This picture-perfect 'silvery stone' house with royal connections is a restoration marvel
This family home in Wiltshire was once ‘a mean miserable little house’ until it was spectacularly restored at the turn of the century. Now it is on the market.
In Wiltshire, a few miles from Gillingham and Warminster's train stations, lies a house so beautiful it looks like something out of a Disney film.
The property was originally built between 1920 and 1922, on Duchy of Cornwall land, for the daughter of a shipping magnate — who happened to be friends with Edward VII. The house you see today, however, is much changed.
It was almost completely rebuilt between 1999 and 2004, which is when the Millennium Tower and vine-clad loggia were added. In 2015 Country Life wrote about the restoration project of the Grade II-listed home, carried out by David and Mary Thomas. Mary recalled the home as being ‘a mean miserable little house’, when the couple purchased it in 1997 — something which is hard to believe when you look at the property today.
Mere Down House was ‘made of silvery local stone under a Cornish slate roof,’ our reporter wrote. The Thomas’s were inspired by late-17th and early-18th-century English domestic architecture, as well as French and Italian influences, when redesigning the house. The architect Jonathan Harker described their approach as ‘wonderfully anarchic’ and said it combined ‘all the very best of old and new’.
Now on the market with Strutt & Parker, for £3.2 million, it comes with five bedrooms, five bathrooms and five reception rooms, in a total of 4,129 square feet. As well as a lot of undeniably striking architectural beauty, the new owner will also inherit an Aga, a gym, which could also be used as a games room, a boot room and a full-height, baize-lined safe. And, as if that wasn’t enough, a library, tower study and downstairs cloakroom.
Some of our favourite features, however, are the antique marble floor in the entrance hall, the wide, polished French oak boards in the sitting room, and a well-fitted larder.
Outside, there's a swimming pool, greenhouse, cutting garden, fruit trees, potting shed and workshop, as well as amazing views of the Wiltshire and Dorset countryside that extend far beyond the property itself. The house would, quite obviously, suit a lover of the great outdoors.
Mere Down Houses on the market with Strutt & Parker — see more details.
