THREE landmark late entrants to the 2023 market will pique the interest of buyers or entrepreneurs who are looking to move westwards next year. Imposing, Grade II*-listed Cheney Court, which is for sale through Strutt & Parker's country department (020-7591 2213) at a guide price of $4.5 million, stands on a gentle south-facing slope in the hamlet of Ditteridge in the Wiltshire Cotswolds. It's 3½ miles west of the picturesque town of Corsham, 5½ miles north-east of Bath and just under 1½ miles from the Three Shires Stones, where the counties of Gloucestershire, Somerset and Wiltshire meet.
According to its Historic England listing, Cheyney Court, as it was originally known, was recorded as the manor of the Cheyney family in the 15th century, although the present house was rebuilt in about 1620 by George Speke, who died in 1656. During the English Civil War, Queen Henrietta Maria, the wife of Charles I, reputedly hid in a barn on the property as she fled from Oxford to Exeter on her way to seek refuge in France.
In about 1726, the Spekes sold Cheney Court to the Northey family, wealthy landowners who used it as an investment property, letting it out as a desirable house convenient to Bath, suitable for the 'middling sort' of people. According to the writer Alan Payne, an early tenant was John Neate, a prosperous Bristol merchant, who lived there in 1769 before he built Middlehill House nearby. In the late 1890s, George Edward Northey decided to move with his family to Cheney Court, where he embarked on a major renovation of the rambling, 18-bedroom house. He found the court rather too quiet for his liking, compared with the busy social whirl of his father's house at nearby Ashley Manor, and invited his many friends to visit him at his new home.
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der December 06, 2023-Ausgabe von Country Life UK.
Starten Sie Ihre 7-tägige kostenlose Testversion von Magzter GOLD, um auf Tausende kuratierte Premium-Storys sowie über 8.000 Zeitschriften und Zeitungen zuzugreifen.
Bereits Abonnent ? Anmelden
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der December 06, 2023-Ausgabe von Country Life UK.
Starten Sie Ihre 7-tägige kostenlose Testversion von Magzter GOLD, um auf Tausende kuratierte Premium-Storys sowie über 8.000 Zeitschriften und Zeitungen zuzugreifen.
Bereits Abonnent? Anmelden
Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
