Hidden Herefordshire

BOUNDED by Shropshire to the north, Worcestershire to the east, Gloucestershire to the south-east, and the Welsh counties of Monmouthshire and Powys to the west, dreamy, landlocked Herefordshire, best known for its fruit, cider and cattle, is one of the smallest, least-populated and most rural counties in England.

Having tested the water at the height of the pandemic, Will Matthews of Knight Frank (020–7861 1440) and Crispin Holborow of Savills (020–7016 3780) are overseeing the relaunch onto the market of the pristine, 266-acre Poston Court estate at Vowchurch, nine miles from Hay-on-Wye and 11 miles from Hereford, at a guide price of £9.55 million. The focal point of the estate is Grade II*listed Poston House, which stands on the site of a medieval deer park high in the western hills, looking out over the glorious Golden Valley to the Black Mountains and the Forest of Dean.

The original Georgian house was designed in 1765 by the architect Sir William Chambers, of Kew Gardens fame, as a shooting lodge for Sir Edward Boughton, whose father bought the manor of Poston from the 5th Duke of Beaufort’s trustees in 1749. In the late 1800s, the house was altered and extended, with the addition of east and west wings. The estate grounds were laid out by Sir Thomas Robinson, who was master gardener to George III, and many of the magnificent trees seen at Poston today were planted at that time.

In the 1960s, the estate was sold to a local farmer, after which the ‘very charming shooting box’ mentioned in Pevsner went into rapid decline. By 1988, when Esmond and Susie Bulmer bought the Poston estate, the house was a virtual ruin, its classic late18th-century rotunda a nesting place for hens.

An article by Mary Miers in C OUNTRY L IFE (July 7, 2005 ) traces the transformation of Poston House from a forlorn wreck to an ‘arresting country house on a diminutive scale’, thanks to an inspired collaboration between the Bulmers, the architect Philip Jebb and master-builders Treasure & Son of Ludlow.

The remodelling of Poston House involved the restoration of the 18th-century core, comprising the south-facing round room, the hall, the staircase and the Doric portico, and the replacement of the Victorian wings by two-storey pavilions in keeping with the original Chambers design. The former gate lodge, used as a farmhouse in Victorian times, was turned into a guest annexe, with buildings in the farm courtyard later converted into an office, a gardener’s cottage and garaging.

During their tenure, the present owners, who bought Poston Court in 2015, have, according the agents, transformed ‘a timeless classical house into a modern masterpiece’, thanks to an extensive and minutely detailed programme of renovation, repair and/or rebuilding of the entire house, orangery and pool house, lodge, cottages and estate buildings, all carried out by a dedicated team of specialist craftsmen.

The main house offers 4,362sq ft of glamorous and colourful accommodation including an elegant drawing room, a comfortable library, a Chambers circular dining room, a bespoke Martin Moore kitchen and three bedroom suites, with a further three bedroom suites in Poston Lodge, and four further bedrooms in Poston Cottage.

Having recently found a buyer for The Old Rectory in the village of Pudleston, four miles east of Leominster and 14 miles south of Ludlow, Mr Holborow is also handling the sale—at a guide price of £7.5m—of Grade II-listed Pudleston Court, the principal house of the village, set in 49 acres of formal gardens, parkland and woodland with views over the surrounding rich farmland and the Welsh mountains.

Pudleston Court was acquired by local grandee Elias Chadwick in 1845 following the death of its previous owner, who was rector of Pudleston. He subsequently rebuilt the house in pink sandstone with a battlemented roofline in the Tudor Gothic style to the designs of Liverpool architect J. T. Brearley. It was later described as ‘a handsome modern mansion in the castellated style standing on an eminence in a beautifully undulating park of over 200 acres ornamented with shrubberies, plantations and sheets of water’. In the late 20th century, Pudleston Court was the home of Dutch supermarket entrepreneur Albert Heijn, who lived there until his death in 2011.

Restored to the highest of standards in recent years, Pudleston Court offers sumptuous accommodation on two main floors, including a reception hall, grand hall, drawing room, library, sitting room, kitchen/breakfast room, dining room, office, nine principal bedroom suites, a cinema complex, an indoor swimming pool complex, a staff flat and extensive cellars. It comes with five cottages (two with indoor swimming pools), two entrance lodges and two newly built houses, most currently let on an Airbnb basis and producing a substantial income.

Finally, Lindsay Cuthill’s Blue Book Agency (07967 555545) is handling the sale of historic, Grade I-listed Rudhall Manor, three miles east of Ross-on-Wye in south-east Herefordshire, close to the Welsh border and the northern edge of the Forest of Dean. A guide price of £3.25m is quoted for the wonderfully atmospheric manor house set in 10 acres of picturesque landscaped gardens leading down to the Rudhall Brook, which enters the grounds via a waterfall and is crossed by a series of bridges. The brook