A magnificent ivy-clad mansion in the Wessex Downs which comes with its own Iron Age hill fort

2,500 years ago, Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonians were destroying the Temple of Solomon. The Kingdom of Carthage was taking over the western Mediterranean. And in leafy Berkshire, a group of ancient Britons were busy building Bussock Camp, an ancient Iron Age hill fort in a stretch of land which has laid seemingly almost undisturbed ever since. We tend to think of Britain — and particularly the south-east — as busy to the point of teeming, yet here on the fringe of the commuter belt you can find an ancient site full of interest.

An ancient site, moreover, which is currently up for sale as part of the 170-acre Bussockwood estate, for which Matthew Allen of Fisher German in Banbury quotes a guide price of £8.9 million.

The Bussockwood estate — and the handsome mansion at its heart — sits in a private woodland setting in the hamlet of Snelsmore, on the edge of the Berkshire Downs and within the North Wessex Downs National Landscape, 2½ miles south of Chieveley.

Bussockwood has been owned since the 1950s by the Palmer family, descendants of Victorian biscuit manufacturers Huntley & Palmers, well-known as benefactors to society in Reading and the wider Berkshire region.

At the centre of the estate stands Grade II-listed Bussockwood House, a large Queen Anne-style house built in 1907 to the design of Mervyn Macartney, a leading Arts-and-Crafts architect who was a surveyor to St Paul’s Cathedral.

The main house — which we must point out needs modernisation, albeit not quite so much as the hill fort does — offers some 10,000sq ft of gracious, well-proportioned living space on three floors, including three main reception rooms, a study (the former billiard room) and a large kitchen/breakfast room.

There is a principal bedroom suite with garden views, eight further bedrooms and four bathrooms, with three additional rooms that could be converted to extra bathrooms.

An adjoining, three-bedroom flat can be accessed through the kitchen of the main house, with further accommodation provided by the three-bedroom Bussockwood Cottage, the converted coach house and two timber-frame Colt bungalows with paddocks.

The Bussockwood Estate is for sale at £8.9 million — see more pictures and details.