The Ripple effect

The arrival on the market of three much-loved family houses in the Home Counties bodes well

- Penny Churchill

AS with the proverbial bus, you can wait forever for the right country house to come along and then three appear all at once. It bodes well for the market this summer that three exceptional houses— a Georgian masterpiece, a rare 17th-century manor and a whimsical Thames-side estate —have come to the market after generations in the hands of their devoted owners.

Described as ‘a sleeping beauty’ by selling agent Simon Backhouse, of Strutt & Parker in Canterbury (01227 451123), Grade II*-listed Ripple Court, three miles from the quaint coastal town of Deal, is rightly regarded as one of east Kent’s most important country houses. Owned by the same family for the past 60 years and ‘now in need of sensitive updating’, it stands in 8.6 acres of wonderfully private gardens and grounds, screened on three sides by a shelter-belt of mature woodland. The agents quote a guide price of £2.75 million.

Built between 1796 and 1802 on the site of an earlier, 16th-century Ripple Court for Col John Baker Sladen, the classic late-Georgian house was reputedly designed by Sir John Soane. Although no paper trail exists to this effect, its Historic England listing highlights the front façade and many details of the house and plan as being ‘reminiscent of Sir John Soane, normally the least copied of Neo-Classical architects’. Mr Backhouse also points to the distinctive central chimneystack as being ‘typically Soane’.