Cottage garden that will melt your heart

Ask most people what feature they associate most with English cottages and the answer will probably be the gardens. If you are one who shares that opinion then you won’t be disappointed by a property that has come onto the market at Ham, near Hungerford.

Manor Cottage, for sale through Dreweatt Neate a guide price of £825,000, has idyllic gardens approaching an acre that have been beautifully laid out. The village is in some of the most delightful countryside in the region, nestling in the lee of the downs below the hill to Buttermere. At the top of the hill, overlooking Ham, is a nature reserve and there are magnificent views across Berkshire from it.

The cottage originally started life in the 1830s as two properties but it has been skillfully blended into one spacious home. To the right on the ground floor is the reception area – a large sitting room with its own door in from the front garden. Leading off it is a study.

In the opposite side of the ground floor is a kitchen / dining room that has an Aga range and brick flooring to give that real cottage feel. Off the adjacent hall is a cloakroom.

Two turning staircases from rear lobbies lead to the first floor, with each side of the cottage having two well proportioned bedrooms and a bathroom.

But it’s the gardens that will melt your heart, for sure. To one side of the gravel driveway is a pretty cottage-style garden stocked with shrubs and specimen trees. To the front of the cottage is a lawned area with forsythia and hedging. At the rear is a beautiful and substantial south-facing garden with a gravel seating area that leads to a gently sloping lawn interspersed with borders.

A large ornamental pond adds to the peaceful scene and the garden then rises gradually to a cultivated vegetable plot and various trees. To the west of the cottage is a large expanse of lawn with the potential to form a paddock.

For further details, visit dnproperty.co.uk.