Property editor Caroline Culot selects three of her favourite new instructions for sale.
•Thunder Lane, Norwich, on sale for £450,000
This Dutch designed detached house was built in 1929 and offers lots of character and quirkiness. The property boasts a spacious 26ft sitting room with a feature Arts and Crafts fireplace and French doors onto the private, non-overlooked rear garden. Downstairs the
kitchen/dining space is a perfect social space with more than enough room to fit in the whole family. The kitchen has been recently fitted with marble work surfaces and reclaimed kitchen units. Upstairs are four bedrooms. The master still has it's original fireplace and there are two further bedrooms which are doubles with the fourth, a single. The landing is part galleried which adds to this properties charm.
•The Old Rectory, Starston, on sale for £1.25 million
This property dates from the 17th century with much of the structure dating from the late 18th and early
19th centuries however the vendors have undertaken a complete restoration of it and it offers many period features including deep, sash windows with shutters, working fireplaces and a geometric curving staircases as well as a bakehouse with a working bread oven. Inside are seven bedrooms, three bathrooms, a reception room, morning room, dining room, billard/games room, a conservatory and a kitchen/breakfast room. Outside is about 8.4 acres with formal gardens, outbuildigns, stables, woodland and a paddock. The property comes with extensive history - one rector was ejected in 1644 by Cromwell's soldiers and the rector Rev Willaim Whitear, who added the library wing in 1817, was accidentally shot dead in the woods in 1826. Other anecdotes include the fact an underground air raid shelter is int he garden and the current vendors dug up a mangled silver cigarette case near the house which was inscribed to a Major Miles who apparently won it playing doubles in the Rhine army tennis tournament in 1919. There used to be a tennis court in the grounds.
•Ellingham House, Ellingham, on sale for £750,000
This home is utterly charming, found at the end of a no through road so really private and tucked away. What is immediately striking are the gardens - amounting to some three acres but what make them so appealing is the fact the house is surrounded by its land which is divided up into different areas. So you have a formal lawn, a super walled garden, a small paddock and woodland as well as the most beautiful wild meadow and at this time of year, everything is just bursting into life. So it feels like a quintessential English country garden full of flowers and established trees and at the centre is the most charming home which started out in the Georgian era and has been added to over the generations.
'The house was built in three phases,' the vendor explained. 'The front isG eorgian and so over 300 years old, while the middle is Regency and the back, Victorian. When we moved in about 16 years ago we were told it was built as the Dower house for Ellingham Hall. It started out as a relatively small two-up-two down cottage but over the decades was extended to become quite a large country home.' Indeed there is a lot of property - its pretty front facade belies the fact it is actually a very substantial home. Inside there is a sun-filled conservatory and large hall as well as a formal dining room where the vendors opened up an original fireplace and a drawing room with a hand-painted frieze.
'The television room, which was a playroom when the children were little, has recently been redecorated and is now rather like a Victorian study,' the vendor added. The sitting room has a magnificent sash window and floor-to-ceiling shutters overlooking the former tennis lawn and there is also a Victorian fireplace. 'We have two wood-burners and two open fireplaces in this house; it is wonderful at Christmas when we get them all going.'
The master bedroom also overlooks the tennis lawn and is apparently a beautiful place to wake up in every morning. From there is a view out over the gardens and trees and wildlife can often be spotted.
'This area is rich with birdlife and we also see the occasional deer.'
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