Biddlesden Park, Northamptonshire, Country Mansion for sale for £20 million

April 17, 2009 - PRLog -- Anyone with the sum of £20 million to spend on a glorious country house will want seclusion as well as broad acres. Biddlesden Park is comfortably set out of sight in a 460-acre estate on the site of a Cistercian abbey founded in the 12th century. With it comes a home farm, woodland, pheasant shoot and fishing. Here on the Buckinghamshire border with Northamptonshire and Oxfordshire, you’re among movers and shakers, with the business mogul Wafic Said and the Tory grandee Lord Heseltine as your neighbours. Better still, Biddlesden is a secret house, its interiors hitherto never illustrated in print.

The early Georgian house is beautifully built of blemish-free pale stone and looks out across two large lakes to extensive parkland, where many of the lime trees were planted when the house was built. The front lawn is the perfect landing spot for a helicopter; pilot and passengers will not fail to exclaim with delight at the beauty of the house and spreading lawns reflected in the reed-fringed lake. The approach to the house is appropriately impressive. Opposite the main entrance stand a neat row of paired estate cottages in the pretty chequer brick typical of Buckinghamshire. Just inside the gates is a delightful gabled gatelodge. The drive is lined with 60ft-high trees and sweeps round to approach the house from the south.

In recent years Biddlesden has been home to a successful stud with handsome stables, an indoor riding school and numerous paddocks enclosed with sturdy wooden pales. Not all buyers will be this horse-mad,although prime hunting country is all around and there is polo at Kirtlington Park on the other side of the M40. Some are likely to think of the outbuildings as guest cottages, private office suites or perhaps a home for a collection of classic cars. A large 18th-century timber barn with four tall entrances cries out for restoration in the walled garden.

The big decisions come in the house itself. Outside it is a pictureperfect early Georgian house with three graceful stone fronts — and the date 1731 on the rainwaterheads. On the right is an attractive service wing built at the same time in black and red chequer brick. It once had a matching wing, evidenced by a lone doorway on the lawn, attributed to Francis Smith of Warwick, the great Midlands master builder.

The surviving wing contains a large chapel with Baroque arched windows and original woodwork inside. It’s now the parish church and is used for services once a fortnight; a prettier and more private place for family weddings would be hard to imagine.

The ground floor of the main house has been extensively remodelled twice during the 20th century, first to make a comfortable 40ft-long reception hall, with a columned dining room and a columned summer drawing room opening off it. And second in 1987 by the present owner to create a large indoor pool in the wing, with extensive paving, balustrades and steps to a sunken garden, palatial enough for a Hollywood star. Opening off it is a 30ft-long panelled billiard room and oak library as well as a conservatory that pops out cheekily on to the main front.

The large fitted kitchen cum breakfast room was created at the same time, and some purchasers will want to recast this part of the house. The big question is whether to go for all-glass minimalist-modern or for retro.On the first floor most rooms retain their early Georgian panelling and marble or wooden fireplaces.

On the edge of the lakes are two timber cabins. One could be rebuilt as a domed temple, the other as a gabled boathouse with verandah overlooking the water. My priority would be to banish the tarmac in front of the house, replacing it with gravel,pleached trees and clipped box.

For those who value fast journey times, Biddlesden is superbly placed. In five minutes you can be on the A43 dual carriageway that links the M1 and M40, yet the house does not appear to suffer from traffic noise.

What you get: Grade II* listed mansion with ten bedrooms, indoor pool, cottages, farmhouse, pheasant shoot, lake, fishing and 460 acres. In total, 20,713 sq ft.

Where it is: Five miles from Buckingham, 18 miles from Northampton, 27 miles from Oxford.

Good schools: Summer Fields and Dragon prep schools, Oxford; Stowe.

Where to eat: The Royal Oak at Eydon; The Crown at Weston.

Shaun Ascough Group Managing Director of UK London & Country Property Search Agents Sands Home Search comments: "This is a supurb opportunity to acquire a substantial private and secluded Country Estate within one of the UK's most sought after locations".

Source: Timesonline

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Sands Home Search are property search agents 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, South Africa.