The beautiful south

The late arrival onto the market of three mouth- watering Hampshire houses-one fringing the heavenly Beaulieu River and two in Austen country- can help to banish those November blues

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THE beautiful Beaulieu River and the prestigious 7,000-acre estate that takes its name are two of the jewels in Hampshire's crown. A series of secluded properties built on the waterfront in Dock Lane, Beaulieu, from the early 20th century onwards are among the most sought-after in the county and George Clarendon of Knight Frank in Winchester (01962 677234) is handling the sale of one of the earliest examples, The Rookery, at a guide price of $5.25 million.

One of England's great landed estates, Beaulieu can trace its origins to 1204, when King John gave the land to monks of the Cistercian order. The Abbey they founded grew in size and status until the Dissolution in 1538, when the Beaulieu estate was surrendered to the Crown and sold that same year to Thomas Wriothesley, 1st Earl of Southampton, a direct ancestor of the Montagu family that still owns it.

The estate is situated on the southern fringe of the New Forest National Park and occupies a glorious elevated setting overlooking the picturesque Beaulieu River, which rises near Lyndhurst in the heart of the New Forest. It then flows south across heathland to the village of Beaulieu, where it becomes tidal and passes the hamlet of Buckler's Hard before entering the Solent at Needs Ore. The river has been key to the development of the Beaulieu estate by successive owners, among them John, 2nd Duke of Montagu, who founded the shipbuilding village of Buckler's Hard in the 1720s-now the setting for the prestigious Buckler's Hard Yacht Harbour and marina.