A spectacular Georgian home in the beautiful village of Lavenham which is as pretty as its surroundings

(Image credit: Savills)

published 8 May 2022

Views of open countryside rival those of the local church at The Old Rectory, a beautiful Grade II-listed house in Lavenham which is currently on the market via Savills with a guide price of £5.5 million.

Originally dating from 1720, it has been painstakingly renovated by the current owners and retains many Georgian features, from fine fireplaces to original shutters and a barrelled ceiling in the wine cellar.

There are eight bedrooms, a newly built conservatory and an indoor pool, plus additional accommodation in the form of a three-bedroom coach house and a one-bedroom apartment.

Outside, the grounds span three acres of land- scaped gardens with ornamental pond, terraces, an orchard, mature woodland and walled vegetable garden.

The Old Rectory is currently on the market via Savills with a guide price of £5.5 million — see more pictures or enquire with the agent for further details.

Lavenham: What you need to know

Location: 19 miles west of Ipswich and 11 miles south of Bury St Edmunds. Cambridge is also approximately 40 miles to the west. There are rail services from Colchester (18 miles south) providing Great Eastern Mainline services.

Atmosphere: Regarded as the 'finest surviving Medieval wool town,' known for its timber-framed properties and quirky, wonky houses. It benefits from a large number of shops including a butchers, bakery, pharmacy and post office; plus numerous pubs, restaurants and galleries. The Swan Hotel is also home to an award-winning spa — The Weaver’s Spa.

Things to do: Visit the National Trust’s Lavenham Guild Hall and the Dedham Vale AONB as well as the Suffolk Coast and Healths AONB. There are countless walks in and around Lavenham, plus plenty of history to absorb.

Schools: Lavenham Community Primary School, Acton Church of England Voluntary Controlled Primary School and Great Waldingfield Church of England Voluntary Controlled Primary School are all rated 'good' by Ofsted. Old Buckenham Hall School is a local independent prep school and Thomas Gainsborough School is a secondary option

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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Lavenham: What you need to know

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