The village of Newton Toney, on the Hampshire/Wiltshire border, is one of those rural cul-de-sacs with an access road seemingly going nowhere. Yet being just nine miles from Salisbury and 12 miles from Andover – which has a 69-minute train ride to London Waterloo – it’s a great spot for those wanting country life with practical access to the metropolis. As such, the sale of the Old Rectory – through Knight Frank and Strutt & Parker at a guide price of £3.25m – will no doubt spark plenty of interest.
There has been a church at Newton Toney since at least the 12th century and records from 1179 suggest that it was originally under the aegis of Amesbury Priory. The living was in the gift of the lords of the manor, but was given to Queens’ College, Cambridge in 1637.
In 1776, the college appointed the Rev John Ekins, later Dean of Salisbury Cathedral, as the village rector. He swiftly dismantled the existing Jacobean rectory and built the present one of Flemish brickwork on a stone plinth, the latter sourced from the original cathedral at Old Sarum.
In 1844, the medieval village church was replaced by the present one, dedicated to St Andrew and designed by Wyatt and Brandon in a 14th-century style – the gift of the Malet family. All the memorials were transferred to the new church, including that of the Fiennes family to Celia Fiennes, who made the ride around the country on her ‘cock horse’.
The rectory was sold away by the Church in 1953 and is again for sale, a classic Georgian building stands in just over two acres of gardens and grounds on the north-eastern edge of Newton Toney, overlooking the village and across the rolling chalk hills of the Bourne valley to the south-west.
Meticulously refurbished by the current owners, The Old Rectory has been partially re-wired, re-plumbed and equipped with a new borehole and central-heating system to provide ‘zoned’ heating on each floor.
The entrance hall leads to a well-appointed drawing room, study and sitting room, beyond which is a well-equipped kitchen/breakfast room leading to a large east-facing terrace – perfect for a leisurely breakfast in the morning sun.
Some 6,000sq ft of extended family living space includes five first-floor bedrooms and four bathrooms and a top floor cleverly converted into two double bedrooms, a bathroom and a small sitting room.
The house also comes with a former coach house and planning consent for a three-bay garage with a large storeroom above. There is also more than two acres of land which include a tennis court, walled garden and paddocks.
The Old Rectory in Newton Toney is for sale via Knight Frank and Strutt & Parker – see more pictures and details.
Credit: Strutt and Parker
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