A fantastical house where the young Lewis Carroll lived is up for sale, complete with endless curious touches that could have come straight from Wonderland

Mathematician, clergyman, academic, trailblazing photographer… Charles Dodgson was a man of many parts. Yet for all he did in his life, he’d have long since been forgotten by history were it not for a handful of children’s books he wrote in the second half of the 19^th century under one of the most famous pen names in literary history: Lewis Carroll.

Dodgson — the fourth in a long line of Charles Dodgsons — was a lecturer in mathematics and an ordained deacon at Oxford University, and as such wrote his non-academic works under the pseudonym. Initially these pieces amounted to a few poems, but in 1865 he published Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, arguably the most famous children’s book of all time.

And so, as we all love a home with a literary connection, the appearance of one of the writer's childhood homes on the market is exciting — particularly as it's a place with dashes of flair and imagination that seem as if they could have come from a Lewis Carroll book.

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The Old Hall — which is for sale at £1.6 million via Savills — sits almost in the shadow of Ripon Cathedral, where Carroll's father, Charles Dodgson Sr, was a cannon for several years from 1852. It was the official residence that went with the role between 1841 and 1858, according to the agents.

Few clergymen have homes so grand these days. This is an exquisite, Grade II*-listed home with six bedrooms, five reception rooms and four bathrooms, and it's a gem of early Georgian architecture, with the highlight being the magnificent curving staircase that dates to 1738.

Not all of the house is so old, but much of it is full of unusual touches which will make a visitor declare curiouser and curiouser. An archway from sitting room through to the kitchen, for example, has been partially filled in as a miniature library, with a bust placed prominently overhead.

The dining room, meanwhile, has a trompe l'oeil ceiling that's a recreation of one of the most famous paintings ever created: the detail of God and Adam touching fingers the adorns the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. The eagle-eyed will note that over the fireplace is a colourised version of one of Sir John Teniel's iconic illustrations for the earliest editions of Alice in Wonderland.

The unusual, almost disconcerting details continue upstairs, with the ceiling on the upstairs landing being a gilt-covered plasterwork ceiling featuring the Judgement of Paris, the moment from classical mythology which saw the young prince choose the most beautiful of the goddesses Hera, Athena and Aphrodite.

To the side, an ornate carved doorway leading through to a room whose walls are adorned with pine wainscotting, and whose floor features a chessboard rug — ideal for any budding Queen of Hearts to demand her subjects play an impromptu game.

Curiouser and curiouser indeed, and it gets all the more so as you enter a bathroom with a corner mirror that wildly distorts and reflects those who use the bath, or the shower that sits above it.

None of this gets in the way of what is a beautiful and immaculately presented family home; the touches of whimsy — many of which are original, as featured in the house's listing document — seem to offer some insights in to the more fantastical elements of his later writings.

That said, it is debatable how much time Lewis Carroll would ever have spent living in this house: he was a 20-year-old undergraduate at Oxford at the time his father became cannon at Ripon, and after graduating in 1854 was based at Christ Church college for the rest of his life.

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On the other hand, the Ripon Museum's website note that the misericords that are one of the building's most famous features include 'a carved griffin chasing a rabbit down a hole'.

It's not hard to imagine that just a few years later, the young academic drew upon those images of Ripon when spinning tales for the daughter of his friend Henry Liddell. The daughter's name? Alice, of course.

The Old Hall in Ripon is for sale via Savills at £1.6 million — see more details and pictures.