Rebuild The Dream

A ruined mansion worthy of Midsomer Murders and a Thames-side Repton landscape make waves on the market

- Penny Churchill

HISTORICALLY overshadowed by the dominating presence of Brightwell Park on its northern boundary, nowadays, the main claim to fame of the pretty south Oxfordshire village of Brightwell Baldwin, at the foot of the Chilterns between Oxford and Henley-on-Thames, is probably its role as the setting for multiple episodes of Midsomer Murders.

As intriguing as any of the series’s storylines, however, is the history of the ruined mansion that abuts the 18th-century former coach house and stables, which now serve as the main estate house—all currently for sale, together with Brightwell Park’s other estate houses, farm buildings and 135 acres of ancient woods and parkland, at a guide price of £8 million to £10 million through Savills (020–7016 3780).

According to local records, the village name is of Anglo-Saxon origin, the ‘bright well’ being the clear stream that was dammed to create the lake in the park, with the Baldwin element added in the 14th century when Baldwin de Bereford became Lord of the Manor. Thereafter, the Brightwell Baldwin estate passed through a number of influential families, among them the Cottesmores, the Parkes and the Carletons. In 1754, it came down to the Lowndes Stone family, when Francis Lowe left it to his daughter, Catherine, who had married William Lowndes Stone in 1744.