Just what is the connection between a much prized silk dress now at the Kensington Palace museum and this impressive country house which comes with more than 280 acres?
Thurgarton House Farm is for sale with Strutt & Parker as a whole for offers in excess of £4.4 million or in three lots.
It's a rare opportunity to find a historic property like this one, situated in the centre of its plot and with extensive grounds and outbuildings. It also had a hidden 'treasure.'
Many of us like to imagine we may find a hidden treasure when we move into a historic house - but the owners of this fine Grade II listed country house in prime north Norfolk turf could never have dreamed what they would find.
Carefully packed in tissue paper in a cardboard box in a chest of drawers was a magnificent silk dress, woven with pretty motifs, which, when examined by experts from Christies, was found to date to 1750 and a very special and unique example - it would have been worn to court just once by its tiny waisted female - and it is now at the Kensington Palace museum. What a find!
This house in itself is a real find; it is situated at the centre of its plot in a desirable spot just three miles from the north Norfolk coast and a couple of miles from Brancaster and Holt.
You have a wonderful combination of early Georgian, late Georgian and Victorian architecture; what began as a substantial Georgian farmhouse was added to over the years and so you have that glorious mixture of some rooms with smaller windows and lower ceilings and then others with incredibly high ceilings and large picture windows.
This property will also appeal to those who are looking for something with potential to develop further as it comes with land and outbuildings if desired; you have about 237 acres of grade two arable land, 27 acres of grass and meadow, 12.5 acres of woodland and a range of outbuildings as well as full shooting rights.
The Georgian part of the house was built in 1733 by William Spurrell, the first of four generations of the same name to be chief constable and then the larger, later section was believed to have been added by William Dewing Spurrell in 1828.
Inside you enter into a large reception hall and ante room off which left takes you to an early Georgian morning or sitting room and off the other side is an
absolutely stunning drawing room which just looks divine with a pale green striped wallpaper and pale green drapes, with full length French doors to the garden.
There is also a lovely formal dining room and a large, really inviting kitchen/breakfast room with Shaker style units in powder blue and a sunny outlook over a super walled garden framed with field maple trees. Upstairs there is a master bedroom with a dressing area and en suite, a second bedroom, also with a dressing room, four further bedrooms and two family bathrooms.
Outside you have a formal garden area and paddocks as well as a Grade II listed barn, cart sheds and an original stable block and a lake.
• Thurgarton House Farm is for sale as a whole for offers in excess of £4.4million or in three lots. Lot 1 is the house and about 12.5 acres including the traditional farm buildings and track for £1.75 million. Lot 2 is the land amounting to appromiately 271 acres for £2.3 million and Lot 3 is Woodside Cottage, a three bedroom property, for £350,000. Strutt & Parker is on 01603 617431.
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