A manor house dream with four poster beds, poolhouse, artist's studio and 17 acres of the Cotswolds to call your own
Ashley Manor is the stuff of Cotswolds dreams. Penny Churchill takes a look.
The Cotswolds seems to be popping up everywhere you look at the moment — Badminton Horse Trials last week, the new series of Disney+'s adaptation of Rivals this week — so, quite naturally, anyone who's ever toyed with the idea of moving to his beautiful part of England will be looking for a great country home. And they don't come much greater than the historic, Grade II*-listed Ashley Manor, fresh to the market, with Ed Sugden of Savills quoting a guide price of £6.5 million.
That puts it towards the very top end of the Cotswolds market, but with good reason: this is an exquisitely renovated manor house which, according to David Verey’s Buildings of England: Gloucestershire, The Cotswolds (1970), is built around a 15th-century core, with east and west wings added in the 17th and early 18th centuries.
And the house is just the start: Ashley Manor comes with 17 acres of gardens and pasture land, including stabling and outbuildings, in a dream location. For Ashley itself is the sort of place you'd imagine when thinking of the Cotswolds: it's a timeless Cotswold hamlet of honey-coloured houses, barns and cottages set within the Cotswolds National Landscape, four miles north-east of Tetbury, eight miles south-west of Cirencester and 14 miles from Badminton.
Secluded Ashley Manor offers more than 6,500sq ft of characterful accommodation on three floors, including on the ground floor, where there is an entrance lobby, dining hall, library, drawing room, sitting room, kitchen/breakfast room, utility and larder, with extensive cellars below.
The first floor houses the principal bedroom suite in the west wing, with two further suites in the east wing.
The second floor provides two bedrooms and a bathroom in the west wing, with two further bedrooms, a shower room and store room in the east wing.
Further accommodation is available in the one-bedroom stable cottage and the triple-aspect barn with its vaulted ceiling. Outbuildings include garaging, a pool house, and a stable block with three boxes, a tackroom, workshop and garden office.
The gardens, designed and created by the present owners, form a series of ‘rooms’ separated by mature yew hedging and Cotswold stone walls. Far-reaching views take the eye down an avenue of oriental plane trees to the open countryside beyond.
Nearby, the topiary and summerhouse garden boasts a south-facing stone summerhouse, currently used as an art studio. On the southern boundary, the enclosed swimming pool garden is a wonderfully private spot in which to while away the hours.
In the late 16th century, the manor of Ashley was given by Elizabeth I to a maid of honour, Helena Snakenborg, whose husband, Sir Thomas Gorges, was ambassador to Sweden in 1582. It was he who arrested Mary, Queen of Scots in 1586 and he held various influential posts at Court until his death in 1610. On Helena’s death in 1635, the manor passed to her son, Sir Theobald Gorges, who almost certainly built the earlier part of the present house. He died in 1647, leaving the estate to his nephew Richard, later Baron Gorges.
In 1709, having no direct heirs, Lord Gorges settled the estate on a distant cousin, Ferdinando Gorges, on the occasion of his marriage, at which point the house was extended and altered, as date stones of 1712 and 1715 clearly show. On Ferdinando’s death in 1738, the estate passed to a cousin, John Beresford, who died four years later. The manor was then acquired by Onesiphorus Paul, a wealthy clothier, whose son, Sir George Onesiphorus Paul, sold it to neighbouring landowner Thomas Estcourt of Estcourt Park in 1790.
In 1920, it was acquired by a Mr Hoskins and it remained in his family until, in 2004, the present owners bought the estate and commissioned the well-known conservation architects Watson Bertram & Fell of Bath to carry out a meticulous, two-year-long renovation of the atmospheric manor house.
Ashley Manor is for sale via Savills — see more details.
