When the Edwardian professional classes went house-hunting beyond the suburbs, they sought what Mark Rimell of Strutt & Parker’s country-house department describes as ‘their very own Howards End’, referencing the 1910 novel by E. M. Forster. That is ‘[country homes] close to a railway station with trains into the city’. As a result, the countryside surrounding London and other large cities is peppered with Edwardian country houses that typically feature landscaped gardens and high boundary hedges, providing a secluded retreat.
Rignalls, sitting a mile outside the Buckinghamshire village of Great Missenden and launched on the market at a guide price of £4.5 million, is one such example. And a very fine example it is too.
Designed by the architect Charles Holden in the early days of his career, the house is influenced by the Arts-and-Crafts Movement, although Holden later performed something of a design U-turn by going on to champion a more unadorned style, free of ‘unnecessary’ decorative detailing.
Among his later and better-known works are several stations along the London Underground and the University of London’s Senate House in Bloomsbury (which some described as Stalinist when it was first unveiled).
Externally, the house is typical of the Arts-and-Crafts style, boasting high ceilings and much natural light, as well as steeply pitched roofs and decorative chimneys. Reportedly, the acoustics in the impressive double-height reception hall are so good that Sir Felix’s wife, Augusta, an opera singer, would perform from the galleried landing to guests below.
The house was commissioned in 1909 by Sir Felix Semon. He was a German-British pioneer in neurobiology and a prominent throat-and-speech specialist who had been appointed Physician Extraordinary to Edward VII in 1901 and helped a 23-year-old Winston Churchill overcome his lisp when in the military. In his biography, he is quoted as saying, after the first appointment with the future prime minister: ‘I have just seen the most extraordinary young man I have ever met.’
An interesting further chapter in the house’s history opened up during the Second World War, when Rignalls was occupied by a member of the free French government, the base of which, until the reconquest of North Africa in November 1942, was in St James’s, London SW1 — easy to reach by catching one of the frequent services from Great Missenden station to London Marylebone (today, the journey can take only about 40 minutes).
Rignalls, which stands in about 10¼ acres, was last on the market in 2016, when it was advertised as in need of modernisation. The present owners have undertaken a substantial programme of renovation and restoration to return the property to its original state. The work was carried out by architect Keyvan Lankarani and historical-decorating specialist Patrick Baty.
The principal rooms all face south, overlooking the terraced gardens with glorious views of the Chiltern Hills beyond. This outlook is even more impressive on the first floor, where the main bedroom suite is located, alongside three further bedrooms. The second floor, where there are three more bedrooms, could be used as a self-contained flat.
As part of the original project, Holden commissioned Gertrude Jekyll to design the garden, the drawings for which are now archived at the University of California, Berkeley, US. Although many of her original layouts for country-house gardens have been lost, those at Rignalls have been faithfully restored by landscape designer Todd Longstaffe-Gowan.
The gardens lie predominantly to the south of the house, below a Yorkstone terrace with wide, brick steps leading down to the lawn surrounded by colourful shrubbery. There is a separate timber garage building, recently built, as well as stables, an outbuilding and mature woodland.
Rignalls is for sale via Savills — see more pictures and details.
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