The New Murrey and Blue blog

This astonishing door is said to be 1000 years old, belongs to Homestall Manor in West Sussex and came originally from a French monastery.

Regarding the house itself: “….Originally a simple farmhouse, the oldest part of the property dates from 1350, when it was probably used as a hunting box by John of Gaunt, the son of Edward III, who held the hunting rights to Ashdown Forest….”

Ah, but the house as it is now doesn’t all belong to the present site, for it seems that at the beginning of the 20^th century the wife of the then owner, whisky distiller Lord Tommy Dewar, found it to be “….simply too small for the kind of lavish entertaining she had in mind. With the nonchalance of the very rich, her husband responded by buying Dutton Hall, a large Tudor mansion in Cheshire dating back to Domesday, which he had dismantled, brick by brick and oak beam by oak beam, and rebuilt on the estate to form the present south-west wing of Homestall Manor….” So the house you see in the photograph below is a hybrid, partly belonging to West Sussex and partly to Cheshire.

For me the exterior of the house is well nigh perfect, although I’m not charmed by most of the interior. But then, who am I in the great scheme of things? To read more about the house, and see more photographs, go to this link.

PS: To call Homestall Manor  your own you’d have needed a mere £10 million. As it’s no longer on the market, your money’s safe!