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Follow on Google News | English Country estate for sale in OxfordshireThe most important English estate to hit the open market this year is Kiddington Manor in Oxfordshire
By: Sands Property Search & Relocation Agents At the heart of the relatively little-known Kiddington estate stands Kiddington Hall, built in 1673 on the site of an earlier house by Sir Henry Browne, whose family lived there from the early 1600s. Great trees mark the fringe of parkland that overlooks the Hall and its lakes, the first of several landscapes created in Oxfordshire by Lancelot ‘Capability’ Famed for his uniquely English style of ‘naturalistic’ During his lifetime, Brown’s work became the height of fashion, although he had his critics, too. His contemporary, the poet and satirist Richard Owen Cambridge, hoped to die before Brown so that he could see heaven ‘before it was “improved”’ The Rev Thomas Warton, a fellow of Trinity College, Oxford, who was rector of Kiddington for 20 years and poet laureate from 1785, pictures the coming of spring on the estate in his April Ode with ‘swallows skimming the village green and rooks swarming in the oak trees round the manor house’. Meanwhile, Sir George Browne, another owner, provided the real-life inspiration for ‘Sir Plume of amber snuff-box justly vain’ in Alexander Pope’s The Rape of the Lock. In 1840, the Kiddington estate passed to Mortimer Ricardo, youngest son of the political economist David Ricardo, who was a major landowner in the county. In 1850, Ricardo commissioned the architect Sir Charles Barry to remodel the house in his trademark Italianate style, build a magnificent new stable courtyard adjoining the hall to the north, and create formal terraced gardens to the south and west, overlooking Brown’s park. Beyond the Victorian orangery to the south, a gate leads to the square-towered 14th-century church of St Nicholas (not included in the sale) where stained-glass windows commemorate Henry Lomax Gaskell and his wife, Alice, whose family lived at the Hall from 1855 to 1953. The estate was then bought by Sir Lawrence Robson, whose son, the Hon Maurice Robson, is the current vendor. Built of pale, honey-coloured English limestone, Kiddington Hall, listed Grade II, is grand, but in no way oppressive. The entrance and staircase halls are a gentle introduction to the five main reception rooms, which include the splendid Rococo-style drawing room and morning room, the richly decorated dining room with its twin columns and carved marble fireplace, the library with its neo-Classical friezes and the panelled billiard room that overlooks the gardens. The main 18th-century staircase leads to two bedroom suites, seven further bedrooms and three further bathrooms on the first floor; the back stairs lead to the second floor where 10 attic rooms provide space to create additional bedrooms. Given that Maurice Robson’s father was a distinguished City accountant, knighted for his services to the profession in which his Eton- and Oxford educated son is also qualified, it is hardly surprising that, these days, the Kiddington estate is run along more-or-less commercial lines. Let property produces an annual income of £437,700, with substantial further returns derived from farming, the shoot, extensive conference facilities housed in the converted Victorian stable block, and wedding receptions held in the orangery. The estate is being sold as a whole or in 10 lots, with the Hall, stable block, dower house, lodge, two cottages and 466 acres of gardens and grounds, on offer at £17.5 million. The remaining farmland, houses and buildings are being offered in various lots of varying sizes, but none will be sold until a buyer has first been found for Kiddington’s historic core. The Guide price: £42million Source: Country Life For London property, UK Country Houses, homes & estates, Farms & waterside Property Search and Relocation assistance, contact Sands Home Search. Tel: UK Office - 01425 462 549 (0044 1425 462 549); For Cape Town, South Africa Property Search and Relocation assistance, Tel: Cape Town, South Africa Office - 076 222 7518 (0027 76 222 7518) To Email us: http://www.prlog.org/ Web: www.sandshomesearch.com email: inbox@sandshomesearch.com (cut and paste this email address into your email program, e.g. microsoft Outlook) # # # Sands Home Search are Property search agents & Relocation consultants who specialise in finding the finest properties for sale in London, the UK Country House, Estate, Equestrian & Farm property markets & the prime residential property market in Cape Town End
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