pink, gold and blue with rows of hanging crystal globes and in the centre, a plaster medallion depicting the goddess Aurora, which the Shentons have restored. The rooms also has a linen-fold and carved oak dado panelling, cornicing with scrolls depicted lines from Psalms, a fine marble fireplace with impressive carved oak surround and two pairs of double carved oak doors, one of which is false- just there to give the room symmetry.

The remainder of the rooms are less imposing and on several different levels. In total there are four bedrooms, a large kitchen/sitting/dining room on the lower ground floor, two studies and an extensive attic. In around two acres, the property is for sale for £975,000 (Kingston & Grist, 01983 761005; www.kingstonandgrist.co.uk)

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Calthwaite Hall is a magnificent early-Victorian Grade II listed house extending in around seven acres, standing on the edge of Calthwaite village. It is situated in beautiful countryside close between Penrith and Carlisle, near the eastern edge of the Lake District National Park and within easy reach of the M6.

The property is an impressive country house constructed around 1840, with fine dressed stone elevations featuring Victorian Gothic architectural detail. The Gothic theme continues inside with a remarkable carved oak spiral staircase in the centre of the three-storey galleried hall, fine plaster detail and oak panelled doors to most rooms.

The Hall is in need of refurbishment – at the present time the accommodation is arranged as a five-bedroom house and an independent two bedroom apartment - and would make a perfect family house once brought back into one property.

Mature wooded grounds outside provide the approach to the house, opening out to grass paddocks on the east side, where there is stabling and a ménage, all in just over 7 acres. Junction 41 of the M6 is just five miles away and Carlisle is 13 miles drive from where it is around four hours by train to London.

The guide price is £800,000. For further information, please contact Smiths Gore on 01228 520 802.

Lucie's, an attractive semi-detached house near Shipton-on-Stour, was once owned by the then landowner David Bertram Ogilvy Freeman-Mitford (Lord Redesdale). He was the father of the famous Mitford sisters. Freeman-Mitford was the son of the first baron of Redesdale and as a young man fought in the Boer War and the First World War. He married Sydney Bowles (known as 'Muv' by the family) with whom he had five daughters ? Pamela, Diana, Jessica, Nancy and Unity Mitford. He was a Nazi sympathiser and deemed to be rather eccentric. The Redesdale wealth was considerably depleted in the early twentieth century by a series of poor investments and it appears he sold Lucie's as part of his urgent efforts to raise money. The house was sold in 1920 for £739 to George William Faulkner, the postman at Great Wolford. Faulkner was married to Lucy, hence the moniker given to the house. The current owners bought Lucie?s from Dorothy Faulkner Duggan in 1987, a descendant of George William Faulkner. It is believed the house and the post office business remained in the family until then. The three-storey house has an entrance hall, four bedrooms, sitting and dining rooms, kitchen, breakfast room and a study. Lucie's is for sale through Hayman-Joyce's Moreton in Marsh office (01608 651188, www.haymanjoyce.co.uk * Search country houses for sale in Warwickshire

Whitecroft Hospital, which was built in 1896, has been lying empty since the 1990s. Oakdene Homes bought the property and is converting the historic building into 54 two and three bedroom apartments. A further 36 new apartments and 24 new houses are being built in the grounds. The hospital, which has a Grade II listed clock tower, was originally built as a pauper lunatic asylum, but as it slowly became unsuitable for modern needs, wards were gradually shut down and by 1997 only the laundry remained in use. Now the 25 acre site in the centre of the island, surrounded by countryside and only a few minutes from the capital town of Newport, has been renamed Whitecroft Park and will be gated with private leisure facilities of tennis court, gymnasium, sauna with café/chill out area and concierge service - a first for the island. The island is only two hours from London and a paradise for walkers and sailing aficionados alike. 'The Isle of Wight offers an excellent quality of life to its residents and Whitecroft Park reflects this, offering high standards of finish and facilities and creating an intriguing place to live which is shrouded in history,' says Ann Fulker, sales and marketing director for Oakdene Homes. Prices will start at £249,000 and joint agents are Watson Bull & Porter (01983 533691) and Countrywide (02380 228822). * Houses for sale