Cressy Hall is an exquisitely beautiful home that will take your breath away from the moment you pull up to your driveway.
Very often when looking for a new home, you find something that seems to fit the bill: a beautiful home in great surroundings, with plenty of space, with an interesting history, all at a price that seems too good to be true. And then you find a huge list of things to do.
Fortunately, this will not be the case for those who seek to bring them into contact with the almost outrageously beautiful Cressy Hall, near Spalding in Lincolnshire, an amazing home on a truly special lot that is on the market for £1.85 million. That’s the kind of money that can hardly buy a detached country house on the A1 in St Albans, and an enticing, almost impossibly low price for a house that looks like it sprang from a 1990s Merchant-Ivory movie. James Abbott of Savills in Stamford says the impact and opening of Cressy Hall around the corner of the driveway is “unmatched”.
The hall is the home of Michael Hill, an antiques dealer turned outdoor furniture designer, and his wife Janey, an artist who bought Cressy in 1990 when the house was in disrepair and offered unremarkable views of the surrounding arable fields and dams.
Cressy Hall is a beautiful three-story brick building built in 1794 and listed II *. Many of the original features have been retained, including the mahogany staircase, shuttered windows and flagstone floors.
Perfect for those with a creative flair, it features a spacious artist’s studio, accessed through spacious basements – once staff quarters – and illuminated by a skylight above. There are four double bedrooms on the first floor and three more on the floor above.
Nestled in a densely wooded plantation on the northeast edge of the village of Gosburton, its nine-acre pleasure ground is a garden full of surprises documented by Todd Longstaff-Govan when he visited early last year.
The houses of the early Middle Ages and the 17th century, which preceded the current dwelling, had extensive decorative gardens, traces of which have survived. The couple decided to restore them with a rose garden and orchard, as well as a large productive walled vegetable garden, making the most of the south side.
Mr. Hill’s legacy at Cressy will be a magnificent topiary garden, which he has grown from seedlings and planted in the fertile loamy soil of the south lawn, repeating the crescent-shaped ha-ha curve. Today, the yew and the elaborately shaped box form the “Ming walk” (shaved to resemble Ming baluster vases), clouds, spheres, and birds.
Plans are now in place to convert the one-story outbuilding to the west of the lobby into a one-bedroom addition providing useful space for a nanny or relative.
Gosburton has all the conveniences and shops you need, but the market town of Spalding is, above all else, six miles to the south. For city access, the nearest station is at Peterborough, about a 20 minute drive, with links to Cambridge and London King’s Cross.
Cressy Hall is up for sale for £1.85 million – see more photos and details.
A rectory in Staffordshire is up for sale for £1.5m. Credit: John Herman
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