Spellbound by a gothic stately pile and its secret garden

By Roddy Phillips

Published:

IF I EVEN notice a For Sale sign outside a property or at the end of a country road, I barely register it. They obviously have some secret code that I can’t read that says something like: “Hey, come on in, you’ll love me and want to buy me.”

My wife must be genetically programmed to read For Sale signs, because the moment she sees one she automatically goes into potential-buyer mode and somehow the schedule for that very property gets downloaded to our car and printed out and stapled together by the house-selling fairies that live in the glove compartment.

Early one evening last week, she even managed to spot a For Sale sign that was at least two miles away, round three bends in the road. She tried to pass it off as a trick of the light, but I’m hoping she will be able to use her newfound superpowers for the greater good of humanity and the planet.

“Here it is,” she shouted, “I told you I saw one; let’s have a look.”

There was no one behind me, so I stopped and tried to peer through a high hedge and a wood, but since I don’t have any of the superpowers my wife obviously possesses, I couldn’t see the house for the trees.

“Looks like a lovely old farmhouse,” she said enthusiastically.

“Anything else coming through – number of bedrooms, period features, price range?” I asked, but before she could answer I saw a car looming in my rearview mirror and for some reason, possibly my wife’s sheer willpower, I drove through the entrance.

“Oh good, we’re going in,” exclaimed my wife, in a fairly convincing state of surprise.

We had, of course, originally taken this long shortcut home on my wife’s recommendation. Apparently, it would cut a lot of time off our journey, or at least it would if we lived in this particular house. The drive was long and winding with National Trust aspirations; the verges were hedged and bristling with wild garlic.

My wife rolled her window down and sucked it all in. Things weren’t looking good.

They got a lot worse as we reached the end of the drive and an impressive Victorian mansion revealed itself. I knew we were in trouble because both of us were speechless and that meant that one of us wouldn’t be able to talk some sense into the other. You would think I’d know better, considering we’re now living in the 10th house since we got married, which means we’re either serial house-buyers or just incredibly restless.

“Wow,” said my wife quietly to herself as she got out of the car.

We stood in silence for quite some time, just taking it all in.

“Don’t worry,” said my wife at last, “it’s unoccupied; there’s no one here.”

The house was majestic, with gothic pretensions. It also was higher than the average block of flats and the view was a landscape painter’s dream come true. Just looking at it I could hear an old retainer croak: “You rang, milord,” and, I have to say, it sounded great to me.

“So would you paint it, maybe white or that sandy pink they sometimes paint castles?” pondered my wife. “Or just leave it?” she continued. “It is quite nice the way it is, you know, faded and grand.”

It was certainly faded and there was no doubt it was grand. It also emanated a sort of hypnotic power that made you feel as if you had come home to the house you really deserved. The sheer scale of it was literally uplifting.

Walking backwards on to the great lawn, my wife pulled a new card from her pack of tricks.

“It certainly suits your car,” she mused, “stately, elegant and timeless.”

Suddenly, she had a schedule in her hand, so it was possible she was quoting from it.

“We can’t buy a house just to match a car,” I said, but apparently that was silly talk and, more important, my wife had found a gate to a large secret garden.

You would almost have thought there was some mind-altering drug being pumped out into the air, because one minute I was looking at this hugely overgrown, complex garden, bristling in a state of splendid decay and thanking my lucky stars that it wasn’t my responsibility, and the next I was actually striding around stating with incredible confidence that it could be transformed in no time. Perhaps not by me, but certainly by a gang of zealous, professional gardeners.

Back at the big house, it turned out there were servants’ quarters round the side, complete with a tradesmen’s entrance and a separate drive for the proletariat.

Leering in through the windows, we saw more period details than you could swing a National Trust brochure at. After counting the chimneys, I announced there were 24 fireplaces.

“Big families, the Victorians,” reflected my wife.

Probably because I had more or less been kidnapped and taken to this splendid pile, I found myself in a state of powerless submission. I kept saying things like “imagine the heating bill in the winter” or “imagine trying to keep it clean”, but they were all just pinpricks in the feet of this colossus.

We drove off slowly, staring back at the house on every bend of the drive until it vanished behind a veil of birch and blossoming trees. In light of the fact that we didn’t have a Victorian family to hand at this point, we should have been debating about whether or not we were bonkers for even considering buying such a place. Instead, we fell into a worrying deep silence which, after 15 minutes, was broken by my wife. “There’s no doubt you could hear the cars from the main road,” she reflected.

“Quite loud at peak times with commuters, I would imagine,” I added.

The spell dissolved slowly after that. But it was a close thing.