To the Somerset village of Martock — a name Thomas Hardy borrowed for his poem about illicit love, On Martock Moor. A few miles away, Simon Barker of Knight Frank in Sherborne is marketing, at a guide price of £1.25 million, five-bedroom Boleyn House — a pretty 17th-century property with outbuildings and a garden of less than an acre. The location is ideal for someone looking to be part of a village and enjoy wide-open views, as the part-walled gardens back on to open countryside.
Set over three floors, Boleyn House is a fine village house built of the local ham stone and thankfully re-thatched in 2018. The home offers a mix of timber and stone mullion windows, and an axis that means that the rear of the house and the garden captures the 'best of the light' from the morning to the early evening.
Plenty of period features remain throughout the property, such as the mullion windows, fireplaces, wainscot half-height panelling, Regency-pattern doors, cornicing, and a large staircase. The property also comes with a galleried landing on the first floor, and the staircase windo floods the centre of the house with natural light.
The owners have recently undertaken works, installing a wood-burning stove, sand-blasting the characterful flagstones and re-laying the elm floorboards upstairs. The double-aspect kitchen/breakfast room, which looks out over the garden, has an electric, programmable Aga (is nothing sacred anymore) and there is a ground-floor, self-contained annexe with a bedroom, kitchen and shower room.
In the garden, which extends to about 0.85 acres, there is a timber-built home office with a commercial kitchen. Boleyn House is set back from the road, and features a vegetable garden, carriage house, and part-walled garden that is divided into two parts that are connected via a brick arch. There are plenty of lawned areas throughout, colourful borders and an ancient yew tree.
Additional reporting by James Fisher
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