We'll See You In Court

A Parliamentarian built one and an acclaimed writer lived in the other of these two historic houses.

MANY of England’s least altered and most appealing country houses were originally farmhouses on estates acquired in the 16th and 17th centuries by the holders of some of the great offices of state. Such a house is Grade II*- listed Hall Court at Kynaston, near Ledbury, Herefordshire, which comes to the market through Savills (01242 548036) at a guide price of £2.5 million.

The substantial, timber-framed, early- 17th-century house comes with listed Victorian hop kilns, American-barn stabling, a manège and extensive outbuildings—the whole is set in 79 acres of arable land with views of the Malvern Hills. alternatively, the house is being offered with the hop kilns, equestrian facilities, immediate outbuildings and 33 acres of land at £1.9m.

Described in its Historic England listing as ‘a large symmetrically planned house retaining many significant features’, Hall Court was built in the early 1600s by the Parliamentarian and high-level bureaucrat

John Coke, using materials recovered from an earlier building, the moat for which is buried in the field opposite the house. The gardens and orchards are thought to have been laid out between 1608 and 1623 by Coke, who was interested both in kitchen gardening and exotic or little-known plants.

Born the son of a lawyer in 1563, Coke was educated at Westminster School and Trinity College, Cambridge. As a young man, he established a firm friendship with the Elizabethan poet, dramatist and statesman Fulke Greville, filling a number of important administrative roles on his behalf, including chief clerk and naval paymaster from 1599 to 1603, when Greville was treasurer to the Navy.