Four country houses with their own tennis courts, as seen in Country Life

Cornwall — £5 million

About midway between Falmouth and the Helford River, close to the village of Mawnan Smith, lie the idyllic 31-acre environs of Penwarne. The manor was first recorded in 1313; the current house was built in the late 18th century, with a major structural renovation in the 1980s, and the gardens open every spring via Cornwall Gardens Trust in support of various charities.

Today, the modernised Georgian house, with its six bedrooms and views of Falmouth Bay, is an occasional film set. As well as a hard tennis court in Wimbledon purple and green, the grounds contain a swimming pool, walled garden, kitchen garden, duck pond, water tower, Japanese garden and ‘Jungle’, all interspersed by pathways and streams, plus a sloping lawn in front of the gravel forecourt fringed by specimen trees. Two two-bedroom cottages accessed via a separate driveway could be let.
£5 million via Savills

East Sussex — £2.75 million

Complete with a very familiar bridge, an area of small lakes within the nearly 12-acre landscape of Tappington Grange is a homage to Monet’s lily ponds at Giverny in France.

Within the rest are lawns, woodland, a swimming pool, a tennis court, a line of pleached lime trees and a timber barn — a rural haven that is somehow within quarter of a mile of Wadhurst station, with fast services to London.

The Grade II-listed, eight-bedroom house dates to the late 17th century, with high ceilings, fireplaces galore and some fine plaster work in the drawing room.
£2.75m via Hamptons

Norfolk — £1.7 million

Once part of the estate of Hunstanton Hall, former long-time home of the Le Strange family, five-bedroom The Clock Tower — a reworking of the former Victorian coach house by the architect Charles Morris — is approached through picturesque parkland beyond a small moat; Morris’s Gothic stone-mullion windows are particularly distinctive.

Expansive gardens include a paddock, orchard and tennis court and there is an option to purchase a separate two-bedroom cottage. Old Hunstanton, some 18 miles north of King’s Lynn, is a popular coastal village with its championship golf course, clifftop walks, lighthouse and ruins of 13th-century St Edmund’s Chapel.
£1.7m via Sowerbys

Cheshire — £2.45 million

Laid out around Grade II-listed Hatherton Lodge, in Hatherton village, not too far from Nantwich, are some 13 acres, punctuated with formal gardens, woodland, a walled garden, lake, sweeping drive, tennis court and pasture.

A standout feature of the six-bedroom Regency main house, built as a response to the 19th-century Picturesque movement, is its sun-dappled orangery.

Other buildings include the five-bedroom Stables House, a garage with two-bedroom flat above and a two-storey barn.
£2.45m via Jackson-Stops