A grand country house with its own salmon fishing stretch at the price of a London terrace house

(Image credit: Strutt & Parker)

published 24 August 2021

There’s good sea trout and salmon to be had on the one-third of a mile stretch of River Nairn within Cantray House’s almost 10 acres of land.

A drive winds slowly through the grounds, passing mature trees, rhododendrons, azaleas, stables, a large greenhouse and other outbuildings, before approaching the 1920s Scottish neo-Palladian house in Croy, near Inverness, which is for sale through Strutt & Parker at an asking price of £1.35 million. Just for comparison, that's basically the same as this home in Kentish Town.

The agents describe Cantray's 7,825sq ft interiors as Scots/French style. The ground floor includes a large, modern kitchen, drawing room, dining room, morning room plus butler’s pantry, gun room and wine store.

On the first floor are five bedrooms, two of which ensuite, plus a dressing room. The top floor houses a large games room and a small flat with a kitchen area, sitting room and ensuite bedroom.

Close to the village of Cawdor, with its famous castle, and a multitude of golf courses, Cantray House is four miles from the site of the Battle of Culloden, where its then heir, Bonnie James Dallas, fell.

Cantray House is for sale at £1.35 million via Strutt & Parker — see more pictures or enquire with the agent for further details.

Croy: What you need to know

Location: Croy is situated six minutes from Cawdor and its Castle, 12 from Nairn and 20 from Inverness
Things to do: The area is great for walking and cycling, as well as delving in Highlands history at Cawdor Castle and the Culloden battlefield. There are beaches and a marina at Nairn, which also offers a sports centre, tennis club, swimming pool, riding centre,a cricket pitch and two championship golf courses. Great links courses are at Castle Stuart Golf Club and Royal Dornoch. There is salmon fishing on the Rivers Nairn, Findhorn and Spey and shooting on local estates.
Schools: Croy has its own primary school as does nearby Cawdor Find more properties in the area.

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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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