FOR more than 1,000 years, people have shaped the natural beauty of the High Weald, a medieval landscape of wooded rolling hills and scattered farmsteads spread over 564 square miles across the counties of Kent, Sussex and Surrey. The ancient village of Horsted Keynes, six miles north-east of the commuter hub of Haywards Heath, stands in some 5,000 acres of heavily forested, mostly rural land, once part of the ancient forest of Anderida.
First mentioned in the Domesday Book as Horsted de Cahaignes, the village takes its name from Sir William de Cahaignes, a Norman knight who fought with William the Conqueror and was awarded land at Horstede ('the place of the horses') in West Sussex and Milton in Buckinghamshire. At the north end of the village, the Grade Ilisted Church of St Giles stands on the site of a pre-Christian place of worship, although the Norman architects who erected the present 12th-century cruciform building with its landmark spire preserved parts of the Saxon fabric.
Such is the backdrop to The Old Rectory in Church Lane, Horsted Keynes, which stands in 27 acres of spectacular gardens and grounds on the edge of Ashdown Forest and is now for sale, for the first time in more than 30 years, at a guide price of $6 million through Knight Frank (020-7861 1093). The impressive 10,067sq ft country house should, perhaps, be called The New Rectory, given that it stands on the site of a former rectory dating from at least Elizabethan times, which was demolished in the 1970s.
According to selling agent Oliver Rodbourne, the present owner, who, in 1993, bought the imposing house with its large Georgian sash windows dominating the main façade and Victorian-style bays at either end, has, over the years, greatly improved the house and gardens. Amenities include indoor and outdoor swimming pools, games rooms, a squash court, tennis court, a three-hole golf course and ornamental pools that flow into the lake.
This story is from the May 15, 2024 edition of Country Life UK.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Sign In
This story is from the May 15, 2024 edition of Country Life UK.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
