History in the making

A fine country estate hits the market for the first time in 350 years, while a hall is rebuilt from the ground up

- Penny Churchill

WILLIAM LANGMEAD of Strutt & Parker’s Salisbury office (01722 344010) announces the official launch onto the market, in this week’s COUNTRY LIFE, of the historic, 906-acre Newhouse estate, which occupies a gloriously private setting overlooking its park and ancient woodland in the north-east corner of the New Forest National Park, near the village of Redlynch on the Hampshire/Wiltshire border. He seeks ‘offers in excess of £18 million’ for the Newhouse estate with its striking, Grade I-listed main house, built in the early 1600s by William Stockman and sold by him in about 1620 to Sir Edward Gorges, later Baron Gorges.

In 1633, Lord Gorges sold the estate to Giles Eyre of nearby Brickworth House, Whiteparish, whose descendants have remained at Newhouse to this day. The house stands on high, dry land at the top of a steep rise with falling ground to the south where, in the early 18th century, some 70 acres of landscaped park was laid out.

In the early 16th century, the Stockman family settled at Downton, Wiltshire, where, in the 1560s, William’s father, John, acquired a number of properties, including the Bishop of Winchester’s local estates. Following John’s death in 1605, William inherited the family estates, which made him a landowner of considerable substance. By 1619, he had built Newhouse to an unusual Y-shaped plan, possibly designed by the little-known architect, John Thorpe, who oversaw the rebuilding of Longford Castle, near Salisbury, as a triangular Swedish pattern castle for Lord Gorges’s father, Sir Thomas Gorges.