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A fairytale castle peeking above the treetops of Cumbria is for sale at just £2 million

Augill Castle has a wonderful backstory and a lifestyle business attached. .Annunciata Elwes tells more.

Augill Castle in Cumbria
(Image credit: Knight Frank)

Britain is full of fabulous castles, and we at Country Life love them — particularly our Architectural Editor John Goodall, the man who literally wrote the book on castles (he even called it 'Castles').

Some are grand and impressive; some are crumbling ruins; and some look just like the sort of fantasy creations you saw in picture books about the Knights of the Round Table. Augill Castle is one of latter — and the good news is that it's looking for a new owner, with an asking price of a reasonable-sounding £2 million.

Augill Castle Cumbria

(Image credit: Knight Frank)

It's particularly reasonable-sounding because — as Cosmo Linzee Gordon explained a while ago — many castles have winds howling through the corridors and water pouring through the roof. Sometimes even when it's not raining.

Augill is different; it's a place that's in good nick. Very good nick indeed; in fact, it's currently an award-winning boutique hotel near Kirkby Stephen that can be hired out for weddings and other events. As you might have guessed, this isn't a medieval castle that was built for warfare or conquest, but rather a Victorian Gothic folly. The only boiling oil you'll find in this castle is carefully managed by the catering team in the well-equipped kitchens.

Augill Castle Cumbria

(Image credit: Knight Frank)

While it's currently a business, Augill Castle would absolutely make a dream country house, subject to the necessary permissions, as it's large, but not so big that you and your family would feel ridiculous kicking around in a 400-room palace.

Augill Castle Cumbria

Four-poster beds? Tick

(Image credit: Knight Frank)

There are seven en-suite bedrooms in the main house and a range of formal and informal reception rooms, including a Music Room — a space which, in its hospitality guise, is used as a 46-cover restaurant) with an Arts-and-Crafts fireplace.

Augill Castle Cumbria

There's a lovely mix of old and new throughout.

(Image credit: Knight Frank)

Augill Castle Cumbria

No rural castle hotel is complete without a well-stocked bar.

(Image credit: Knight Frank)

The library leads out onto a terrace and the hotel’s bar is located in the conservatory. Five separate garden suites and estate houses provide a further six bedrooms. Grounds, including a tennis court, parking for 30 cars and a playground, extend to 10 acres.

Augill Castle is for sale via Knight Frank at £2 million — see more details and pictures.

Augill Castle Cumbria

10 acres of grounds come with Augill Castle

(Image credit: Knight Frank)
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.

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