Lutyens Houses on the Market – Summer 2021
Richard Page’s regular property column
The country house market enjoyed a phenomenal amount of activity through the spring and into summer, with strong interest from buyers moving out of cities, particularly from those no longer needing to commute into an office daily due to changing working patterns. This resulted in prices for properties situated outside traditional commuter belts increasing significantly, with some exceptional sales being achieved across the country.
Two notable Lutyens houses were recently sold, with Knight Frank finding the perfect buyer for Little Thakeham in West Sussex, which had a guide price of £5.5m (Winter 2020 Newsletter), and Savills securing the sale of Weston at Lulworth Cove, Dorset, which had a guide price of £1.75m (Autumn 2020 Newsletter).
Ferry Inn, Rosneath, Dunbartonshire
This is where “We first feel there is magic in the air” were architect Harry Stuart Goodhart-Rendel’s words on describing Ferry Inn, which Lutyens transformed for HRH Princess Louise, the fourth daughter of Queen Victoria and wife of the Marquess of Lorne, later Duke of Argyll. In 1896, while living at Rosneath Castle, near the tip of the Rosneath peninsula to the north of the Firth of Clyde, the princess acquired the nearby Ferry Inn on the shore of Gare Loch and, through an introduction by Gertrude Jekyll, commissioned Edwin Lutyens, then 27, to alter and extend the building. The result is a wonderful example of the Arts and Crafts style with Art Nouveau influences, considered as architecturally significant as Charles Rennie and Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh’s 1902 Hill House in Helensburgh across the sea loch.
The bulk of Lutyens’s work here is intact. Although the original, central section of the inn has been demolished, the former ballroom was spared and is now a separate cottage. The two-storey house on a raised basement takes full advantage of its position overlooking the water. The south elevation has a huge stone chimney to the side of the gabled entrance porch from which, at the upper level, thin vertical oriel windows wrap around the eastern elevation.
Princess Louise never lived in the house and, in 1902, it became a convalescent home for soldiers wounded in the Boer War, then the Great War. It was later sold to the government and it is said that, during the Second World War, when the house was part of an American naval base, Winston Churchill visited it, as did Bob Hope and Dinah Shore while entertaining troops. By the late 1950s, the house was little more than a shell and, in 1959, was acquired by boatyard owner Peter Boyle, who restored it.
Now Category A-listed, it has four bedrooms, three bathrooms, a reception hall, three reception rooms, kitchen, breakfast room and utility room. The lower-ground floor includes a sitting room and bedroom. The cottage offers open-plan living space, together with a kitchen and bathroom. The 5,000-sq ft property stands in four acres of gardens and grounds providing a wonderful setting, including a private beach on the sea-loch frontage.
Available through Savills. Guide price of £875,000.
Milton Abbot, Tavistock, Deven
In early 1909, Lutyens visited the Duke of Bedford to discuss plans for creating a housing estate in Tavistock, garden cities being all the rage at the time. Lutyens was excited at the prospect of designing this, writing to his wife, Emily, “What a chance!”. While nothing came of this grand plan, minor works were undertaken in the village of Milton Abbot for the duke where some estate cottages were built that year. A Grade II-listed, one-bedroom apartment in one of the original cottage terraces designed by Lutyens – built of local Hurdwick stone and with a slate-tiled roof – is now for sale.
This property was available through agents Mansbridge Balment with a guide price of £99,950 but a sale has recently been agreed.
Langley End Cottage, Hitchin, Hertfordshire
Langley End Cottage was built as part of the staff accommodation for Langley End House, designed by Lutyens in 1911. He was commissioned by Mrs Herbert Fenwick of nearby Temple Dinsley, which was remodelled by him, to provide a house for a friend, Gwendolen Dorothy Fellowes. Langley End House (originally known as Hill End House) is a substantial, Classical, H-plan house of brick and tile featuring stout chimneys.
Langley End Cottage, one of several cottages designed to service the house, is now for sale. A detached, Grade II-listed cottage, it has brick elevations with flush casement windows under a steep tiled roof with swept valleys and large square chimneys. Inside there are reception rooms, a kitchen, utility room, study, three bedrooms and two bathrooms. The cottage has its own sunken garden, private wood, barn, stables and paddock, in all occupying just under two acres. The grounds also include a large, converted dovecote on two levels, containing another reception room (ideal as a home office) and bedroom, and a working well.
Guide price of £1.25m. Agent Putterills reports a sale has recently been agreed.
Websites:
Mansbridge Balment: www.mansbridgebalment.co.uk; 01822 612345
Putterills: www.putterills.co.uk; 01462 632222
Savills: www.savills.co.uk; 0141 222 5875
Richard Page’s 40-year estate agency career has included senior roles at Savills, John D Wood & Co, UK Sotheby’s International Realty and Dexters. He is now an independent marketing consultant and director of www.themarketingcafe.net, a video production company. Over the years, he has handled or advised on the sale of several Lutyens houses, including Deanery Garden, The Salutation and Marsh Court. He is currently in contact with two buyers looking to purchase a Lutyens house, one up to £2m and one up to £10m. For further information or if you have any news about Lutyens properties on the market, please contact Richard at landseer75@hotmail.com.
Disclaimer: prices and availability correct at time of going to press.
