Five spectacular country cottages, within commuting distance of London and under £1m

An idyllic 'chocolate box' cottage is an achievable dream on almost any budget – even if you need to be within an hour or so of London. All these places tick those boxes in style.

Cottage in Fulbourn
(Image credit: Cheffins)
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Hampshire – £650,000

Set in the picturesque village of St Mary Bourne in the Bourne Valley, pretty Myrtle Cottage has three bedrooms and lovely views over open countryside.

A large brick fireplace and a brick-and-tiled floor in the sitting room, as well as exposed beams throughout, add plenty of character and there’s a conservatory overlooking the garden, which includes a summerhouse.

For sale with Strutt & Parker. See more pictures and details about this property.

East Sussex – £675,000

he enchanting old fishing town of Rye is chock full of cobbled streets lined with medieval, Tudor and Georgian buildings – and some excellent pubs, too. Church Square is a sought-after spot and pretty, timber-framed no 28 is Grade II listed and dates from the 16th century.

The interior has been beautifully maintained; there are inglenook fireplaces, wood panelling and four bedrooms – one overlooks the River Rother towards the sea, another has a vaulted ceiling and skylight.

For sale with Phillips & Stubbs . See more pictures and details about this property.

Cambridgeshire – £750,000

For a slice of the good life, the traditional cottage grounds at 34, Cow Lane include a small vegetable garden.

In the heart of sought-after Fulbourn village, the Grade II-listed thatched cottage has four bedrooms, exposed beams and inglenook fireplaces. Despite the peace and quiet, Cambridge is only three miles away.

For sale with Cheffins. See more pictures and details about this property.

Buckinghamshire – £400,000

As adorably wonky as its name is misleading, Grade II-listed The Hovel, situated in the Aylesbury Vale village of Ludgershall, is thought to be medieval – indeed, it's mentioned in the Domesday Book and is certainly at least 500 years old as we reported a few weeks ago.

It has two bedrooms, a thatched roof, occasionally undulating ceilings and a brick-built summerhouse in a pretty garden of 0.23 acres.

For sale with Michael Graham . See more pictures and details about this property.

Berkshire – £1,095,000

We've gone just over the £1m limit for this, but only a little – and it seems worth it for what is a home with truly beautiful gardens. On a quiet edge of Arborfield village, not far from the market town of Wokingham, sits Monks Cottage, surrounded by farmland.

Originally three farm workers’ cottages dating to the 18th century, it was converted in the 1940s and has four bedrooms, exposed beams and open fireplaces.

The lovely garden includes raised beds and soft-fruit cages, as well as an octagonal garden store.

For sale with Knight Frank. See more pictures and details about this property.

Lindfield village pond in West Sussex.

Lindfield village pond in West Sussex.
(Image credit: Peter Vallance / Alamy)

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Annunciata Elwes
Annunciata Elwes

Annunciata grew up in the wilds of Lancashire and now lives in Hampshire with a husband, two daughters and an awful pug called Parsley. She’s been floating round the Country Life office for more than a decade, her work winning the Property Magazine of the Year Award in 2022 (Property Press Awards). Before that, she had a two-year stint writing ‘all kinds of fiction’ for The Sunday Times Travel Magazine, worked in internal comms for Country Life’s publisher (which has had many names in recent years but was then called IPC Media), and spent another year researching for a historical biographer, whose then primary focus was Graham Greene and John Henry Newman and whose filing system was a collection of wardrobes and chests of drawers filled with torn scraps of paper. During this time, she regularly gave tours of 17th-century Milton Manor, Oxfordshire, which may or may not have been designed by Inigo Jones, and co-founded a literary, art and music festival, at which Johnny Flynn headlined. When not writing and editing for Country Life, Annunciata is also a director of TIN MAN ART, a contemporary art gallery founded in 2021 by her husband, James Elwes.

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