A beguiling country house in Oxfordshire that combines fascinating period architecture with pretty gardens

(Image credit: Justin Paget/ Savills)

published 5 July 2022

Grade II-listed Blenheim House, in the village of Warborough, not far from market town Wallingford, has long been a much cherished family home.

A mixture of two 18th-century cottages, combined with a Victorian hexagonal tower in 1910 and another hexagonal wing added in 1912, the result is an airy six-bedroom property, with a lovely drawing room and dining room, both of which open into the garden, a west-facing conservatory and a lantern roof flooding the upper floor with natural light.

The property is currently on the market via Savills with a guide price if £2.75 million.

A two-bedroom cottage at the end of the drive is attached to two enclosed stables, one of which provides further accommodation.

The nearly 1½ acres also include a swimming pool, semi-circular pleached hornbeam hedge echoing the shape of a stone fountain and a paddock currently frothing with cow parsley, through which mown paths meander.

Blenheim House is currently on the market via Savills with a guide price of £2.75 million — see more pictures, or enquire with the agent for further details.

Warborough: What you need to know

Location: South Oxfordshire, 9 miles south of Oxford and 2.5 miles from Wallingford.

Atmosphere: The pretty village is home to a popular pub — The Six Bells, a post office, village shop, primary school, village hall and a cricket and rugby pitch.

Things to do: There are a number of walking trails along the banks of the River Thames that can be accessed from the village, and neighbouring Wallingford is home to independent shops and a 000market. Oxford is also within easy reach, with a large selection of restaurants, pubs, the Botanic Gardens and Medieval architecture.

Schools: Plenty of excellent options to choose from in the area, with St Laurence Church of England (A) School, Cranford House, Radley College, Abingdon School and Headington School.

See more property for sale in the area.

Credit: Strutt and Parker

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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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Warborough: What you need to know

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