Penny Churchill looks at an elegant south Cheshire mansion which has come up for sale.
The well-heeled county of Cheshire is blessed with many extraordinary and unashamedly extravagant homes, not least the extraordinary Ollerton Grange, whose appearance on the market we recently covered. Many of those mega-mansions are in and around Alderley Edge, which has been hugely popular among the superstars of the two big Manchester football clubs; David Beckham and Cristiano Ronaldo are among those who once called the area home.
Life is altogether more restrained in dreamy south Cheshire, where Will Whittaker of Strutt & Parker’s farms and estates team is handling the sale of Ash House, plus its 186 acres of land.
Ash House is being sold at a guide price of £5.1m for the estate as a whole, or in up to four lots, with a guide price of £2.95m quoted for the main house, its gardens and grounds, separate office, stables and paddocks, some 20 acres in all.
Located three miles from Bunbury and five miles from Nantwich, the estate is being sold on behalf of the executors of the late Sir John Barlow, who died, aged 88, in December last year. A gentleman of the old school, Sir John had something in common with the aforementioned footballers: as well as a former High Sheriff of the county, he was a keen horseman, polo player and successful amateur jockey in his younger days. He was later a popular steward at Aintree and Cheltenham.
According to Mr Whittaker, Sir John bought Ash House as a working farm with a relatively modest farmhouse in 1970. It operated as a tenanted farm until 1996, when Sir John moved there to live and embarked on a major renovation of the house and gardens.
The result was the present handsome, 7,852sq ft country house with six bedrooms and four reception rooms set in beautifully landscaped gardens and grounds
There is a separate office, garages and outbuildings, stables and paddocks, a large range of farm buildings, a semi-detached three-bedroom cottage and three lots of arable and pasture land.
Ash House is for sale at £5.1m for the estate as a whole, or in up to four lots, with a guide price of £2.95m quoted for the main house, gardens and grounds. See more pictures and details.
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