FEW Georgian country houses have remained as charmingly untouched by time or 20th-century development as handsome Netheravon House in the ancient Wiltshire village of the same name. Netheravon, on the steeper eastern side of Salisbury Plain and on the west bank of the Avon, is 12 miles equidistant from Salisbury and Devizes.
For sale at a guide price of ‘excess £2.3 million’ through the Salisbury office of Strutt & Parker (01722 344010), the imposing, early- 18th-century house, listed Grade II*, stands in 4½ acres of gardens that lead down to the river, bordered by a cordon of splendid trees, including a magnificent cedar of Lebanon and some fine mature yew, ash and beech. Although now owned under a 999-year Ministry of Defence (MoD) lease, the purchase of the freehold is currently under way.
Attracted by the excellent sport to be had on Salisbury Plain, especially coursing and hawking, the Dukes of Beaufort based a large sporting estate here in the early 18th century. The estate was to survive in the hands of the Beauforts’ successors, the Hicks Beach family, until the end of the 19th century. Nowadays, the good trout fishing provided by the Avon, which north of Netheravon becomes a chalkstream, is much prized.
Netheravon House was built after 1734 by Henry Somerset, 3rd Duke of Beaufort, on a commanding part of the chalk bluff that overlooks the Avon Valley, to the south of the 11th-century village church and close to where a Roman villa stood. The grounds were laid out by the landscape architect and astronomer Thomas Wright and published in Universal Architecture in 1755 and 1758.
Denne historien er fra November 25, 2020-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Denne historien er fra November 25, 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.
