The traditional check list of 'things you'd like included in your next country house' is no doubt quite extensive. Sash windows is probably on there, as are fireplaces, an Aga and a wine cellar. Lovely gardens too, of course. A coach house, naturally, for use either as home office or granny annexe.
What you don't expect is to be able to add 'walking distance to a Tube station' into the mix. Yet that is exactly what we have at Hillside, as pretty a Wimbledon property as you'd hope to see, and described entirely fairly by the agents as ‘a superb country house in London’.
Set back on Hillside, a quiet no-through road a couple of minutes’ walk from Wimbledon Common and Wimbledon Village, its recent renovation is both sophisticated and sympathetic and this is the first time it has been on the open market for 50 years.
We scarcely need tell you that this is a house with a fig tree flourishing in the inner courtyard — of course it does. Nor will you be surprised to hear that the kitchen, with its Carrera-marble worktops and original Aga, opens onto a south-west-facing garden.
The dining room — once the old tack room, apparently — and conservatory/breakfast room also open onto this secluded, green courtyard. Of course the walls are covered in wisteria. What else would they be covered with?
In true country house fashion, there is even a secondary property of sorts included, albeit one that is effectively one wing of the building rather than a separate construction: the former coach house serves as a studio/home office.
If you want an even more impressive study, a spiral staircase from the first floor landing heads up to a tower room, a wonderful cubbyhole whose only drawback is how many steps you'll need to navigate to pop down to the Victorian wine cellar to grab a bottle of something.
On the first floor there are five bedrooms, including a master suite with a vaulted dressing room; all five bathrooms have underfloor heating (sorry, did you think there was some other manner in which they might be kept warm?). The house is also fitted with a Wyse lighting system, something we'd never heard of, but which is probably way posher than a few light bulbs from B&Q.
Obviously there's a catch; you knew it was coming, and you knew what it would be. At £6.75 million, this is a very expensive house indeed; for the same sort of money further afield, you could buy a 22-acre estate that includes a real-life country house of the sort which looks like it should be owned by Mr Darcy. But you'd have an awful lot further to go whenever you wanted to nip into town.
Hillside is for sale via Savills at £6.75m — see more details and pictures.
Credit: Strutt and Parker
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