EVERY WEEK
JUNE 15, 2022
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Property market
Penny Churchill
The West awakes Hidden valleys, secret coves, enchanting gardens and castle views can be found among four important country houses new to the market in Devon and Cornwall Grade II-listed Hayne Old Manor in Devon offers more than 7,800sq ft of living space, set in 70 acres of gardens and parkland. £6m
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FTER a strangely languid start to the year, the country-house market in Devon and Cornwall has picked up the pace, with the launch onto the market of a quartet of notable country properties in enviable locations. Lindsay Cuthill of Savills (020–7016 3820) quotes a guide price of ‘excess £6 million’ for secluded, Grade II-listed Hayne Old Manor, which stands in 70 acres of gardens, grounds and parkland in a magical hidden valley on the edge of Dartmoor, less than a mile from the pretty village of Moretonhampstead and 13 miles from Exeter. According to local records, the ‘very ancient large Estate and House’ of Hayne was owned for centuries by the Nosworthy family of Sloncombe until, in 1730, the last Nosworthy heiress, Judith, married a Southmead of nearby Wray Barton, after 132 | Country Life | June 15, 2022
which the estates descended together until, in 1833, that branch of the Southmeads died out and Hayne Manor passed to John Courtier, a distant relative. By then, the old manor house on the estate had fallen into disrepair and was demolished the following year when Courtier built himself a new house on the site. He then sold Hayne to John Newcombe Stevenson and went to live at Wray Barton. Hayne Manor was owned by the Stevensons until 1890, when Col Stevenson sold it to W. H. Smith, later Lord Hambleden, who bought the Manor of Moretonhampstead and North Bovey at the same time. Smith later sold Hayne Manor to his sister, Mrs Seymour, who lived there until the 1930s. The handsome stucco façade of Hayne Old Manor comes into view at the end of a long winding drive that leads through the park
and up to the front of the house, with a back drive providing access to the cottages and stable courtyard. On the west side of the house, beautifully maintained gardens cascade down a sloping grass bank in a series of terraced lawns, herbaceous borders and mature trees to an enchanting ornamental lake—a haven for wildfowl, including several resident swans. The current owners, who acquired the property in 2008, have lavished evident care and attention on the house and grounds, buying in additional land and improving the kitchen, bedrooms and bathrooms. The interior, lit by a domed skylight in the hallway, is light and bright and provides 7,857sq ft of accommodation, including three main reception rooms, a study, sitting room, conservatory, large principal bedroom suite, six further bedrooms, three bathrooms and
Find the best properties at countrylife.co.uk extensive cellars. Additional accommodation is available in two estate cottages. The paved stable courtyard includes a coach house with four traditional loose boxes and a groom’s flat above; now in need of modernisation, this area could be converted to further accommodation or a home office, subject to planning. Refreshingly untouched by time, the picturesque village of Lee on the north Devon coast, between the holiday resort of Ilfracombe and Bull Point lighthouse, is strung out along the slopes of a deep wooded combe, bordered on three sides by rolling Devon countryside and on the fourth by the Bristol Channel. At the head of the combe known locally as Fuchsia Valley, where in summer the hedgerows are ablaze with scarlet flowers, stands Lee Manor, a solid, stone-built, late-Victorian manor house set in 49 acres of gardens and woodland with access to a secret cove and far-reaching views out to sea over Lee Bay.
After a strangely languid start, the country-house market in Devon and Cornwall has picked up the pace Now back on the market with Strutt & Parker after a ‘Covid break’, the house, which is unlisted, was built in 1896–98 for Charles Drake Cutcliffe, the squire of Lee, whose coat-of-arms is inscribed on a wall of the entrance porch. Selling agent Oliver Custance Baker (020–7591 2207) quotes a guide price of £3.95m for Lee Manor, which was renovated throughout by the owners when they bought it some 30 years ago and has been meticulously cared for ever since. Approached through electronically operated wrought-iron gates and up a wide tree-lined drive flanked by rhododendrons, the house offers more than 8,000sq ft of well-proportioned living accommodation centred on an impressive reception hall with an open fireplace, a stone mullioned stained-glass window, wide, three-tiered staircase and minstrel’s gallery. It boasts three reception rooms, a study, kitchen/breakfast room, master suite, six further bedrooms with en-suite facilities and a cellar with games room and bar. In Cornwall, Mr Custance Baker is also handling the sale—at a guide price of £3.95m —of Grade II*-listed Marsland Manor at
Above: Lee Manor stands in 49 acres at the head of Devon’s Fuchsia Valley. £3.95m. Below: Marsland Manor, which has never before been seen on the market, has been described as ‘one of the most interesting and picturesque old houses in Cornwall. £3.95m
Morwenstow, near Bude, which stands in 106½ acres of woodland, undulating farmland, meadows and orchard, just inland of a dramatic headland on the north Cornwall coast and within the Hartland Devon Heritage Coast AONB. Owned by the same farming family for more than 50 years, the manor has never before been seen on the open market. Described in its listing as ‘an unusually complete survival of a double courtyard house’ and by the historian Charles Henderson in his Parochial History of East
Cornwall as ‘one of the most interesting and picturesque old houses in Cornwall’, the substantial stone farmhouse was remodelled as a manor house for the Atkin family on a double courtyard plan between 1656 and 1662. The bright and cheerful main house offers more than 4,000sq ft of comfortable living space, including three reception rooms, a traditional farmhouse kitchen and six double bedrooms, with a further sitting room, dining room, kitchen, bedroom and bathroom in the attached cottage. The complex includes June 15, 2022 | Country Life | 133
Property market
Above and right: Fowey’s The Haven on The Esplanade is ‘arguably the best waterside house currently on market’. £4m two further cottages, one with five bedrooms, the other one bedroom. It comes with extensive barns and outbuildings, plus footpaths lead across the fields to the South West Coast Path and the unspoilt beaches and dramatic rock formations around Morwenstow. Down on the south Cornish coast, Falmouth-based Jonathan Cunliffe (01326 617447) quotes a guide price of £4m for The Haven on The Esplanade in the yachting Mecca of Fowey—arguably the best waterside house currently on market anywhere on the south coast of England and another that has never before been seen on the open market. Only three families have lived at The Haven since it was first built in 1877 by Lt Henry Clarke RN, who named the rooms after the ships in which he served. He was followed by the writer Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, who first visited Fowey in 1879, bought The Haven in 1892 and lived there until his death in 1944. Sir Arthur was much involved with the life of the town: he was chairman of Fowey Harbour Commissioners for more than 20 years and Commodore of the Royal Fowey Yacht Club for more than 30 years. The present owners bought the house from Sir Arthur’s family in 1980. The Haven, listed Grade II, occupies a position of exceptional size and level ground 134 | Country Life | June 15, 2022
overlooking the harbour entrance and is one of very few detached houses on the waterfront. It enjoys uninterrupted views of Pont Pill, Polruan village and out to sea—an everchanging panorama framed by the two castles that sit either side of the harbour. The house offers 7,376sq ft of accommodation on three floors, including four reception rooms, five bedrooms, a large kitchen/breakfast room plus extensive cellars and attics—all of which offer scope for updating and improvement.
The large terraced garden, designed by an Inchbald School of Design graduate, is laid out in two parts—one a formal private garden, the other a less formal area overlooking the harbour with a paved terrace running the length of the house. The kitchen garden on the lowest level has room for a swimming pool and a gate leading down to Whitehouse beach; a gate from the upper-level courtyard garden allows access to the car park, which has room for four/five family cars.
Properties of the week
Annunciata Elwes
There’s no place like home Wonders of Nature and design in the sunny Home Counties Surrey, £2.25 million ‘I was always strong and active in my limbs,’ wrote Gertrude Jekyll of her childhood in the village of Bramley, near Guildford, where the family moved in 1848 and where she and her sister were each given their own gardens to tend. ‘I had no girl companions... It was therefore natural that I should be more of a boy than a girl in my ideas and activities, delighting to go up trees, and to play cricket, and take wasps’ nests after dark, and do dreadful things with gunpowder.’ In 1904, her lifelong love of Nature inspired her to commission Sir Edwin Lutyens to build Millmead House, in the same village, with a view to developing the gardens herself. This five-bedroom house, with a hint of early Georgian in its style, has been enjoyed by the current owners for the past 50 years. The gardens are ‘sensationally laid out,’ say agents, and, covering just over an acre, they include a summerhouse and two pavilions also designed by Lutyens. Knight Frank (01483 617910)
Hertfordshire, £2.495 million Marvellous in mellow yellow and with beautifully kept interiors to match, Ashwell’s Old Rectory—about eight miles from Royston and 19 from Cambridge—enjoys sunny gardens leading down to the River Cam. With five, mostly dual-aspect bedrooms, it’s Grade II listed, dates from about 1830 and sits in just under an acre of land, through which a drive meanders and where mature sycamores, firs, oaks and limes are dotted about. Savills (01223 347261) 136 | Country Life | June 15, 2022
Properties of the week
Buckinghamshire, £4.25 million The fresh interiors and wisteria-clad façade of Hollybush Farm in ‘semi-rural’ Chesham belie its origins as a medieval hall house, but not too much. Traces of history come through all over, from the inglenook fireplace in the drawing room to the ’family room’ with its vaulted ceiling and impressive AV system. The former stables house a guest-bedroom suite, with its own entrance onto the courtyard. Upstairs are three double bedrooms, two en suite, and dressing rooms —all with vaulted ceilings. A separate barn on the other side of the courtyard has been converted into an entertaining space with a private walled garden, kitchen and two bedrooms. For further entertainment, there’s a heated outdoor pool, hot tub and air-conditioned pool house containing a gym. Elsewhere within the six acres are a pretty walled garden, with Victorian-style greenhouse, duck pond with jetty fed by a stream, paddock, orchards and a tennis court. Hamptons (01494 355347)
Kent, £1.75 million Converted in the 1980s to an award-winning design by Lee Evans Architects, Nouds Oast takes advantage of its views towards the Swale estuary by having its kitchen and some reception rooms on the first floor, with direct access to a south-facing terrace. Two former kilns are now the reception room and library and three of the four bedrooms are on the ground floor, except the cornerless master, with its dressing room and en-suite bathroom, which is up on the second floor. A connected annexe contains two further bedrooms, sitting room, kitchen and bathroom. Outside, circular planting mirrors the oast and there’s plenty of colour, plus a tennis court, kitchen garden, garage, workshop and car port. Strutt & Parker (01227 473700) 138 | Country Life | June 15, 2022
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