Wedding belles

With parkland or rural settings, country houses make for idyllic wedding venues, as the vendors of these three properties have found

- Arabella Youens

THE vast, Grade I-listed Jacobean Dorfold Hall, just outside the market town of Nantwich in Cheshire, was built, so the story goes, for a visit by James I. Completed in 1621, the property and its surrounding estate of 101 acres have been in the home of the Roundell family ever since, making a few detours along the way down the female line.

Many of the original 17th-century interiors have been beautifully preserved, such as the ornate plaster ceiling in the drawing room, commissioned in 1621 to celebrate the unification of England and Scotland. Changes over the centuries have included a remodelling of the ground floor by architect Samuel Wyatt in 1771. Later, in 1862, William Nesfield was commissioned to rearrange the landscape. During the Second World War, the house was used by Canadian troops and sheltered children evacuated from the bombing of Liverpool.

The current custodians, Charles and Candice Roundell, began taking over the running of the estate from 2010 and moved in a few years later when, in their own words, it was in a state of disrepair and facing a rather gloomy future. The couple have since invested significant energy re-shaping the 400-year-old property for 21st-century living. One initiative included a ground-source heat pump system, one of the first to be installed in a historic house after Castle Howard in North Yorkshire. This combines both ground- and water-source energy from under a nearby field and lake and services properties across the estate.