Country Life early property pages 14th June 2023

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Enchanting Sandford Orcas Manor, near Sherborne in Dorset, dates from 1550. £6.5m

To the manor reborn A charming Tudor house in Dorset comes to the market for the first time in almost three centuries

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RITING in COUNTRY L IFE of The Manor House, Sandford Orcas, near Sherborne, Dorset (March 3 and 10, 1966), a house he describes as ‘one of the most charming manor houses in the West of England’, the magazine’s then Architectural Editor, Arthur Oswald, maintains that ‘often the most enchanting of Tudor houses prove to have been those that were deserted by their owners in the 18th century and turned into farmhouses’. He explains that ‘although farmers might not be the best of custodians, they were unlikely to make more than minor alterations themselves, and most landlords would have been content with the minimum of maintenance. So the house would remain unchanged’.

Thus it was that, in 1872, after 124 years of farmer occupation, Hubert Hutchings, whose family had owned the estate since the early 1700s, decided to live at the manor himself. Working closely with his architect, Harry Hall, who, according to Oswald, ‘had a light touch and no aggressive urge to leave the marks of his own personality behind’, Hutchings carried out a ‘quite unusually sympathetic’ renovation of the manor house,

now listed Grade I. Hutchings died in 1898 and, following the death of his widow in 1914, Sandford Orcas passed under the terms of his will to his cousin, Sir Hubert Medlycott, the 6th baronet, of Ven House at nearby Milborne Port. Sir Hubert was succeeded at The Manor House by his son, also Hubert, and his grandson, Christopher, who let the house until 1978, when it passed to the late Sir Mervyn Medlycott, the 9th baronet. He died in 2021, after undertaking another extensive refurbishment, during which the roof was renewed, and the entire house re-plumbed and re-wired.

Now on the market for the first time since 1736, through Knight Frank in Sherborne (01935 810062) and London (020–7861 1717), The Manor House is being offered either as a whole or in three lots. Lot 1, comprising Sandford Orcas Manor, set in 73 acres of formal and walled gardens, woodland and pasture, is for sale with a guide price of £6.5 million. Lot 2, the 259-acre Manor Farm, comprising two separate blocks of farmland, a four-bedroom farmhouse and a large farmyard with modern agricultural buildings, is on offer at £2.65m. Lot 3, a further parcel of pasture currently let under a Farm Business Tenancy, is available at £350,000.

The manor house “stands by the church, a friendly neighbour of the House of God”

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Historically part of Somerset but transferred to Dorset following a county boundary change in 1896, the village of Sandford Orcas takes its name from the sandy ford across the stream beside which the original settlement grew up, whereas Orcas derives from the surname of the Norman de Orescuilz family who held the manor in the 12th century. In 1939, Arthur Mee, editor of The Kings England, described the village as ‘lying in a green lap surrounded by hills and reached by a sunken lane. Its gracious Tudor manor house stands by the church, its gatehouse like a friendly neighbour of the House of God’.

In the 14th century, the manor was held by the Knoyle family from Wiltshire and, in 1533, was inherited by Edward Knoyle, who built the present house, probably in about 1550. Much of the interior stonework, such as the fireplaces in the hall and the parlour, dates from this period, whereas the glorious woodwork that is such an important element of the house was originally put in place by him or his immediate successors.

The Knoyle family fortunes took a turn for the worse when their Catholic beliefs and

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Sandford Orcas Manor, built of local Ham stone, is surrounded by some 73 acres of formal and walled gardens, woodland and pasture

support for the Royalist cause in the Civil War left them in dire financial straits. By 1651, the house was heavily mortgaged and, in 1674, the mortgagees decided to foreclose. The Knoyles eventually left Sandford Orcas in about 1700, after which the absentee owners were London merchants who, in 1736, instructed a local lawyer, John Hutchings, to sell the property.

Clearly a man with an eye for a bargain, Hutchings bought the house himself, since when The Manor House and its estate have been owned by his descendants.

Built of the local, golden Ham stone under stone slate roofs, The Manor House provides 9,225sq ft of atmospheric living space on two main floors, with a bedroom and ante-chamber in the gatehouse, and four attic rooms on the third floor. The entrance porch leads through to the 17th-century screens passage, with a door through to the Great Hall, arguably the most impressive room in the house.

The fireplace in the hall is 16th century, with further 16th-century fireplaces in the Solar chamber-bedroom and upstairs chambers.

A stone spiral staircase at the west end of the screens passage leads to the Red Room antechamber, bedroom and bathroom, beyond which are the inner chamber and Great Chamber bedrooms. The kitchen is located in the west wing, which has been fully refurbished and consists of a delightful country kitchen, a breakfast room with flag-stone floors, four bedrooms, a bathroom and a shower room.

Further accommodation is available in the three-bedroom Manor Cottage, currently let under a protected life tenancy, and the onebedroom Stable Flat, presently let under an assured shorthold tenancy with a two-month notice period.

Across the county border in south Wiltshire, West Tisbury is a large rural parish situated seven miles north-east of Shaftesbury, Dorset, and four miles east of East Knoyle. It extends west of Tisbury village to take in the grounds of the Pythouse estate and is one of England’s most beautiful and unspoilt corners, where rolling hills, woods, lakes and a rich variety of architecture diversify the landscape.

The focal point of the estate is Grade II*listed Pythouse, an imposing, early Georgian country house originally built in the 1720s

by Thomas Benett, who, according to John Martin Robinson (COUNTRY LIFE, January 6, 2005) ‘came from a line of architecturally minded squires who had owned Pythouse since the 16th century’.

Over a three-year period from 1802–05, his grandson, John Benett, who succeeded in 1797 aged 24, rebuilt the house, still in the Anglo-Palladian style, but with neo-Classical detailing, including Greek Ionic for the portico and loggia columns, and tripartite Wyatt windows in the side elevations. Much of the architectural impact of Pythouse derives from its magnificent setting on high ground and the carefully designed landscape of the hillside park. Benett’s father had made this possible by selling off land elsewhere to fund the expansion and consolidation of the Pythouse estate.

The house was little changed in the early 20th century, and when Evelyn Benett, the June 14, 2023 | Country Life | 95

Property market

Above and below: Far-reaching views are a highlight at Pythouse, a neo-Grecian mansion set in 93 acres near Tisbury, Wiltshire. £18m widow of Jack Benett, its last owner, died in 1957 with no surviving children, Pythouse was acquired by the Mutual Households Association, later the Country Houses Association (CHA), which repaired the house and converted it to apartments for retired gentlefolk.

Half a century later, the CHA was in financial trouble, and, in early 2004, Sir Henry Rumbold, the owner of the estate, exercised his option to acquire Pythouse so that house and park could be put together again and sold as a residential estate. That same year, Pythouse, set in some 93 acres of mature parkland and farmland, was acquired by the current owners, who have carried out a substantial programme of works throughout the house, which still has potential for further improvement.

Having used Pythouse mainly as a second home, the owners are now looking to downsize and the splendid neo-Grecian mansion, which boasts some 38,680sq ft of internal floor space on three floors, including an impressive range of state rooms, 16 principal bedroom suites, two staff apartments and extensive cellars, is for sale through Knight Frank’s country department (020–7861 1065) at a guide price of £18m.

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Property comment

Edited by James Fisher

Installing a heat-pump system at Grade I-listed Dorfold Hall in Cheshire is ‘the best thing we ever did’, says custodian Candice Roundell

The heat is on

Lucy Denton investigates how heat pumps can help our heritage buildings in the move to a more sustainable future

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HERE isn’t a building in the country that can’t be heated effectively with heat pumps,’ says Will McCarthy, senior consultant at ISO Energy in Horley, Surrey, ‘and it’s a myth that it can’t be done. It can be made to work, as long as it’s designed and installed correctly.’ The pressure is on to reduce carbon emissions and heat pumps have emerged as an energy-source antidote to the old fossil-fuel guzzling gas and oil boilers, endorsed by the Government offering grants of £5,000 or more to potential takers, as long as a new system meets certain standards. Yet, the response has been lacklustre, a curiously British phenomenon that means a significant lag behind other countries. ‘It will take time to catch up with the rest of Europe,’ adds Mr McCarthy.

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Heat pumps have become a divisive subject, rousing bad press, notably for the hefty fees for purchase and installation, which often run into tens of thousands of pounds, and for the long wait for cost benefits. ‘What any good installer should do is produce calculations showing expenditure and payback time, but be aware that this could potentially extend beyond your lifetime,’ points out Ed Stancliffe, senior design engineer at ENG Design, based in London. The physical impact on the historic built environment can be invasive and the planning process protracted, depending on availability of conservation officers.

Ground-source pumps require expensive bore holes or trenches to be dug by specialists, whereas air-source units can be noisy and unsightly. Both work best when combined

with effective insulation, ‘which I would promote ahead of everything, where possible,’ says Mark Hoare, director at Hoare, Ridge & Morris architects in Suffolk, who has installed a ground-source heat pump at his own 16th-century timber-frame cottage and has ‘no regrets’.

There are more encouraging stories: at Grade I-listed Dorfold Hall in Cheshire, a superlative Jacobean brick-built house intended to accommodate a visit from James I, the tradition of shrewd development has been fulfilled in the 21st century. Here, one of the first heat-pump systems installed at a country domain, combining both groundand water-source energy from a nearby field and lake, has been nothing short of transformative in the effort to be sustainable,

Property comment particularly as the electricity that powers it comes from renewable sources. ‘It required a significant investment, but it changed our lives,’ stresses Candice Roundell, custodian of Dorfold, ‘and it has outperformed our initial expectations. It’s the best thing we ever did. And it works especially well in historic houses where the constant temperature it generates benefits the collections and fabric of the building.’

There is an auspicious synchronicity between rural stately piles, with all their outbuildings and land, and the practical requirements of ground- and water-source energy. What is still the Roundells’s family home has a huge ‘boiler’ room on site, allowing space for water tanks and heat pumps in the clocktower—to the naked eye, there is no obvious sign of this state-of-the-art system.

However, the dynamics of each building will be unique and thought must be given to a site’s age, location and function. The surprisingly wide variation in results when traditional boiler systems were replaced with heat pumps has been uncovered in a case study of 10 small-scale historic properties recently produced by Historic England in collaboration with Max Fordham LLP, netzero technology specialists, which analysed impact on churches, private dwellings and retail units. ‘There are effective solutions in buildings of all sizes and ages,’ concludes Morwenna Slade, head of historic-building climate-change adaptation at Historic England, ‘but it is not a case of one size fits all. Heat pumps are effective when situated properly and the resident knows how to use the system.’

It depends on how the building is employed: a modest congregation occupying a mid-19thcentury church only intermittently, which got cold throughout the rest of the week, found that the underfloor heating powered by an air-source heat pump took too long to warm up days later. Yet a similar set-up proved very efficient in providing a constant ambient temperature and eliminating condensation at a Georgian equivalent in Cumbria that was more frequently operational.

Investing in companies and planners with good knowledge of these systems in order 100 | Country Life | June 14, 2023

Good design is crucial when fitting heat pumps to churches and other historic buildings

to produce an optimal design that is fit for purpose is essential, otherwise ‘it can be deeply frustrating,’ points out Rob JonesDavies, a director of the RJD Consultancy, which specialises in rural development, ‘especially when a very expensive heat pump is installed by a specialist, who then defers to a local plumber for everything beyond the plant room, so you’re dealing with two different suppliers. And internal infrastructure often has to be replaced.’

Heat pumps produce a lower temperature and existing pipework will almost certainly need to be updated with an increased diameter, so that heat isn’t lost. If retrofitting a new system, the existing radiators won’t be as hot and may also need changing. Mr Stancliffe advises starting with a heat-loss calculation with a sensible worst-case external temperature, cautioning that ‘unless you know how much heat that building requires, it is only half the game. If you don’t know the heat loss, then you’re guessing at the amount of heat you need. In the case of ground-source heat pumps and their collectors, it’s a good idea to have one contractor responsible for it all, to ensure compatibility’.

Interventions in the historic fabric of listed buildings will also require formal consents from the local planning authority, who will ‘need to decide whether the harm caused to the building by the upgrades

is outweighed by the benefits offered,’ says Alice Jones of Savills’s heritage-planning team, although ‘we are seeing a shift in attitudes from officers and the public benefit of improving the energy efficiency of a building is being given more weight in this balance’.

Fitting heat pumps is a complex operation, with heating requirements in different rooms, amount of space and land and geology all being factors, even the potential for snow

There are effective solutions in buildings of all sizes and ages, but it is not a case of one size fits all build-up and how many baths will be run at the same time—although maintenance is usually no more than for a ‘traditional’ oil or gas system. There are ways around what might seem like problematic circumstances, including combining boreholes and dry-air coolers for multi-storey blocks; ISO Energy has even designed systems to be buried under car parks, extensions, in paddocks and registered parkland. Some do, indeed, like it hot-ish.

Alamy; Shutterstock

In historic houses, the constant temperature benefits the collections and fabric of the building

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