In any country estate, owners ought to be able to find refuge from the busy world. That is the least of what one would expect from outlaying such sums of money to buy them. But that refuge comes in different shapes and sizes. Perhaps you would like your own private peninsula in Dorset? Or maybe something else.
Strutt & Parker are marketing a small country estate of a different nature. Ayot Bury in the Hertfordshire village of Ayot St Peter is a Grade II-listed Georgian manor house overlooking mature parkland and set in just over 40 acres.
The asking price of £10.75m reflects the best-of-both-worlds location; it’s on the edge of what some believe to be one of Hertfordshire’s prettiest rural villages and yet within easy distance of Welwyn Garden City, where trains take only 29 minutes to reach King’s Cross. The handsome, nine-bedroom family home has elegant and spacious reception rooms, including a spectacular 42ft-long ballroom with a beautifully carved marble fireplace.
‘Equally majestic,’ notes Mark Rimell, who is leading the sale, ‘is the drawing room, with hand-painted silk panels, a hardwood floor and fine views through the mullioned windows to the parkland beyond.’
The owners have carefully restored the house over recent years, with significant attention to detail, and there are new heating and electrical systems throughout. Five good-sized bedrooms with bathrooms are on the first floor, with three additional bedrooms and a ‘treatment room’ on the second floor. Accessed both through the house and independently is a cottage, which is ideal for relatives or staff.
Outside, the charms of Ayot Bury are extensive. There is an excellent range of well-kept outbuildings providing stabling, garages, storage and two offices, one used as a home office and the other a secondary workspace with its own kitchen and shower room. Great care has been invested in the gardens, which are mainly laid to lawn and studded with a selection of mature specimen trees and deep banks of rhododendrons.
A York-stone terrace overlooks a peaceful sunken garden and, to the north, set away from the main house, tall hedges shield a floodlit all-weather manège and, separately, the tennis court and its pavilion.
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