The good people of the Country Life Online Property Desk (Me and Toby Keel) have spent a lot of time covering Frome recently, it feels like, but there do seem to be a lot of good houses around there. When you find a rich seam, you must mine it.
Today’s effort is the glorious Grade II-listed Selwood Manor, which is for sale with Inigo for the sum of £5 million. It has 10 bedrooms, more than 12,000sq ft of space and consists of a manor house, three other ancillary accommodations, and 11 acres of gardens.
What we have here, basically, is a mini estate. No — not even that, actually. It's effectively a mini village to call your own. We shall go through it, piece by piece.
To begin — the main house. Built in around 1740, the honey coloured home offers some 5,600sq ft of space built in a Jacobean style. The façade is seven bays wide and a generous entrance porch opens to the main hall.
Set over three floors, it offers seven bedrooms and eight bathrooms, with five reception rooms on the ground floor that are perfect for entertaining. Plenty of period features remain, with modern touches where necessary. It is a bread-and-butter Country Life classic house.
The guest cottage offers a further 1,000sq ft of space and two bedrooms, executed in a similar style to the main house. It also has its own private area of garden. A more perfect guest-house you could not find.
The But and Ben Barn offers a further 1,200sq ft of space and a single bedroom, crafted in a more contemporary style. The living room is some 40ft deep and has views over the River From, which flows at the bottom end of the garden.
The entertainment complex, otherwise known as Cooper Hall, measures some 2,750sq ft and is where you’ll find a central hall with soaring open-pitch roof, reminiscent of a chapel. There is also a cinema room with 12 seats, a gym, and access to the outdoor swimming pool.
The gardens and grounds extend to some 11.38 acres, finishing at the River Frome. Formal areas, grasslands and woodland constitute the majority of the space, and there is also a paddock, kitchen garden and orchard to the south south west.
What you get at Selwood is the kind of house that you would never really need to leave. There are also no neighbours, so privacy and peace of mind are the order of the day. Heaven.
Selwood Manor is for sale with Inigo for £5 million. For more information and pictures, click here
Credit: Strutt and Parker
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