A home fit for a lady
Chocolate box cottage comes with candy cane twist,
SOME pretty homes are known as a ‘chocolate box cottages’ but this one has candy cane confectionery thrown in for good measure. It comes in the form of twisty ‘barley sugar’ chimney stacks out of all proportion to the property.
Welcome to Lady Eleanor’s Cottage. The woman of that name was Lady Eleanor Balfour, grandmother of prime minister Arthur Balfour, and ‘lady of the manor’ at the Whittingehame Estate in East Lothian.
A sewing school for her was built in the grounds of the mansion house in 1833 to the design of celebrated architect William Burn. He endowed it with no fewer than seven sloped roofs and its gorgeous chimney stacks.
It goes without saying that peace and quiet come as standard at this rural retreat, which still sits within the estate grounds, surrounded by wooded country lanes and pretty paths.
The nearest community, East Linton, is three miles away.
Lady Eleanor was married to James Balfour, a swashbuckling entrepreneur who made his fortune in India by selling supplies to the Royal Navy. When he returned to Scotland in 1815 – the year he married Eleanor – he had amassed a fortune of £300,000, which is estimated to be the equivalent of £25million today.
Visitors to their grand home, Whittingehame House, included HG Wells, Arthur Conan Doyle, William Gladstone, Winston Churchill and Lloyd George.
An 1864 photograph of Lady Eleanor is held within the National Portrait Gallery Collection in London. Estate agent Rettie says the house was modernised in 2011 to include the installation of a new kitchen, new bathroom fittings and central heating.
Alteration works were carried out under the instruction of architect Ian Parsons, bringing new light into the kitchen and opening up the main rooms by dispensing with a store and scullery.
However, the property has been let in recent years and ‘would now benefit from some redecoration works, both internal and external’. Extending to 1,671 square feet, the principal apartments consist of the large dining kitchen and expansive sitting room, which has aspects on three sides.
There are three bedrooms – one of which has a notable marble fireplace – and two bathrooms.
The extensive gardens are a major feature of the cottage, evidently planted and tended with care over the years.
The gardens – which are enclosed by a stone wall – are arranged over a number of levels and stone steps linking the different levels gently fall away to the south, down towards the boundary at the Whittinghame Water.
Lady Eleanor’s Cottage is surely an opportunity for oneupmanship.
After all, how often can you take the title to a property with a title?
Offers over £400,000 to Chris Hall of Rettie. Tel 0131 624 4074 or email chris.hall@rettie.co.uk