The drama of Arts and Crafts

Two superb small estates in Surrey and Hampshire are as desirable for modern owners as they were in their illustrious beginnings

- Penny Churchill

THOSE of us who relied on Netflix to lift their spirits during the long dark evenings of lockdown were rewarded by the screening in January 2021 of The Dig, a haunting dramatisation of the 1939 excavation of an Anglo-Saxon ship burial and its treasure in the grounds of the Sutton Hoo estate, Suffolk, starring Ralph Fiennes and Carey Mulligan. For lovers of historic houses, however, the real star of The Dig was its ‘moody and magnificent’ location, Norney Grange at Shackleford, three miles from Godalming, Surrey, which doubled for Sutton Hoo House in the film.

An important, Grade II*-listed Arts-and crafts house built by the architect C. F. A. Voysey and set in 21 acres of landscaped gardens and woodland, Norney Grange is for sale, for the first time in 69 years, at a guide price of £8 million through Savills (07773571950). Little changed since it was built, the house has played a leading role in numerous period dramas over the years, including Carrington (1995), Midsomer Murders (2007), Miss Marple (2009) and London Spy (2015).

Charles Francis Annesley Voysey was the eldest son of the Revd Charles Voysey, a Church of England priest who lost his Yorkshire living in 1871 due to his unorthodox religious views and subsequently moved to London, where he founded the Theistic Church. A man of equally strong ethics, C. F. A. Voysey was articled to the Gothic Revival architect J. P. Seddon for five years from 1874 and later worked as an assistant to country-house architect George Devey, a follower of his father’s church, before setting up his own practice in London in 1881 or 1882.