A pocket of Middle England

Idyllic Midlands counties appear to have been left alone by the hordes-all the better for those who live there

- Penny Churchill

TIME slows to walking pace in the pretty stone villages that line the wide, shallow valley of the River Welland, which flows gently from its source near Sibbertoft, eight miles from Market Harborough, through the borderlands of Northamptonshire and Leicestershire to Stamford in Lincolnshire, before passing eastwards through the fens to the Wash. Here, Stephen King of Market Harborough-based King West (01858 435970) has hit the ground running with the launch onto the market of imposing Horninghold Hall at Horninghold, in the upper Welland Valley, seven miles north-east of Market Harborough, Leicestershire, and four miles south-west of Uppingham, Rutland.

Mr King seeks 'offers in excess of £3.95 million' for the Hall, previously known as Horninghold House, which, according to Pevsner, was converted in the 1880s from a 17th-century farmhouse by Thomas Hardcastle of nearby Blaston Hall; he added the bay-windowed Victorian stone front and the extensive red-brick stables, dated 1882. Alexander Cross, who rented the house before buying the Horninghold estate in 1916, reputedly kept as many as 30 hunters there.

Following Thomas's death in 1902, his son, T. A. Hardcastle, completed the remodelling of Horninghold into a 'garden village', building stone, brick and half-timbered houses in a neat and symmetrical pattern and surrounding them with ornamental shrubs and trees. Between 1903 and 1913, the well-known Leicestershire architect H. L. Goddard worked on the remodelling of the village; at its centre is a triangular green with a village sign made of oak, paid for with prize money won when the village was judged 'the prettiest in Leicestershire' in 1953.

Approached through wrought-iron gates and over a brook that runs along the front of the property, Horninghold Hall, set in 54 acres of immaculate gardens and grounds, takes pride of place within the village.