Three years after Brexit slammed the brakes on the upper end of the country-house market, a wind of change began to blow through rural counties of England way beyond the M25 and some fine country properties that were friendless in 2018 changed hands during 2019.
In south Devon, the lure of the lonely sea and sky brought buyers back to the waters of the South Hams, one of whom was bewitched by the spectacular Gurrow Point on the banks of the River Dart at Dittisham, seven miles from Dartmouth by road and a lazy two miles by water. Launched on the market through Savills at a guide price of £10 million in October 2018, the immaculate, eight-bedroom riverside house, set on its own magical 79-acre peninsula with a jetty and moorings, found a buyer in November 2019.
Across the border in Somerset, September 2018 saw the launch onto the market—at a guide price of £6.5m through Knight Frank—of 647-acre Langham Farm at Luxborough on the edge of Exmoor. A lovely sporting estate incorporating the renowned Chargot pheasant and partridge shoot, it came with a farmhouse, a shoot lodge and modern farm buildings for grain storage and cattle rearing. The shooting fraternity celebrated in May 2019, when the estate was sold to a party who will continue to operate it as before, Rupert Sweeting reveals.
Denne historien er fra January 01, 2020-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Denne historien er fra January 01, 2020-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.
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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.
