Mary Berry's daughter is selling her Oxfordshire home — and it's a wild fantasy of a home, the likes of which you've never seen
Blenheim Farm, near the village of Ewelme, defies every convention of the country house.
Dame Mary Berry's daughter Belles Berry clearly has cooking in her DNA. She trained at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris, and not long ago co-authored a bestselling cookbook, Menolicious.
But it turns out that the daughter of the national treasure and former Great British Bake Off judge is just as talented with art and design as she is with food. We know this because her Oxfordshire home, Blenheim Farm, is up for sale — and it is an absolute feast for the eyes.
The words 'Oxfordshire farmhouse' usually refer to a crumbling-round-the-edges Georgian home, but not in this case. Instead, it's a wildly colourful, contemporary family home near Ewelme that throws a joyful challenge at the idea of what a country home could and should be.
The agent, Stephen Christie-Miller, describes it as ‘one of the most spectacular contemporary homes I’ve seen.’ And that pretty much covers it for us as well.
Approached from afar there are clues to its modern take in the abundance of glazing and its low profile within the charming gardens and the 10 acres of land that it sits in.
It's inside, however, where the fun really starts. The open-plan kitchen/dining/family room is vast — 46ft by 23ft — and takes up an entire quarter of the ground floor of the 4,100 sq ft main house.
Beyond being a place to cook, eat and cook, it's also a hub for the ground flooor, connecting to the imposing entrance hall — with its aquamarine tiles and a water feature — as well a study and the wonderful office-slash-library (pictured at the top of the page), where bookshelves reach from floor to ceiling and brightly-coloured furniture and fittings are illuminated from above by the skylight.
There's more of that to come: the sitting room is tucked away off a different corner of the hall, and it's astonishing. The walls are decked in startling hues of yellow, pink, blue and more — and once your eyes focus, you realise that the whole space is decorated with floor-to-ceiling pop-art, where Warhol's tins of soup sit alongside James Bond, Wonderwoman and JFK.
The five bedrooms and bathrooms: over here, a polished copper bath; over there, an armoire so charmingly stylised that you half-expect it to burst into song like its counterpart Beauty and the Beast-style.
The entire house is built on one storey, with all the living spaces on one side and all the accommodation on the other, making a logical split between the sides of the house — and thanks to what look like double-thickness walls between the halves, soundproofing on this six-year-old building appears good enough that you can throw a party without worrying about waking up the kids.
For make no mistake: this is a party house on a grand scale, where even an ordinary light fitting has been replaced with a disco ball.
And beyond the main house, there's more for those looking to have fun: a swimming pool, tennis court and a fantastic gym/party barn/games room are within the grounds. There's even a separate cottage.
The space around the buildings grounds are a mix of formal areas and fields, including a rose garden that is full of Dame Mary's favourite bloom, ‘Chandos Beauty’, which produces Hybrid Tea flowers in Champagne and pale-apricot hues.
Blenheim Farm is for sale through Savills — see more details.
