Period home that is steeped in history
Beechfield House, Boston Spa, £2.2m
AS John McDonnell talks about Beechfield House, the home in Boston Spa he shares with his wife and two grown-up daughters, it’s easy to imagine stepping back more than two centuries to the heady days of Georgian balls and revels, when the house formed a wing of a hotel.
“It was built as a hotel in 1780 or something like that,” says Mr McDonnell, 59, who sold his electronics business eight years ago, and is now chair of governors at a local primary school and a volunteer for business organisation Connect Yorkshire. “Then in around 1795, it was turned into a school named The Seminary. I am sitting here now and I can still see graffiti etched into the windows by some of the pupils.”
Such touches of history add a fascinating dimension to the sixbedroom property, which has four bathrooms, an outdoor pool and gated parking for several cars.
When Mr McDonnell and his wife, Ros, 58, a volunteer for St Vincent’s Centre in Leeds, bought the house for around £1.4m in 2017, and set about overseeing a £500,000 renovation programme, they discovered a 40ft deep well in what is now the laundry/boot room. “We couldn’t believe it,” he says. “So we made a feature of it.”
Agent Andrew Beadnall, director and founder of Beadnall Copley, selling Beechfield House for the McDonnells (asking price £2.2m), who are reaching the final stages of building their own home nearby in the popular village, believes that the well could indeed hold spa water. “Boston Spa was famous for its waters back then,” says Beadnall. “It was only surpassed by nearby Harrogate and Ilkley when the railways came, and ended up left out as it wasn’t given a railway station.”
Nevertheless, locals happily drive 20 miles to York for fast trains to London and Edinburgh. Boston Spa is just minutes from the A1 (M) and around 30 minutes’ drive to Leeds city centre.
Grade II listed Beechfield House is one of a handful of properties on The Terrace, one of the most prestigious addresses in Boston Spa, situated between the high street with its popular restaurants and independent shops and the banks of the River Wharfe.
The McDonnells bought their house from the village doctor and her husband, who had lived here for many decades. Their full-scale renovation programme involved moving the kitchen from the back of the house to the middle to create an easier and more family-friendly arrangement. The kitchen itself was designed bespoke by Jeremy Wood Interiors of Wetherby and is separated from the dining room by a double-sided multi-fuel stove.
Enlisting the professional help of Bluesky, an interior design company based in Boston Spa, John and Ros took inspiration from the fascinating history of the building, which was divided into houses in the 19th century, choosing a soothing palette of under-stated Farrow & Ball paint shades and gracious wallpapers for the bedrooms.
“We did the things we wanted to for our own enjoyment and comfort, as we thought that we would be staying here for the rest of our lives,” Mr McDonell adds. “But we always wanted to build our own modern house and to our spec and the opportunity came up so we have taken it.”