On the outskirts of the pretty Norfolk market town of Wymondham lies Burfield Hall, a delightful country house set in just under 20 acres of parkland which comes with a pair of cottages.
It's a Queen Anne house originally built in 1709, boasting nine bedrooms and seven reception rooms that's on the market via Savills with a guide price of £1.95 million. For people living in central London flats carrying the same valuation, it will surely be a very tempting prospect – particularly considering that there are two cottages within the grounds which bring in £18,000 of rental income.
Not that London buyers are necessarily the target market for this lovely home: the beautiful city of Norwich is just over 10 miles away, and there is a direct train from Wymondham to Cambridge. The A11 is also quite close, meaning that getting to the city when duty calls is straightforward matter that doesn't demand hours of driving down country lanes.
Why, though, would you want to head to such hotspots until you really had to, if living in a home like this? Burfield Hall is a classic country home, which is featured in Pevsner’s Norfolk volume of the Buildings of England. And it's in ready-to-move-in condition, with the present owners (who have been here 20 years) having clearly lavished a huge amount of effort in restoring the house.
That work has been done with a real care to keep the character intact, resulting in a home so authentic of appearance that you'd probably have the BBC costume drama location scouts on the phone all the time, wondering if they might use the place to shoot a few scenes.
The choice of colour, furniture and artwork all work together to that effect, creating a striking look throughout the almost 8,000 sq ft of the main house, whose rooms are spread out over three floors – or four, if you count the cellars.
There are original fireplaces, sash windows, panelled doors and a magnificent main staircase lit by a Venetian window, over which the elaborate plasterwork ceiling has been beautifully restored.
The gardens are a real feature, arranged as extensive lawns that surround the house. Theres a large formal lawn to the south bordered by mixed shrubs, herbaceous borders and a large pond and moat, while adjoining the house to the west is a terrace overlooking a parterre rose garden designed by Verity Hanson-Smith.
There is plenty of woodland and hedges too, including a yew and beech hedge which separates the gardens from the hard tennis court. Through beech and horse chestnut trees to the north you reach the bulk of the grounds, which feature grazing meadow and parkland.
Also within those grounds are the aforementioned cottages – one rented out at £850 per month, the other at £650. Neither impinge on privacy since they both lie towards the end of the long, tree-lined drive which wends its way through the land to the house itself.
There are other outbuildings too, including a barn known as 'The Annexe' which is used as a party barn. With bedroom, kitchen and wet room also under that roof, it could equally work as guest accommodation for when you have visitors. And in a beautiful country house like this? We'd imagine that 'having visitors' would happen an awful lot of the time.
Burfield Hall is on the market with Savills, priced at £1,950,000 – see more details and pictures.
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