A family affair

A remarkable Edwardian country house is on the market for the first time and wine, cider and hops spice things up at a manoir estate, both in Herefordshire

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THE glorious Wye Valley, which straddles the border between England and Wales, provides a spectacular backdrop to one of Herefordshire’s most remarkable country houses, Whitney Court at Whitneyon-Wye, six miles north of Hay-on-Wye and 17 miles east of Hereford. For sale for the first time since it was built—at a guide price of £3 million through Peter Daborn of Savills in Telford (01952 239511)—the grand Edwardian country house stands in 22 acres of gardens and wooded parkland at the heart of the ancient Whitney estate, which was acquired by the Hope family in 1897.

According to a history compiled by the owners, the house was born of a collaboration between various members of the Hope family, the prime mover being Lady Mary Nugent, the widow of the Hon James Hope-Wallace of Featherstone Castle, Northumberland; her daughter-in-law Eliza Coats, youngest daughter of textile magnate Sir Peter Coats, joint founder of the Scottish thread-making firm of J. & P. Coats; Eliza’s favourite brother, another Peter Coats, ‘who found the necessary cash’; and Lady Mary’s second son, James Louis Alexander Hope, who ‘handled the aesthetic side of things, siting the new house brilliantly and choosing both architect and building style’. The site chosen lay ‘high and dry above the river valley and, not, like its two predecessors (both of which were eventually demolished), down and damp beside the River Wye, where cellars could flood several times a year’.