This Grade I-listed mansion — with 1,700 acres, 20 extra houses and its own racecourse — is one of the grandest privately-owned properties in Britain
Penny Churchill takes a look at the Edgcote Estate, the 'crown jewel of Northamptonshire'.
There are sales and then there are sales. Edgcote is the latter.
This sublime, 1,700-acre estate sits in the Northamptonshire parish of Chipping Warden and Edgcote, bounded by the River Cherwell, some five miles or so from Banbury. It's the jewel in Northamptonshire's crown, with a rich, often turbulent history going back almost 1,000 years — and it has just come to the market. Crispin Holborow of Savills Private Office is overseeing matters for this most historic and refined of country estates, either as a whole at a guide price of ‘excess £45 million’, or in two lots.
The saloon overlooking the gardens is one of Edgcote’s many exceptional reception rooms, featuring timber flooring, an ornate plaster ceiling and a grand stone fireplace.
Lot 1, on offer at a guide price of ‘excess £20m’, comprises the Grade I-listed, Georgian Edgcote House and Park, set in 288 acres of gardens, grounds, parkland, pasture and woodland, together with 13 houses, which include the Old Rectory, Mill House, various cottages and flats, plus a traditional stable courtyard and a secondary stable yard with traditional and modern farm buildings at Home Farm.
A guide price of ‘excess £25m’ is quoted for Lot 2, Edgcote Farms, a diverse portfolio of agricultural, equestrian, residential and commercial property, including the well-equipped Lodge Farm, two equestrian yards, gallops, a racecourse, three traditional stone barn ranges with development potential, 20 houses, annexes and cottages, plus extensive arable land, pasture and woodland.
Following the Norman Conquest, William the Conqueror granted Edgcote to his principal adviser, the ruthless Geoffrey de Mowbray, Bishop of Coutances. By about 1240, it was owned by Isabel de Bruce, grandmother of Robert the Bruce, who was crowned King of Scotland in 1306, whereupon his English lands were seized by the English Crown.
By 1410, Edgcote was held by Henry, Prince of Wales, who, on acceding to the throne as Henry V, sold the lands to a courtier, Richard Buckland, a wealthy merchant and ship-owner. Later, in 1469, the estate was the setting for the Battle of Edgcote during the Wars of the Roses.
Writing in Country Life (January 10, 1920), the magazine’s Architectural Editor, Henry Avray Tipping, traces the rise and fall of Thomas Cromwell, who made his fortune as wingman to Cardinal Wolsey and bought Edgcote in 1535. Following Wolsey’s disgrace in 1529, Cromwell earned Henry VIII’s favour by his handling of the Dissolution of the Monasteries, but lost it again when he chose the German princess Anne of Cleves as the King’s new wife ‘for her Protestantism and political connections and not for her personal appearance’.
Edgcote in Country Life in January 1920. It's remarkable how little the essence of the rooms have changed in the last century.
Cromwell’s fall was swift and brutal, as Tipping relates: ‘It is in January, 1540, that he brings about the Anne of Cleves marriage. In April he is created Earl of Essex, in June Norfolk accuses him of treason, in July his head falls on Tower Hill… and so Edgcote, after five years of Cromwell ownership, became one of the many manors granted to Anne of Cleves as part of her divorce settlement.’ She had no interest in living there and, in 1546, the estate was sold to the Chauncy family, prominent Northamptonshire landowners in whose hands it remained for the next 270 years.
By 1742, the estate had passed to Richard Chauncy, a London merchant, who rebuilt the original Tudor house between 1748 and 1754 to the designs of the architect William Jones. The ambitious redevelopment included the construction of the stables courtyard and ancillary offices, designed by William Smith of Warwick, between 1745 and 1748. William Henry Chauncy, who inherited on his father’s death in 1760, was the last of the Chauncy male line and, following his death in 1788, the 3,000-acre estate eventually passed by marriage to the Cartwrights of Aynho in 1847.
Although badly hit by the long drawn out agricultural depression of the late 1800s, the Cartwrights hung on at Edgcote until 1924, when the estate came to the market for the first time since the 1540s. Two years later, the house and estate were acquired by Raymond Courage of the Courage brewing family who, together with his son, Edward, developed Edgcote as a successful National Hunt racing enterprise which saw Edward establish himself as a leading owner-trainer in the 1950s and 1960s.
The estate is now home to two successful racing yards, both let to established trainers — Ben Case at Wardington Gate Farm and Alex Hales at Trafford Bridge Farm.
The Courage family remained at Edgcote until 2005, when the 1,800-acre estate was acquired in a private sale by businessman David Allen, another keen racing man, who continued the careful conservation and management of the estate until his death in October 2015. His widow, Ann, remained at Edgcote House until her death in November 2024.
Although currently unoccupied, Edgcote House has been impeccably maintained and retains much of its original splendour, with elegant accommodation extending to some 25,908sq ft over four floors, including six beautifully proportioned reception rooms, eight bedrooms and five bathrooms on the first floor, additional accommodation on the second floor and further space for offices, cellars, or alternative uses on the lower ground floor.
With admirable foresight, an isoenergy, lake-sourced heating system provides a substantial saving of about 70% in fuel costs compared with the original oil-fired fossil-fuel boiler.
Outside, extensive formal gardens, an established treescape and sweeping lawns lead down to an 8½-acre lake fed by the River Cherwell — famously featured in the 1995 adaptation of Pride and Prejudice — and a kitchen garden, tennis court and traditional stable yard, the whole surrounded by Edgcote’s historic parkland.
The estate is interspersed with small blocks of mainly broadleaved woodland, most of which dates back to the mid 1800s. Some new woodland has also been planted in recent years as part of a parkland restoration plan cleverly designed to distract from the construction and use of HS2, which will pass through a tunnel to the north of the Edgcote estate.
Edgcote is for sale via Savills — see more details.
