Country houses for sale

OnTheMarket

A striking oast barn conversion in a pretty village that is just a short train journey from London

Caste-like Down Farm Oast offers the chance for buyers to live in a beautifully-converted property with unique features, all whilst being surrounded by beautiful scenery and an idyllic village setting.

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(Image credit: Hamptons)

Extending to more than 2500sq ft across three floors, smartly converted Down Farm Oast is the sort of property you would expect to find in the cinematic remake of a fairytale. From the front, the property — currently on the market via Hamptons for offers over £895,000 — juxtaposes red bricks against black timber frames, whilst to the rear a large spiralled oast tower cuts a striking shape over the garden.

The house has five double bedrooms across the two upper floors, with two of the rooms located in the circular walls of the former oast tower.

Downstairs, glass doors lead from the circular kitchen to a large sitting/dining room with exposed beams and a brick feature fireplace with log-burner.

It sits just outside the extraordinarily pretty village of Lamberhurst, famous for its vineyard, the ruins of Bayham Old Abbey, Scotney Castle and Margaret Thatcher’s one-time holiday house, not far from Bewl Water, Frant and Tunbridge Wells.

(Image credit: Hamptons)

Down Farm Oast is currently on the market via Hamptons for offers over £895,000 — see more pictures, or enquire with the agent for further details. 

Lamberhurst: What you need to know

Location: In the borough of Tunbridge Wells in Kent, near to the High Weald Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. Train services run from Frant into London Charring Cross via London Bridge.

Atmosphere: The exceptionally pretty village has a local village store, bakers, restaurant, pub and churches.

Things to do: The area is popular due to its close proximity to Bewl Water and walks near to Scotney Castle and Bayham Abbey Ruins. There is also a golf club within the village.

Schools: Lamberhurst St Mary's C of E Primary School, Wadhurst C of E Primary School and Uplands Community College all received 'good' ratings from Ofsted.

See more property for sale in the area.


Credit: Strutt and Parker

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Annunciata Elwes

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.