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The complete package: a quintessential family home in an idyllic village setting . . . Windram House bears so many hallmarks of a classic Georgian property symmetrical architecture with sandstone quoins and lintels, elegant and beautifully proportioned rooms, high ceilings, elaborate Adam-style plasterwork and large multi-paned sash windows – it would be easy to assume it stems from the period. Yet this beautiful house, which sits well back off the road in Oxnam, a small village near Jedburgh with an Old English place name that means ‘the village where ox are bred, was actually only built in 1937 and has been a much loved home to the Simpson family for the last 60 years.
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Windram House, Oxnam
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WHEN YOU’RE BUYING OR SELLING PROPERT Y . . . IT HAS TO BE BSPC
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Windram House, Oxnam Standing in extensive garden grounds sheltered by a woodland and woodland orchard, the property also includes a detached cottage with a living room, small kitchen, shower room and two bedrooms, plus private garden, attached garage and separate gated entrance. The cottage has scope for improvement and an extension at the side, rear or into the garage (subject to planning) and could make a separate home or holiday let or a variety of alternative uses. Beyond the cottage is a paddock and existing outbuilding, which could be adapted to provide stables (there is water but no electricity). Alternatively, as this site is accessed directly from the road and currently has planning consent for a detached house, there is scope for development – an ideal opportunity for several generations of the same family to live together but in separate homes.
Featured Property • Windram House, Oxnam, TD8 6RD Price: Offers Around £495,000 • Details on: Page 8
Windram, which takes its name from the windram (windmill) generator that originally supplied the house with electricity (happily, long since replaced with mains power), is an ideal family home – spacious, but not so big as to be high maintenance. Beautiful gardens comprising level lawns, mature trees and shrubs, kitchen garden, and a patio complete with extending sun canopy, complete what is an exceptionally pretty picture.
The interior of the main house offers flexible accommodation, with a traditional slate-floored entrance vestibule with cloakroom off leading into a newly carpeted reception hall, star of which is a carved oak and Columbian pine staircase and Columbian pine doors. Off the hall is an elegant drawing room where features include dual aspect windows, French doors opening onto the patio and garden, an attractive period-style fireplace and open fire - and in true Georgian style, delicate but decorative ceiling and cornice plasterwork.
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“We also felt instantly at home in the house and have been very happy here. It’s a wonderful home and rural environment in which to bring up children, yet only ten The formal dining room is a similarly sizable reception room, again with dual aspect windows, working fireplace, and ornate plasterwork. Completing the ground floor accommodation is an attractive study/snug, and an 18ft dining–size fitted kitchen (Aga included) with an adjoining sun room, which is glazed on three sides and has access to the gardens. Upstairs, off a particularly bright landing that receives abundant natural light from a triple window, are four bedrooms (three double size and one single) and a bathroom with adjoining WC and a large linen cupboard, the latter with scope to extend the existing bathroom layout. When Jean Simpson and her husband George bought the property in the 1950s they were inspired by the house but also by the setting. “We had three daughters and loved the fact that Oxnam is a proper village, with a primary school,” says Jean. “We also felt instantly at home in the house and have been very happy here. It’s a wonderful home and rural environment in which to bring up children, yet only ten miles from Kelso and just four miles from Jedburgh.”
miles from Kelso and just four miles from Jedburgh”
A lovely final tribute, the original owner - a lady who was 71 when she built the house and lived in it for a further ten years – left a little plaque above the door from the vestibule to the hall, which reads: ‘Bless this House.’ The plaque has remained in place ever since – and will be there to welcome Windram’s new owners, who like the Simpsons, will doubtless feel doubly blessed.
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“the property also includes a detached cottage with private garden, attached garage and separate gated entrance”