What does a property need to fulfil your list of country house dreams? It's a question that all buyers have to ask themselves, no matter if they have a budget of £350,000 or £35 million.
Bayham Hall — which, at £3.6 million via John D Wood, sits between those two extremes — sheds an interesting light on the decisions to be made. This is a home which is as grand as it gets from the outside, as stylish and chic as you could wish for on the inside, prompting the agents to claim that it mixes a Downton Abbey exterior with a Soho House interior.
It's huge, too: almost 8,000sq ft of accommodation, with eight bedrooms (many of which can be configured for other use), spectacular, high-ceilinged living spaces, and a hallway with staircase that lends the place real grace and beauty.
Take the kitchen, for example. It was once the library, but now that space has become a huge, bright room at the heart of a house which blends the modern with period living in plentiful creative and practical ways.
The choices of art and decor are what give this Kent house its contemporary twist on classic country house accoutrements. Thus we have a Chesterfield sofa adorned with boldly patterned cushions, and a four-poster bed that is the antithesis of the heavy, dark timber, curtained four-poster you might expect when coming up the drive.
As well as all this grandeur within, Bayham Hall also has a fine rural setting in over five acres of grounds and gardens, while nearby Tunbridge Wells offers a town that both provides plenty in its own right, and also a fast rail service in to London.
The compromise? You don't get to call the whole place your own. The purchase price is for the freehold of the west wing of a mansion designed and built in the 1870s by David Brandon. You'll be able to impress friends by inviting them to come and see you down in the country, and they'll drive up to your door via a Downton-style driveway; but those grounds and gardens will be shared with others who live on this estate, and in other parts of the house.
For some that will be a deal breaker (they might to look at nearby homes such as this which offer space and privacy without that period drama grandeur). For others it'll probably be a boon, since isolation and worries about ground maintenance are two things which make some country house buyers think twice. Neither is an issue here.
So that puts the ball back in the buyers' court. Is this how and where you want to live? Is this a better choice for you than a similarly-priced Edwardian home in Cobham, or a terraced house in the heart of Edinburgh, for example? All that is up to you.
Bayham Hall is for sale at £3.6 million via John D Wood — see more pictures and details.
Credit: Strutt and Parker
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