No place like home

Loseley Park may welcome 6,000 to 8,000 members of the public each year but first it is home to the next generation of the More-Molyneux family

- Clive Aslet

“It's home.” That, says Alexander More-Molyneux, is the meaning of Loseley Park, known to many people as a brand of superior ice cream, but – as the picture on the label shows – it is also a 16th-century country house near Guildford.

Alexander and his wife, Sophia, have had two years there: time during which they have had to adjust to “living above the shop,” as Alexander puts it, and their four children have overcome their anxiety sharing the property with strangers – between 6,000 to 8,000 members of the paying public each year.

“To begin with they were terrified,” says Sophia. “They couldn’t see them but they could hear them coming in and out. They don’t really understand why anyone wants to come and look at the house anyway.”

The number of days that Loseley opens has been scaled back as a result. The MoreMolyneux are concentrating on other enterprises: gardens, weddings, wakes (they have a neighbour in Guildford Crematorium; my drive through the lanes to reach Loseley was preceded by a hearse). The ice cream business was sold in the 1980s. They want to do more with food, starting with the Farm Shop development which has just begun. “We see one of the most important assets of the estate is the land itself,” says Alexander.

The land – 1,500 acres of it – would cause a speculative housebuilder to salivate: it forms a ‘green bubble’ in one of the most prosperous areas of Britain, between Guildford and Godalming. All of it Green Belt and protected but still, one could hope.