It doesn't get more idyllic than Strete Estate, nestled between Salcombe and Dartmouth on the South Devon Coast. Penny Churchill takes a look.
Penny Dart from the Savills Exeter branch and Alex Lawson from the Savills London office are handling the sale of a great survivor of a bygone era, the 920-acre Strete estate, which overlooks the quaint coastal village of Strete, within the sought-after South Hams in the South Devon AONB and within easy reach of the sailing towns of Dartmouth and Salcombe.
Owned by successive generations of the same family, the property is being offered at £11.5m for the whole, or in up to 11 lots. The guide price for Lot 1, the 184-acre Higher Fugue Farm, is £2.8m.
According to its Historic England listing, Strete was formerly in the parish of Blackawton and, ‘after the dissolution of the manor of Blackawton came into the possession of the Russells who in 1618 sold it to the Roopes of Dartmouth [who] owned Fuge’.
Today, the main farmhouse at Higher Fuge Farm, a former dairy farm at the heart of the estate, is a fine Grade II*-listed Georgian place built in 1726. Now in need of renovation, it retains its original walled garden and comes with a range of modern and traditional farm buildings surrounded by productive farmland.
It offers more than 5,500sq ft of accommodation on two floors, including a large entrance hall with a grand staircase, an open-plan kitchen/dining room, drawing room, five bedrooms and a family bathroom. The eastern wing is presently arranged as a self-contained, two-bedroom property.
In addition, the estate boasts two let farms: Lower Fuge Farm (guide price £1.45m) is a 253-acre mixed dairy farm let on an Agricultural Holdings Act tenancy, with a stone farmhouse, a range of modern and traditional farm buildings and farmland, plus 12 acres of in-hand woodland and amenity land; and Coxs Farm, price £1.9m, a grassland farm with a modern farmhouse and lovely views along the coast.
The estate also includes four further houses and cottages, including a magical mill house and mill buildings, together with strategic land surrounding the village of Strete.
Hidden within the estate are the beautiful and untouched Gara Valley and Strete Gate Beach, which were evacuated towards the end of the Second World War and used as a training ground for British and American forces on the run-up to D-Day.
Although, nowadays, Strete Gate Bridge is open to the public, the Gara Valley has never been re-populated and provides a valuable habitat for a huge variety of rare flora, fauna and over-wintering and breeding birds.
The Strete Estate is currently on the market via Savills with a guide price of £11.5 million — see more pictures or enquire with the agent for further details.
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