The entire map of Britain is full of gloriously quirky place names (Auchtermuchty in Fife and Pratt’s Bottom in Kent are particular favourites), but for a constant stream of magnificently bananas places, it’s hard to beat the West Country. And the as if to demonstrate this very point, today’s property is a gorgeous house in a Somerset village called Trudoxhill, a spot wedged in between Nunney Catch and Marston Bigot. You really couldn’t make it up.
The house in question is Millards Hill House, a Grade II-listed Georgian home being sold by Alice Keith of Knight Frank, with an asking price of £3 million.
That money buys you a strikingly pretty home designed in the Classical, symmetrical style with 19th- and 20th-century additions, located in an idyllic rural spot four miles from the market town of Frome and 18 from the World Heritage city of Bath.
It's been owned for almost 40 years by the same family, and is the sort of place where even arriving is an event: you enter the 44 acres of parkland and paddocks via a long, private drive, which splits to provide access to the main entrance of the house before leading to the stable yard, outdoor school, cottage and outbuildings at the rear.
The imposing main building, which now needs updating throughout, offers 7,490sq ft of accommodation laid out in traditional country-house style, with three principal reception rooms, a conservatory, nine bedrooms and five bathrooms.
Particularly impressive is the gracious, south-facing drawing room, which opens onto a terrace with far-reaching views towards King Alfred’s Tower, a landmark 18th-century folly on the neighbouring Stourhead estate.
Millards Hill House is surrounded by established formal gardens, which include a covered swimming pool and pool house and an old tennis court that could easily be reinstated.
A two-bedroom cottage and various outbuildings could be converted to residential use subject to planning, the agents say.
Millards Hill House was originally built in the late 18th century as the dower house to nearby Marston House, which was the English seat of the Earls of Cork and Orrery from the mid 1600s until 1905 (and which was rescued from dereliction in the 1980s and 1990s, as Country Life reported in January 2018).
Millards Hill House is for sale via Knight Frank at £3 million — see more pictures and details.
Credit: Strutt and Parker
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