The original Mr Rochester

Three classic houses in North Yorkshire have come to the market; the owner of one inspired Charlotte Brontë to write Jane Eyre

- Jane Eyre

IN the 18th and early 19th centuries, the country’s richest landowners and industrialists underlined their status in Society by building impressive country houses in the fashionable Palladian, neoClassical or Regency style of their day. The less well-off sought to achieve the same effect by tacking a grand Georgian façade onto a less imposing building from an earlier period. Launched onto the market earlier this month with a guide price of in excess of £2.95 million through York-based Blenkin & Co (01904 671672), Grade II*-listed The Old Rectory at Brandsby, North Yorkshire, offers the best of both worlds.

Described in COUNTRY LIFE (March 22, 2012) as ‘a house in two parts’, the original rectory dates from 1565, when it was built by the then incumbent, the Revd Robert Wilson. That house was partially thatched and, some 240 years later, in 1809, one very rich rector, the Revd William Smith, added the fine Georgian front in ashlar stone. He also created four grand Georgian rooms— the present drawing room, dining room and master and guest bedrooms—in front of the more informal 16th-century rooms at the rear of the house.

Sold away by the Church in 1938, the landmark former rectory stands in some 22½ acres of gardens, paddocks and woodland on the edge of Brandsby village, which lies south of the North York Moors, surrounded on all sides by the undulating wooded countryside of the scenic Howardian Hills, four miles from the Georgian market town of Easingwold and 14 miles north of York. A further 18¼ acres of adjoining grassland is available by separate negotiation.