The Wreck of the Mary Deare, The White South (Hell Below Zero on film), The Lonely Skier (aka Snowbound) and Campbell’s Kingdom will be well known to fans of the novelist Hammond Innes, whose former home, The Green, near Kersey, is now on the market via Winkworth for £2m.
Born in Horsham and schooled in Kent, Innes began writing novels while a journalist in pre-war London, though some of the stories which helped launch him to success draw upon his war-time experiences — he served as an anti-aircraft gunner at the Battle of Britain and eventually rose to the rank of Major in the Royal Artillery before being demobilised.
After the war he took to writing again, producing his thrillers on a regular basis — all of which tended to involve an ordinary man thrust by chance into an extreme situation and having to use his wits and ingenuity to survive. He regularly travelled in the name of research, spending months at a time in he mountains, at sea or even — according to his obituary in the Independent — on a Norwegian whaler.
He would then return to the home he shared with his wife, the actress and author Dorothy Lang, to write — and this was the home at which 20 of his books were created. He lived here until his death in 1998.
This idyllic Tudor property, with its four bedrooms and three reception rooms, is Grade II listed and has been sympathetically restored by the current owners, who retained its wealth of period features.
The heart of the house is the Great Hall at the centre, off which are sitting room, drawing room and dining room, through which a passageway leads to the kitchen and scullery.
All four bedroom plus two bathrooms and a cloakroom are on the first floor, which is accessed by two separate staircases.
Outside, the property comes with some 1½ acres of landscaped gardens and grounds, which include a self-contained thatched studio (in which Innes wrote his novels) and a summerhouse.
The Green is on the market via Winkworth for £2m — see more pictures and details.
Credit: Strutt and Parker
Best country houses for sale this week
An irresistible West Country cottage and a magnificent Cumbrian country house make our pick of the finest country houses for
The best places to live for commuters: Suffolk
There are two places in Suffolk on our list of the best villages and towns close to London.
-
Athena: This Government must open its eyes to the contribution that heritage and culture can make to our economyHeritage is a forgotten driver of growth laments our cultural crusader.
-
‘A significant number of the little blighters can add up, can’t it?’: Sophia Money Coutts on how much — or little — to spend on your godchildren’s Christmas presentsAs we ramp up to the festive season, our Modern Etiquette columnists answers our reader's most pressing questions.
-
This Suffolk home is a perfect escape from the world and it comes with its own stretch of river and 20 acresThis idyllic home in Suffolk is the perfect village home.
-
The quaint Alpine village that got taken over by The BeatlesThe Beatles visited the Austrian resort of Obertauern to film their 1965 film Help!. Despite a distinct lack of prowess on the slopes, the Fab Four got by with a little help from some new-found friends, discovers Russell Higham.
-
The ultimate treehouse escape, where you can have a sauna and hot tub 12 metres above the forest floor, is for sale in DorsetGuy Mallinson's award-winning treehouses in Dorset are a true escape from the world. Anna White takes a look.
-
20 breathtaking country homes for sale, as seen in Country LifeWe take a look at some of the finest houses to come to market via Country Life in the past week.
-
The elegant country home of a motor racing daredevil who drove round the world in a 1936 Bentley and crashed a Range Rover into his own front porchPeasemore House, with its collection of barns, workshops, stables and more, is an ideal home from which to plan an adventure — something that was a passion of its present owners. Penny Churchill explains more.
-
The wisteria clad cottage where Noël Coward and Ivor Novello held court at the height of their fameThe 17th-century Follejon Cottage just outside Windsor was a perfect escape from the city for Noël Coward and his circle of friends. As it goes on the market, Penny Churchill takes a look.
-
A Cotswolds property that's the strangest mix of old and new we've ever seen... and yet somehow, it all worksThe Gasworks is a house quite unlike anything you've seen before — or at least anything you've seen all in one place. Toby Keel takes a closer look.
-
A country house near Windsor that could be straight from the pages of a Jilly Cooper novelPenny Churchill looks at the beautiful polo-lover's sanctuary that is Barkham Square Park.
