The essence of perfection: A modern Arts-and-Crafts masterpiece in Surrey

Sometimes, when a house is so special, you need not one, but two, agents to sell it. I always wonder what that looks like. I suppose I could pick up the phone, call an estate agent, and ask them what it’s like to share a listing with a rival. But that sounds a lot like hard work, so I’d rather just imagine it in my head. Will the two agents be like a buddy cop movie? Is one good agent and bad agent? Are we leaning more towards rom com? If you ever see me at a party, or at the pub, and I am staring into the distance, this is likely what I’m thinking about. It’s probably why I don’t get invited to many parties.

Anyway, here’s a house in Surrey that you can buy from Savills and/or Knight Frank, with an asking price of £10.5 million. You might be thinking, reasonably, ‘woah, £10.5 million is a lot for a house’. But you have not seen the house (or, at least, much of the house). And you certainly haven’t read what I have written about the house.

It is named Millhanger Farmhouse, and it is near Chiddingfold. Calling this place a farmhouse seems mildly ridiculous, considering it is more than 11,300sq ft in size. I suppose farmhouses have no maximum or minimum size, but I am once again swerving off topic.

Millhanger has six bedrooms, six bathrooms and six reception rooms. It is an Arts-and-Crafts style house designed by Yiangou in collaboration with Finchatton. It is new, it looks old, and I like that kind of thing. It also comes with a dash fewer than 35 acres of land. Space to do things, both inside and outside. 

Accessed via a private drive, the house is set centrally within its own landscape, on an elevated position, so as to offer 360º views of the surrounding countryside. There are some fine reception rooms, such as the drawing room, the morning room, the dining room (formal), the dining room (informal) and family snug. 

The six bedrooms (five on the first floor, one on the ground floor) are all en-suite, and there is also a staff flat, if having staff is your kind of thing. The property is quite unusual in its layout, with three protruding wings on one side of the home, and a single-storey cloister-cum-courtyard on the other. In the middle of it all is the kitchen. The kitchen being the heart of the home is taken quite literally here, as it is what joins the two structures.

‘The beauty of the butterfly plan is all about the orientation and light, and that it lends itself to a large central hallway that links beautifully to all the other principal rooms; it creates very inviting spaces and a lovely flowing plan,’ said Ross Sharpe, director of Yiangou. 

Interiors-wise, advice was sought from Sims-Hilditch, making the property a veritable who’s who of the Country Life Top 100. In fact, when you visit the Sims-Hilditch website, it is the very first picture you will see. So clearly they are quite proud of it.

Lastly, but certainly not leastly, it’s believed that Millhanger is the first Arts-and-Crafts home to achieve planning permission under Paragraph 84e planning consent. A truly one-of-a-kind home. 

Millhanger Farmhouse is for sale with Knight Frank and Savills for £10.5 million.

Credit: James Baily/Lurot Brand

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