STATELY STATEMENTS
A gatehouse offers the chance to lord it up in a unique, historic setting, discovers Fred Redwood
WE ALL dream of the day when we own a grand house, but for most of us it’s never going to happen. Perhaps that’s one reason why Downton Abbey and Brideshead Revisited became such TV success stories.
However, there is a way that you can buy into the stately home experience in a small way — and at a far more affordable price. Start looking for a gatehouse.
‘ Gatehouses were originally defensive features,’ says Roy Porter, senior curator at English Heritage. ‘ They are often architecturally interesting because the owner of the big house — knowing the gatehouse to be the first building a visitor would see — would use it to display his wealth, sophistication and taste.
‘In abbey and cathedral grounds, they were used by porters as bases from which to control the access of pilgrims or visitors.’
Gatehouses can make good investments. ‘People love their sense of history and heritage — and they sell well,’ says Ed Church of Strutt & Parker estate agents. ‘They also share the views of the grounds with the main house and are part of it all, by proxy.’
Church could be describing Dave Newman’s gatehouse, outside Weybridge, Surrey, which belonged to the estate that is now Oatlands Park Hotel. The hotel stands on the footprint of a palace built by Henry VIII for his new Queen, Anne of Cleves.
That palace has long since been demolished, but there are still reminders in the grounds of the site’s links with royalty. A cedar tree, one of the first to be brought from the Lebanon, stands in honour of the birth of the Duke of Gloucester.
And the pet cemetery built in the 1700s by the then Duchess of York, complete with headstones, is still on the lawn.
‘We are surrounded by lovely hedges and the grounds are tended by professional gardeners, at no cost to ourselves,’ says Newman, 77, a retired hotelier.
The gatehouse is now on the market priced at £500,000 ( johndwood.co.uk).
The charming 74 The Close, Salisbury, for sale for £475,000 ( myddeltonmajor.
co.uk), is attached to the Harnham Gate that leads into the famous Close for Salisbury Cathedral.
DATINGback to the 18th century this Grade I-listed three-bedroom cottage is full of period features, such as gothic arched window panes, but perhaps its biggest selling point is that it is part of The Close community, a rich and diverse collection of characters who have become part of Salisbury folklore.
The author Leslie Thomas, a great raconteur who often wrote for this newspaper, used to relish tales of The Close from his days living there.
‘The word got around that I had written The Virgin Soldiers and some thought the title a little raunchy,’ said Thomas when I chatted with him a few years before he died in 2014. ‘One old dear was heard to say somewhat biblically, “A pornographer has come among us!”’
Thomas lived in The Walton Canonry next to the former prime minister, Sir Edward Heath, who owned Arundells, believed by many to be the most beautiful house in England.
‘Ted was the most famous man in the The Close, but he was the first to invite us to lunch. Looking out from his window to the Cathedral that day I said, “I don’t know how I came to live here. I’m a working-class boy.” Ted said, “So am I.”’
Not all gatehouses are dinky miniatures of the great house at the end of the drive. Shurland Hall in Eastchurch, on the Isle of Sheppey in Kent, is set in seven acres and has five bedrooms. It is an imposing property in its own right.
Reminiscent of the great Tudor Palace gatehouse at Hampton Court, it was built in the 16th century for Sir Thomas Cheyney, a courtier. Sir Thomas entertained Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn at the house in October 1532.
Situated in a prime strategic position, overlooking the Thames estuary, the property’s function was to defend London. It was the service wing of a ‘once important medieval house’ and later the home of 266 Squadron during World War II, before it fell into a sad state of disrepair.
In 2006, it was acquired by the Spitalfields Trust, which completely renovated it.
‘My daughter was married here and it made a wonderful setting,’ says Dan O’Donoghue, 71, a champagne importer who has owned Shurland Hall for the past seven years. ‘The Tudor fireplaces are intact and the Georgian windows give it a light and airy feel.’ Shurland Hall is for sale for £2.5 million ( fineandcountry.com).