Lea Hurst, in the traditional Derbyshire village of Holloway, is at first glance a classic and beautiful stone-built, Grade II-listed home overlooking the scenic Derwent Valley at the south-eastern edge of the Peak District.
Look beyond that first impression, however, and you find some fascinating history: Lea Hurst was Florence Nightingale’s much-loved childhood home, and it's now seeking a new owner. Blue Book's Sebastian Hipwood quotes a guide price of £3.75m for what is a splendid country home set in more than 19 acres of beautifully landscaped gardens and parkland on high ground overlooking the Derwent Valley.
The house offers generous living space on several levels, with four principal reception rooms, including a triple-aspect formal drawing room, a large kitchen/breakfast room, 13 bedrooms and eight bathrooms.
Lea Hurst was inherited in 1815 by Florence Nightingale's father, William Shore, as part of the estate of his great-uncle, Peter Nightingale, whose surname he assumed.
At the time, the site was occupied by a relatively modest Jacobean farmhouse, which Nightingale expanded and incorporated into the present house, built in the Elizabethan style between 1820 and 1821, when the woman who would become a trailblazing nurse and campaigner was a mere baby (she was born on 12 May, 1820). Somehow it makes her story all the more inspiring: she made her name during the Crimean War, a conflict so brutal she described it as being in 'the kingdom of hell'; yet she had spent her formative years in a home that is a little slice of heaven.
The Nightingale family moved to Embley Park in Hampshire in 1825, but they retained Lea Hurst as a summer house, where they spent several months of the year. It remained in the Nightingale family until 1846, after which it became a home for retired nurses, before being bought by the Royal Surgical Society as a nursing home, which operated until 2004.
Lea Hurst’s present owner, Peter Kay, was working as a banker in Singapore when he saw an advertisement announcing Florence Nightingale’s childhood home for sale.
In 2011, he completed the purchase of the house and spent the next three years renovating it through-out and a further 12 months re-creating its wonderful Victorian gardens.
Now, as the Kay family moves on to a new chapter in Asia, Mr Kay echoes the words of Florence herself, who wrote ‘it breaks my heart to leave Lea Hurst’, adding ‘but the most satisfying thing for us has been turning the house back into a family home for the first time since Florence and her sister were running around here in the 1820s. Our two youngest children were born in the house and it has been a wonderful place for children to grow up in’.
Lea Hurst is for sale at £3.75m — see more details and pictures.
Credit: Strutt and Parker
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