Country Life early property pages 10th May 2023

EVERY WEEK

The Cotswolds

80 pages of dream property

MAY 10, 2023

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Quintessential Cotswolds

AFTER 30 happy years with Savills, Lindsay Cuthill (07967 555545) has joined the ranks of the Cotswold independents with the foundation of his Blue Book Agency on home soil at Horton, on the Cotswold escarpment three miles from Chipping Sodbury, a stone’s throw from Badminton. He has hit the ground running with the launch onto the open market, for the first time in 30 years, of illustrious Lyegrove House near Badminton, a classic, Grade II*listed Cotswold country house set in 18½ acres of famous formal and walled gardens and surrounded by the lush pastures and woodland of the 52,000-acre Badminton estate, of which it was once a part. A guide price of £12.5 million is quoted for Lyegrove, which first appears as an estate in its own right in 1461, when it was held by John and Alice Codrington.

The present house was built in the early 17th century, extended in the 18th century and further altered in the 19th century. Bought as a dower house by the Duke of Beaufort in the early 1900s, it was sold by the 9th Duke to the Earl and Countess of Westmoreland in 1926. According to an article in COUNTRY L IFE (December 14, 1929) ‘when the Countess of Westmoreland took the house in hand it had lost most of its original character, but presented great possibilities to an architect of imagination. The fullest advantage of

these has been taken by Mr G. H. Kitchin, who has helped the Countess in laying out the gardens and has given the interior of the house a charm and interest which it never possessed before’.

Between 1927 and 1932, Kitchin worked with Lady Westmoreland, a talented artist and plantswoman, in a close collaboration that resulted in ‘a fine harmony between plants and buildings’. As well as executing major improvements to the house, Kitchin designed the formal gardens in the walled kitchen garden area, adding the fine gate piers in the north wall, a loggia and a lily pool.

According to the Historic England Register of Parks and Gardens, much of this planting remains and was considerably restored by Christopher Selmes, Lyegrove’s owner in the 1980s, when a third formal garden was created in the last of the kitchen gardens to the south. The current owners have continued Lyegrove’s grand gardening tradition with the help of RHS Gold medal-winning designer Jinny Blom, who has designed a garden to suit modern tastes that acknowledges the past. Approached along a half-mile-long avenue of beech and lime trees, Lyegrove House is arranged around a central courtyard, with the principal reception rooms, all south facing and spacious, leading easily from one to another. In all, the house offers more than 15,000sq ft of elegant accommodation on

three floors, including five reception rooms, kitchen and domestic offices on the ground floor and seven bedroom suites and a splendid library on the first floor. The second floor is laid out as a self-contained apartment, with an additional guest or staff apartment located on the ground floor to the north of the courtyard.

The market in this delightful corner of England is as robust as ever

Impressive stone ancillary buildings include a listed gatehouse lodge, two guest cottages, and a garage block with a coach house above. The magnificent stable yard provides 16 loose boxes, tack and feed rooms, a stable flat and two coach houses, with part of the original stables converted to create an impressive

leisure complex that includes a private screening room, a fully equipped gym, and one of the most remarkable indoor swimming pools in the country.

Local knowledge is a powerful tool when it comes to buying or selling a country property, and Mr Cuthill has experience of both,

as the background to the sale of Grade IIlisted Widden Hill House near Horton, reveals.

Currently on the market with Blue Book at a guide price of £3.5m, Widden Hill House is a grand, late-Georgian former rectory, designed by Henry Lane, a pupil of William Inwood, and built of Cotswold stone next

Facing page and above: Lyegrove House near Badminton, Gloucestershire, is known for its 18½ acres of formal gardens. £12.5m

Property market

with a reception hall, four reception rooms, a superb open-plan kitchen, a boot room and cellar on the ground floor; a master suite, three bedrooms and three bathrooms on the first floor; and a further two en-suite bedrooms on the second floor.

to an Iron Age hill fort on the Cotswold Edge, with far-reaching views across Sodbury Vale to the Black Mountains. Coincidentally, Mr Cuthill’s own house is located down the hill in what was once the walled kitchen garden to Widden Hill House. Built in the Greek Revival style for a former rector of St James’s Church, Horton, who was evidently a man of means, Widden Hill was reputedly placed in its lofty hillside location by the rector, who, on a clear day, liked to exchange signals with his brother in the Black Mountains, some 70 miles away, using a heliograph and the rays of the sun.

Although difficult to verify, the story confirms the extraordinary views enjoyed from the house, which stands in 12 acres of mature landscaped gardens and grounds, and comes with stabling and outbuildings, plus a twobedroom guest cottage. Described as ‘a grand house on a small scale’, Widden Hill offers light-filled, well-proportioned rooms, including an entrance hall, three main reception rooms, a family room, a kitchen/breakfast room, six bedrooms, three bathrooms, a cellar and garaging.

An equestrian background is a badge of honour in fashionable south Gloucestershire, where Rupert Sweeting of Knight Frank (07836 260236) and Crispin Holborow of Savills (07967 555511) are overseeing the sale of picturesque Saddlewood Manor, a ringfenced, 172-acre equestrian and residential

estate in one of the most sought-after Cotswold locations, seven miles south-west of Tetbury and 24 miles from Cheltenham.

Now on the market at a guide price of £8.75m, the focal point of the estate is a charming, Grade II-listed, 17th-century stone manor house, extended in the 20th century and renovated throughout in recent years, although many original features have been retained. In all, the house offers 7,270sq ft of bright and cheerful accommodation on three floors,

The front of the house faces west, overlooking its own drive and much of the land, which has been farmed on an arable rotation by the present owner, who now plans to drill the land to grass. The previous owner used 25 acres to create a polo field that used to benefit from an underground irrigation system. To the rear of the house are formal gardens, with, close by, a leisure complex and guest cottage. Further away from the house is another cottage, extensive stabling and an impressive range of stone farm buildings, one of which has been converted to a party barn.

Twenty miles or so to the north-east, Rupert Sturgis of Knight Frank’s Cirencester office (01285 882001) is handling the sale of the delightful Manor House in the village of South Cerney, which stands at the southeastern rise of the Cotswold hills with

Saddlewood Manor is a 172-acre equestrian property in south Gloucestershire. £8.75m

Greek Revival-style Widden Hill House is set in 12 acres at Horton, Gloucestershire. £3.5m

At Lyegrove House, Jinny Blom has designed a garden to suit modern tastes that acknowledges the past

Property market

13 acres of mature gardens and grounds on the edge of the village, with distant views over the surrounding hills. Impeccably renovated by the current owners, it offers everything an active family could wish for, including a party barn with a sitting room, a fully fitted kitchen, a cinema and a gym, plus a swimming pool and a hard tennis court. The main house offers comfortable family accommodation on two main floors, including a reception hall, four reception rooms, a kitchen/breakfast room, three bedroom suites, two further bedrooms and a bathroom.

running through it the River Churn, from which the name Cerney derives. For sale at a guide price of £2.85m, the quintessential Cotswold-stone house, listed Grade II, which dates from the 1760s, stands in four-fifths of an acre of walled garden next to the church in the oldest part of the village, 4½ miles south of Cirencester and five miles from Kemble station, with the lakes of the Cotswold Water Park on the doorstep.

Although apparently never linked to any of the surrounding manors, Manor House is a reassuringly solid family home with accommodation on four floors, including a reception hall, three reception rooms, an orangery, a kitchen/breakfast room and wine

cellar, seven bedrooms and four bathrooms in the main building, with a further two bedrooms in the adjoining wing. Lovely stone outbuildings include a coach house with its original stables, a garage and a party room.

Further north, close to the county border with Oxfordshire, Mr Sweeting is handling the sale of Grade II-listed Maces Farm near the unspoilt Saxon village of Wyck Rissington, the smallest of four Rissington villages, which comprises 50-odd 17th-century houses surrounded by farmland and open countryside, 1½ miles from Bourton-on-the-Water and four miles from Stow-on-the-Wold.

He quotes a guide price of £6.5m for the substantial 17th-century farmhouse set in

Across the county border in Oxfordshire, Luke Morgan (07917 267320) has joined forces with Dominic Spencer-Churchill of Londonbased agents D. S. Churchill to establish the firm’s Cotswold office based in Chipping Norton. He quotes a guide price of £6.15m for Grade II-listed Millbrook House in the popular village of Broadwell, a couple of miles north-east of Stow-on-the-Wold. Built in about 1720, with later additions by Guy Dawber in about 1890, Millbrook House is a fine village manor house set in enchanting grounds overlooking its paddocks and down to the brook from which it takes its name.

Held in the same ownership since the 1950s, it has three reception rooms, all with high ceilings and some endearing original features, notably the drawing room with its large mullioned windows overlooking the garden and down to the brook, which leads into the River Evenlode.

The kitchen, which has a cellar below, leads to a two-bedroom flat that can either be incorporated into the main house or used separately. There are seven bedrooms and five bathrooms on the first and second floors, which are ideally set up for entertaining weekend guests.

Manor House is a classic Cotswold-stone home at South Cerney, Gloucestershire. £2.85m

Handsome Maces Farm is a 17th-century farmhouse set in 13 acres in the Saxon village of Wyck Rissington in Gloucestershire. £6.5m

Properties of the week

Get set

From Daylesford Organic to the Soho Farmhouse, western England’s AONB still seems like the place to be

Oxfordshire, £3.6 million

In Swinbrook, what was once two, is now one, after cottages were combined to create this two-storey Tudor-style family home. With four/six bedrooms, four bathrooms and countless reception rooms (four), this Cotswold-stone home is ideal for entertaining and appreciating the surrounding AONB. Plenty of period features are still on show throughout, such as high ceilings, exposed beams, open fireplaces and delightful cast-iron lattice windows. The beauty of the interiors is matched by the three-quarter-acre gardens, which feature three lawned terraces, a mature orchard, which leads to a summerhouse and weeping-willow walk, and well-stocked beds throughout. Knight Frank (01865 264879)

Wiltshire, £1.495 million

The year 1828 was a good one for Joseph Neeld and the manor of Grittleton. It was the year that Neeld inherited £800,000 (£71 million) from the silversmith and ‘tyrannical miser’ Philip Rundell, with which he built Grittleton House and improved much of the village. Grittleton is now one of the Cotswolds’s ‘prettiest and most sought-after villages,’ says agent Alistair Heather, and The Old Laundry (formerly The Barton) is one of the finer properties there. Listed Grade II, the house is thought to have been originally part of the Grittleton House estate and originally dates from the 17th century (with further additions in the 20th century). The three-storey rubble-stone building offers a wealth of period features and generous proportions, as well as five bedrooms and a convenient location in the heart of the village. Outside, an attractive walled garden provides lots of space for entertaining and enjoying the views of St Mary’s Church, whereas a stone outbuilding, currently used as a garden store, could easily be repurposed as a home office or studio. Savills (01225 474500)

James Fisher

Properties of the week

Gloucestershire, £3 million

On the outskirts of the pretty village of Painswick, between the city of Gloucester and Stroud, Old Greenhouse Farm provides the complete package, say agents, with a charming Grade II-listed main residence, a cottage, two flats and about seven acres of gardens and grounds. The main property is dressed in traditional Cotswold stone and offers six bedrooms over its three floors. It’s another shining example of tasteful modernisation, with period features such as stone fireplaces, mullioned windows and exposed beams working in concert with modern luxury. The ancillary accommodation, which consists of two one-bedroom flats and one two-bedroom cottage (the Little Greenhouse), is attached to the side of the property and benefits from separate access. Whether for hosting guests, intergenerational living or as rental income, there are acres of space within the property. Outside, the gardens consist of extensive lawns interspersed with ornamental ponds, box hedging and a ‘mature, and productive’ mulberry tree. Further afield, the property comes with a lawned paddock of about four acres and about two acres of common land including mature woodland. Hamptons (01452 595249)

Gloucestershire, £1.5 million

Offering a rare chance to be right in the heart of the action, Wolds End House is a Grade II-listed fourbedroom home just off the High Street of Chipping Campden. Set back off the road behind a low dry-stone wall, the Cotswold-stone property, which dates from the 18th century, is approached via the small lawned front garden. The period charm sets in immediately upon arrival, with the entrance hall boasting flagstone floors, exposed beams, timber wall panels and exposed stone walls. Combined with that rustic charm has been a sensitive programme of modernisation, which is most pronounced in the bathrooms (three en suite) and kitchen. Outside, a sunken garden surrounded by raised flowerbeds is set to the rear of the property, as is a corner loggia for relaxing and a ‘substantial’ stone barn that is almost asking for renovation. The many amenities of the market town of Chipping Campden are, of course, on the doorstep. Jackson-Stops (01386 840224)

Oxfordshire, £1.4 million

There is no doubt that Burford, the gateway to the Cotswolds, is one of the prettiest market towns in the country. The downside to that, of course, is the tourists and passing traffic, which means that the smart money is to set up shop on the other side of the River Windrush, in Fulbrook. One such example would be 19th-century Fulbrook Cottage, a detached four-bedroom Cotswoldstone home that is only a short walk from Burford’s High Street. With all four bedrooms situated on the first floor, the ground floor is perfect for entertaining, with a tripleaspect drawing room, fully-fitted kitchen and a dining room with French doors leading to the garden. Outside, a large garden is mostly laid to lawn, with well-stocked borders and a vegetable patch, and there is further accommodation in the separate one-bedroom annexe. Fine & Country (01608 619919)