Halfway houses

Two properties could be greater than the sum of their parts with a little investment, as another shows that a ruin is anything but

THE story of Grade II-listed Black borough House near Kentisbeare, six miles from Cullompton, mid Devon, in the heart of the Black down Hills AONB, is one of survival against all odds. Now partially restored and still in need of substantial renovation, the house, set in 10 acres of woods and parkland overlooking lush Devon grassland as far as the eye can see, is for sale through Savills Country Department 020-7016 3822) at a guide price of 2 million.

The cost of implementing a detailed restoration programme is informally estimated at a further 4m to S5m. Black borough House was designed originally as an Italianate pile by the Society architect James Thomas Knowles for George Wyndham, 4th and last Earl of Egremont first creation), who inherited the title, but, to his great disappointment, not the family seat at Pet worth, West Sussex, on his uncle’s death in 1937. With insufficient funds available to complete Knowles’s grand design, according to its Historic England listing, the notoriously spendthrift Wyndham had Black borough House built of stuccoed brick in 1838-40 as two almost identical halves, each self-contained, one half occupied by the Earl of Egremont, being placed back-to-back with the other half occupied by the rector of Black borough, another member of the Wyndham family’.