A wonderful, late 18th century country house set in over 20 acres amidst beautiful and unspoilt Somerset countryside.
Built around 1790 in the classic style of the age, Woodlands is a fine, late Georgian country house set within unspoilt, level countryside. The house is close to the edge of the Quantock Hills and looks on wooded hillsides to the front, with northerly views stretching behind to the Bristol Channel and Hinkley Point. It was once the home of the poet and philanthropist John Kenyon, who introduced Browning to his future wife Elizabeth Barrett and most recently has been the much-loved home of the same family for the past 27 years. The house has clearly been well maintained but is now a little tired and dated and therefore presents a wonderful opportunity for a new owner to restore and modernise it, subject to its Grade II listing. It has three storeys including a lower basement floor, with the exterior walls covered in roughcast rendered under a Welsh slate roof. The house also has tall, 12-pane sash windows, a south-facing front and western side incorporating an impressive two-storey bow, which all combine to fill the inside with natural light.The interior has retained its original grandeur along with many of its original architectural fittings including fireplaces, joinery including moulded skirting boards, doors and door surrounds, fireplaces, dado and picture rails, cornicing and an elegant front staircase lit by a tall stairwell window. The ground floor has a long, central reception hall, four reception rooms, a large, west-facing kitchen/breakfast room and a wonderfully sized laundry/boot room.The first floor rooms are arranged as a mirror to those on the ground floor incorporating five big double bedrooms arranged around a long, central landing that looks down the deep stairwell at one end. The principal bedroom has south and west-facing windows with lovely rural views and an en suite bath and shower room, whilst the remaining four bedrooms share two family bathrooms.The basement floor incorporates a suite of nine rooms including the wine cellar.Stable Cottage and OutbuildingsBehind the house to the north is a courtyard of brick/timber-built ancillary outbuildings and a stone-built, Grade II listed stable block, which dates from the same period as the main house and incorporates four loose boxes, tack room and hayloft. Attached to the stable block is a three bedroom, stone-built cottage, called Stable Cottage, which has a living room, kitchen/ breakfast room and three bedrooms plus its own courtyard garden and parking. In addition to parking within the courtyard there is further parking and a garage block incorporating a double garage and single carport to the rear of the ancillary outbuildings.Garden and GroundsDesigned to originally provide carriages with convenient access to and from the house, the drive is double ended approaching both from the east and the south, with a turning ellipse immediately in front of the house.The gardens and residential grounds extend all the way around the house and are primarily lawned with areas of hard and soft landscaping and incorporating a walled garden behind the stable block, woodland and a hard surfaced tennis court, which requires resurfacing.The walled garden, which is enclosed by high walls of red sandstone, is also Grade II listed. Pasture divided into four paddocks and enclosed by post and rail fencing extends primarily outwards from the garden to the south, south east and west, with a fourth, smaller paddock in the north west corner adjacent to the tennis court. In all, the grounds extend to about 20.41 acres (8.26 hectares), of which the garden and additional area around the house and outbuildings is about 2.91 acres (1.18 hectares).
Woodlands is situated amidst unspoilt countryside in the lee of the appropriately named Woodlands Hill and within the Quantock AONB. It is about half a mile as the crow flies from the small village of Holf