The childhood home of an erstwhile Country Life deputy editor has come to the market for the first time in 65 years. Penny Churchill takes a look.
On the market in north Hampshire is a much-loved family home, the Grade II-listed Monks at Nether Wallop, near Stockbridge, situated in the pretty and ever-popular Test Valley. And we happen to know that it’s much loved as it has a Country Life connection: it’s the childhood home of the magazine’s former deputy editor Rupert Uloth.
Steven Moore of Savills in Winchester quotes a guide price of £2.25m for the charming 16th-century country house set in nearly 5½ acres of paddocks and formal gardens. It is for sale for the first time since Rupert’s parents, Tony, a colonel in the 10th Hussars, keen hunting man, talented sculptor and former director of the Bath and West Show, and his wife, Margaret, an accomplished horsewoman, bought the house at auction in July 1956.
Constructed mainly of stone, flint and the local ‘clunch’, using materials reclaimed from a 14th-century monastic building that was altered and extended in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, Monks offers 3,866sq ft of living space on two floors.
There is a warm and welcoming reception hall, a large drawing/dining room, plus a music room, study and artist’s studio on the ground floor, with master and guest suites and four further bedrooms on the first floor.
During their tenure, the Uloths extended the house, which now includes a good-sized kitchen, not to mention a panoramic breakfast room on the eastern side to take advantage of the early morning sun.
The formal gardens to the south and east of the house are well established, with mature shrubs and plants and views towards the tennis court, which now needs repair. The paddocks, four in all, lie to the south and east of the house, bordered by a trout stream linked to the Wallop Brook, a tributary of the Test, and a large stream-fed pond, probably of monastic origin.
Outbuildings include a splendid, 2,380sq ft barn comprising four stables, a garage, feed room and hayloft, suitable for conversion to any number of uses, subject to planning consent.
For sale via Savills — see more details and pictures.
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