Country Houses with History
29 Feb 2008
Country Life - Country Houses with History - Thursday, 28 February 2008 - Penny Churchill
The 16th-century origins of delightful Cobblestone House at Hascombe, Surrey now on the market through Browns (01483 267070) at a guide price of £2.5m may be humbler than those of Newington House, but it’s still a class act in more ways than one. Originally a barn on the Nore estate, the building was converted first to stabling, and then, in the early 1900s, to guest accommodation for the main house by the estate’s owners, the pioneering Godwin-Austen family. At about the same time, Gertrude Jekyll, a family friend who lived nearby, was almost certainly brought in to create the splendid formal terraced gardens and ornamental pond, using the foundations of the old barns and sheds demolished by the Godwin-Austens.
In 1962, Hollywood came to Hascombe, when screen idol Dirk Bogarde bought the Nore estate as a country retreat, where he would entertain his friends when ‘resting’ between acting jobs. In 1965, the actress Ingrid Bergman stayed in Cobblestone House for six weeks when performing at the newly opened Yvonne Arnaud theatre in Guildford. In his autobiography Snakes and Ladders, Bogarde recalls that ‘while she was playing A Month in the Country at Guildford, [Bergman] was constantly amused by my evening walk down to the vegetable gardens to pick the mint for supper. As she set off for her theatre, so I set off for my mint bed. It became for both of us a symbol of unemployment’.
Bogarde eventually moved on to West Sussex and then to France, and in the early 1970s, the Nore estate was sold and subsequently sub-divided. The current owners of Cobblestone House bought the Grade II-listed house and its adjacent period barn and embarked on a long-term programme of intensive restoration, including that of the 2.2 acres of splendid Jekyll gardens with their spectacular views over the adjoining Hascombe Hills. Cobblestone House offers spacious family accommodation, including three reception rooms, a kitchen/dining room, two bedroom suites, plus three additional bedrooms and a family bathroom. Meanwhile, today’s visitors have the choice of a self-contained flat or a guest suite in the converted Grade II-listed barn.
