Tuesday sees the launch via Country Life of one of Somerset’s most captivating country houses: the exquisite, Grade II*-listed Maperton House.
Set in eight acres of immaculate gardens and grounds at Maperton, three miles south-west of Wincanton, it comes to the market with a guide price of £9.5 million through Ed Cunningham of Knight Frank and Lindsay Cuthill of Blue Book.
And it really is quite something. In his book In Search of the Perfect Country House (2007), former Country Life Editor Marcus Binney rated Maperton House among the ‘top 10 most perfect houses of all periods in Britain’.
Marcus gets no argument from us. Indeed, Maperton is now even more perfect, following a complete and sensitive renovation by the current owners during their 14-year tenure.
As did many fine houses on the Somerset/Dorset border, Maperton started life as a hunting box in the Blackmore Vale country. Before that, the manor was listed in the Domesday survey and, in 1600, was held by Francis Hastings of North Cadbury.
Constructed of the locally quarried golden Ham stone under clay-tile roofs, the present Maperton House was built on the site of an earlier 18th-century manor, but dates mostly from 1802, with the addition, in 1876, of the striking Victorian conservatory to the garden front.
Its Historic England listing (March 24, 1961) further highlights ‘many good early 19th-century features inside the house, which has been little altered, except by a late-20th-century addition on the east side and demolition of some work on the north side’.
This probably refers to the addition of the pillared entrance portico and west-front bay window by the Ridley family in the early 1900s and the demolition of a Victorian extension by musician Georgie Fame, the owner in the 1970s.
A wealth of period detail includes original shutters and cornicing, window seats, elegant chimneypieces and original stone floors.
These, combined with hotel-standard plumbing, underfloor heating, a Sonos music system, superfast broadband and elements of contemporary design, such as Louis Poulsen lighting, Bisazza sanitaryware, Plain English joinery and a neutral palette of colours, create a sense of space and flow throughout the house.
Today’s Maperton House offers more than 15,500sq ft of well-planned accommodation on three floors, centred on a grand reception hall and staircase, a boldly decorated library and a large south-west-facing drawing room, with a dining room to the right and a morning room to the left.
The first floor houses the luxurious principal-bedroom suite and five further ensuite bedrooms, with the second-floor attic rooms cleverly adapted to provide a four-bedroom suite of rooms for the owners’ grown-up children.
Approached through a picturesque arch, the well-appointed coach house is home to a large gym with a first-floor apartment above.
It’s hard to pick a stand-out feature of Maperton House, but the magnificent curved conservatory, where the flowers of star jasmine, Trachelospermum jasminoides, provide a heady perfume throughout this relaxed entertaining space, which has seating for 30 diners, is arguably the most memorable.
Maperton House is for sale via Knight Frank and Blue Book at £9.5 million.
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