Former MoD rehabilitation centre is up for sale
Historic Headley Court was set up as a rehab centre after the Second World War to care for injured RAF pilots and aircrew.


RAF pilots and aircrew during the Second World War lucky enough to survive their injuries might have earned themselves a stay at neo-Jacobean Headley Court, high up on the North Downs at the back of Box Hill, Surrey.
‘For almost 70 years,’ says Air Vice Marshal Anthony J. Stables, chairman of the Headley Court Charity, ‘the medical rehabilitation facility at Headley Court has cared for wounded, injured and sick members of the Armed Forces and, as a consequence, holds a very special place in many peoples’ hearts.’
Next year, the MoD will relocate to Nottinghamshire and substantial Headley Court is for sale with Knight Frank as a whole or in lots. With 82 acres, an attractive Grade II- listed mansion and a range of accommodation, offices, sporting and rehabilitation facilities, there are endless possibilities for its future use.
‘We expect to see interest from UK and overseas purchasers including private individuals, institutions, hotel and retirement housing operators and developers,’ comments Knight Frank partner Emma Cleugh (020–7861 5427).
Headley Court is on the market with Knight Frank – see more pictures and details.
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Annunciata grew up in the wilds of Lancashire and now lives in Hampshire with a husband, two daughters and an awful pug called Parsley. She’s been floating round the Country Life office for more than a decade, her work winning the Property Magazine of the Year Award in 2022 (Property Press Awards). Before that, she had a two-year stint writing ‘all kinds of fiction’ for The Sunday Times Travel Magazine, worked in internal comms for Country Life’s publisher (which has had many names in recent years but was then called IPC Media), and spent another year researching for a historical biographer, whose then primary focus was Graham Greene and John Henry Newman and whose filing system was a collection of wardrobes and chests of drawers filled with torn scraps of paper. During this time, she regularly gave tours of 17th-century Milton Manor, Oxfordshire, which may or may not have been designed by Inigo Jones, and co-founded a literary, art and music festival, at which Johnny Flynn headlined. When not writing and editing for Country Life, Annunciata is also a director of TIN MAN ART, a contemporary art gallery founded in 2021 by her husband, James Elwes.
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