Property market
Wonderful houses of the West Country are enhanced by characterful owners, from the man who bought the whole of Exmoor to Jane Seymour and Sir Terence Conran
ONE of Somerset’s most intriguing country houses, Grade I-listed St Catherine’s Court stands in 14 acres of famous gardens and grounds, overlooking a hidden wooded valley some five miles north of the World Heritage city of Bath. Originally built as a priory grange for the monks of Bath Abbey, the manor takes its name from the Grade II*-listed, 12th-century parish Church of St Catherine, which is within the grounds.
Following the Dissolution of the Monasteries, Henry VIII granted the manor to his tailor, John Malte, whose son, also John, an Elizabethan courtier, sold St Catherine’s Court to John Blanchard in 1591. Blanchard’s son, William, remodelled the house in the early 17th century and, in 1610, the porch was added and a terraced garden was laid out. Following several generations of Blanchard ownership, the house passed to the Parry family, who failed to maintain it and, by the 18th century, it was in a serious state of disrepair. In 1841, Col Joseph Holden Strutt, a long-standing MP, bought St Catherine’s Court and renovated the house and church. The manor remained in the Strutt family until 1976.
In 1984, St Catherine’s Court hit the headlines when British actress Jane Seymour and her then husband, David Flynn, bought the house and lavished a reputed £3 million on its refurbishment. However, the couple spent little time there and, following their divorce and Ms Seymour’s marriage to American film producer James Keach, the manor was rented out as a film set, recording studio and wedding venue. Finally, in November 2007, Ms Seymour sold St Catherine’s Court to an unknown buyer.
Now, following further extension and renovation, the house and its spectacular gardens—of which Gertrude Jekyll wrote: ‘Many are the beautiful houses… but there is hardly one within the length and breadth of England… whose charm of ancient beauty and of lovely, restful pleasure-ground, can rival that of this delightful place’—are once again back on the market.
Ed Sugden of Savills (07557 337507) quotes a guide price of £12.5 million for this ‘wonderfully idiosyncratic family home’, which offers 14,477sq ft of sumptuous living space on four floors, with additional accommodation in the five-bedroom Serendipity Lodge and the three-bedroom Old School House. The ground floor houses professional kitchens, a family kitchen/breakfast room and various domestic offices. The front door, entered through the pillared porch of the old chapel, opens to wide stone steps leading to the first floor and five grand reception rooms,
