Beautifully maintained by its subsequent owner, Niall Holden, whose cherished family home it’s been for the past 8½ years , the striking 15,000sq ft house, set in two acres of spectacular gardens and grounds overlooking the Abbotts Barton water meadows on the northern outskirts of Winchester, has come to the market through Knight Frank (01962 850333) at a guide price of £4.395 million.
The water meadows, created in the 17th century by Dutch engineers, are owned and managed by the Hampshire & Isle of Wight Wildlife Trust and enjoy SSSI status, as does much of the surrounding land. Piscatorial aficionados revere the meadows as the birthplace of modern flyfishing through Winchester scholar George Edward MacKenzie (G. E. M.) Skues, who fished the Itchen from 1887 to 1938 and developed the modern nymph fly in the Highland Burn tributary a few hundred yards from Chalk Dell House. (The fishing is still available to any new incumbent through an annual subscription to the Abbotts Barton Fishery.)
The quarry was worked into the early 18th century, when two thatched cottages built with the chalk were used as staff accommodation for nearby Abbotts Barton House; they were converted to a single house in the early 1960s. However, the presence of chalk meant that the building remained inherently damp and, when Chalk Dell’s creator bought it in 1998, local planners agreed that the best way forward was to demolish the existing house and start again.
Denne historien er fra November 20, 2019-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Denne historien er fra November 20, 2019-utgaven av Country Life UK.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
Allerede abonnent? Logg på
Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
