Country house selloff

It is being billed as the country house sale of the century. Eight historic mansions go on the open market next month in what land agents say is the biggest single dispersal of stately piles since the ravages of the English civil war.

Estate agents are expecting a rush to buy the houses at up to £5m each. All are grade I or grade II listed, most have rich historical connections and each comes with its own “porcelain collection”: there are up to 50 lavatories in every house.

The sale has been forced by a financial crisis at the Country Houses Association (CHA), a charitable trust that owned the houses and divided them into rented apartments. . .

The houses include Aynhoe Park on the border of Oxfordshire and Northamptonshire, which dates from Jacobean times and was landscaped by Capability Brown. Great Maytham Hall at Rolvenden in Kent was designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens and is the former home of the novelist Frances Hodgson Burnett. It was the inspiration for her book The Secret Garden.

Others with former famous residents are Swallowfield Park near Reading in Berkshire, which dates from the 17th century. It was later the home of the Pitt family, which produced the prime ministers William Pitt the Elder and the Younger.

Gosfield Hall, near Halstead in Essex, was built in the reign of Henry VIII and at different times was the home of Samuel Courtauld, founder of the family textile business, and Sir Adrian Boult, the conductor.

Danny Park, which is set on the Sussex Downs, was used as a secure location for meetings of Lloyd George’s war cabinet during the first world war, while Flete in Devon is a castellated Gothic mansion built for one of the directors of Barings Bank during Queen Victoria’s reign.

Pyt House in Tisbury, Wiltshire, is a Regency seat built by John Bennett MP. Albury Park, near Guildford in, Surrey, was worked on by the designer AWN Pugin.

ADDENDUM: The Art Newspaper is also reporting this news, adding:

Meanwhile, an interim report by the Commissioners of the Church of England has proposed to cut costs by selling of a number of historic episcopal palaces, such as Auckland, Hartlebury, and Rose Castles. A bishop’s residence costs about £50,000 to maintain annually.

Posted by David on January 25, 2004 5:58 PM