Better than ever

Two glorious estates have been lovingly brought back from the brink

- Penny Churchill

TODAY sees the launch onto the market of one of Cornwall’s best-kept secrets, the secluded, 246-acre Pengreep estate, between Gwennap and Ponsanooth in south Cornwall, which is for sale for the first time in its history, through joint agents Jonathan Cunliffe in Falmouth (01326 617447) and Lodge & Thomas in Truro (01872 272722). The agents quote a guide price of £7 million for the estate, which sits in its own woodland valley close to the towns of Truro, Falmouth, and Redruth, and within seven miles of both the north and south coasts of Cornwall.

Its focal point is Grade I-listed Pengreep House, originally a farmhouse built in the early 18th century by the Beauchamp family, enlarged by them in the mid 18th century and further extended in about 1865 by John Williams, whose grandmother was a Beauchamp. Although the house dates from three main periods, its 1967 listing maintains that ‘this is a predominantly mid-18th-century house and as such is a fine and complete example, retaining three virtually complete rooms of its earlier phase and with good quality circa 1865 additions’.

When Joseph Beauchamp died in 1818, the property was advertised for lease as: ‘The mansion house of Pengreep, together with the coach house, walled gardens, beautiful ponds, pleasure grounds, plantations and about 120 customary acres of meadowland, with several cottages for servants or laborers: the whole in high order and condition and fit for the residence of a large and genteel family.’