6 bedroom detached house

Property number 48543. Click the "Request Viewing" or "Email Agent"button, submit the form and we'll text & email you within minutes, day or night.

INTRODUCTION

Huntsland House is an imposing unlisted period property which has recently been sympathetically rebuilt internally to modern standards with underfloor heating throughout, insulated floors, walls, and roof, doubled glazed windows, pneumatic lift, three phase electricity, fire detector system, and CCTV. Original features include wooden shutters, high ceilings, and a Regency cantilevered spiral stone staircase with dome.

Despite the rural setting it is conveniently located only 10 minutes from Gatwick Airport, but without aircraft noise as it is not on a flight path. The train from Gatwick to London Victoria only takes 30 minutes, or alternatively trains to London Bridge, Victoria, and Brighton are also available from the nearby Three Bridges station.

Internal accommodation extends to approximately 10,000 square feet with six bedroom, seven bathrooms, and eight reception rooms including snooker table. The house is set within three acres of garden which include a four-bay garage, tractor shed, recently dredged lake, and indoor heated swimming pool. EPC Rating D and Council Tax Band H.

SETTING THE SCENE

From a tree lined private laneway off Turners Hill Road the entrance is though high iron gates and down a sweeping driveway to a stunning view of the lawn and lake. The house is located high on a ridge with fantastic views across the unspoilt Sussex countryside, and is surrounded by approximately three acres of garden which include an enviable collection of mature copper beech, oak, and yew trees.

The imposing facade of the house incorporates classical columns reflecting both the Georgian original and Victorian rebuild. Set over three storeys the outside has a finish of grey and white render with a low pitched slate roof.

The former Huntsland Estate is located on the outskirts of Crawley Down village which has local amenities such as shops, post office, pharmacy, doctor’s surgery, and a dentist. The larger town centres of Crawley and East Grinstead are approximately 6 miles away.

Nearly private schools include Brambletye, Ardingly College and Worth School.

The local area includes a number of National Trust properties such as Standen, Nymans, and Sheffield Park, together with other significant gardens such as Wakehurst Place, High Beeches, Borde Hill, and Leonardslee. Dining out is available at a number of local country house hotels such as Alexander House and Gravetye Manor, there are also a number of local golf courses, polo and showjumping at Hickstead, and horse racing at nearby Lingfield Park.

Huntsland has had a series of interesting owners throughout its life. For more information please see the History section. Some of the existing furniture may also be available for inclusion in the sale, as is the personalised e-mail domain huntsland.house

THE GRAND TOUR

The front doors are accessed through the classical columns of the porch, which has now been glazed to provide a useful weather-proof space. The main double doors then open onto the circular Regency hallway, with a marble medallioned floor and cantilevered spiral stone staircase with round headed niches for oil lamps. Further double doors then open onto the ballroom, which is mirrored down one side and has an ornate plaster ceiling supporting twin chandeliers.To the left is the drawing room whose bayed windows with original wooden shutters give a fantastic view of the garden and lake., and which has a marble fireplace with wood burning stove. Next door is the sitting room with panelled walls and original fireplace. All of the ground floor rooms have high ceilings of around 3.4m.

Across the ballroom floor is an impressive dark green walled study, and then down the hallway is a guest cloakroom with tromp l’oeil ceiling, and dining room with a marble fireplace identical to the one in the drawing room. The kitchen is entered from the dining room via a large archway, and has an imposing has a handmade wooden kitchen with Rosso Levanto marble worksurfaces.

On the other side of the hall is the utility room fitted out for a tumble dryer and two washing machines, with wooden doored kitchen units and another long cloakroom with cupboards for hanging and storage. The utility room in turn leads to the boot room, which in turn has the back door out onto a covered back porch.

Downstairs there are three large reception rooms, one of them currently set up as a snooker room, a boiler room with twin oil fired boilers, hot water and expansion tanks, fuseboard, and internet and security hubs. There are also two useful storage rooms, a full bathroom, and a charming wine cellar with rounded ceiling.

Returning to the entrance hall and ascending the spiral stone staircase there is a ladies’ powder room to one side, and through a curved Regency wooden door the upstairs hallway. This leads to six bedrooms and six bathrooms, the master bedroom having its own dressing room with mirror doored cupboards and bathroom with roll top bath. All three floor as connected by a pneumatic lift designed to carry two people, as seen in the Channel 4 series “Escape to the Chateau”.

THE GREAT OUTDOORS

There is a large granite chip drive surrounding the house to the North and East, under which there is a drainage system to ensure that rainwater is efficient diverted to the lake in winter, leading to a four bay Sussex barn style garage with three phase Tesla charger, garden shed, and oil tank. There is a separate tractor shed surrounded by a large supply of firewood to the North, and so the Southeast of the house is a covered and heated swimming pool with shower, toilet, and extensive patio.

The lawns sweep down to a natural clay lined lake which has been recently dredged to more than two meters deep, and which contains a collection of pond plants such as water lilies and Golden Rudd fish. The garden is surrounded by a deer fence and hedge, and contains as number of magnificent fully grown copper beech, oak, and yew trees.

HISTORY

It is thought that a house may have been on the site since the 13th Century - certainly Huntsland Barn, a remnant of the original farmstead, has parts dating back to the 16th century. On the breakup of the Rowfant estate in 1811 the farm of 240 acres was sold to one Peter Walker, and it is thought that he built a Regency style house on the site, of which the circular entrance hall and basement still remain.

Upon his death Huntsland was purchased by John Russell Reaves, who worked as the Chief Inspector of Tea for the East India Company in China. Like his father before him he was a keen amateur naturalist and artist, and together they commissioned over 2,000 drawings of Asian flora and fauna, the collection now being in London’s Natural History Museum. When Reaves finally retired to England he rebuilt the house in the Victorian style, and it is mainly his creation that we see today.

Following his death in 1877 the estate was sold to Hannah Lampson, and so was once again reunited with the Rowfant Estate. Hannah was the daughter of Sir Curtis Miranda Lampson, promotor of the first transatlantic cable, from whom she had inherited Rowfant. She married the poet Frederick Locker, who had a renowned library and was acquainted with all of the major literary figures of the day such as Dickens, George Elliot, Ruskin, Tennyson, Thakeray, and Trollope. Hannah had two daughter and two sons, both of whom went to Eton and became Conservative Members of Parliament. During the First World War Oliver Locker Lampson personally funded an armoured car squadron which was sent to the Russian front.

Here he became entangled in Russian politics and claimed that he was asked to participate in the assassination of Rasputin, and promised to smuggle the Czar out of Russia, a promise that he was unable to keep when the Czar insisted on staying with his family.

In 1903 Arthur George Brand and his family moved in. Brand was the third son of Henry Brand, 1st Viscount Hampden, and grandson of General Henry Trevor, 21st Baron Dacre. Educated at Rugby, he entered parliament as the Liberal member for Wisbech in an 1891 and served in the Liberal administration of the Earl of Rosebury as Treasurer of the Household. He was also a Justice of the Peace and Deputy Lieutenant for Sussex.

In 1906 the property was occupied by Ebenezer Cayford JP, who was a director and Chairman of the Houlder shipping line, but he died in 1909 leaving his estate to his only daughter, Nellie Maud Emma. She had married in the previous year to Henry Norman Spalding, a Barrister educated at Eastbourne College and New College Oxford. Spalding was a civil servant in the Admiralty, wrote several books, and founded a Chair of Eastern Religions and Ethics at Oxford.

The 1911 census shows the Spaldings in residence at Huntsland with a cousin by marriage and six domestic servants – a housekeeper, parlourmaid, two housemaids, a lady’s maid, kitchen maid, and scullery maid. Spalding stood unsuccessfully as the Liberal candidate for East Grinstead in the 1910 general election and for Reading in the 1913 by-election.

In 1915 the house was purchased by Percy Herbert Aggett Barrow who moved in with his family. The Barrow family business was Barrow Hepburn & Gale, which made luxury leather goods such as the red dispatch boxes used by the government and Royal Maundy purses. The firm would have had considerable government contracts during the first world war for the production of goods such as saddles and bayonet scabbards.

From 1928-1933 the house was empty, but was then purchased by Mollie Eddington and Jean Slater from Australia and New Zealand respectively, who updated Huntsland with electricity and running water and operated it as a country house hotel. In 1937 it was sold to Alexander J McNeill Reid.

Reid was the son of Alexander Reid, an art dealer originating from Glasgow who was the joint founder of the Lefevre art gallery in Mayfair, London. Artists whose first British solo exhibitions were hosted by the gallery include Salvador Dali, Edgar Degas, Andre Derain, L S Lowry, Amedeo Modigliani, Henri Rousseau, and Georges Seurat. Alexander Reid was a close personal friend of Van Gough, having shared lodgings in Paris, and it is said they looked so similar in appearance that many could not tell them apart.

Alexander J McNeill Reid took over the position of director of the Lefevre from his father, and may well have used Huntsland to safeguard works of art when the London gallery in King Street was destroyed during the blitz.

In 1946 the Huntsland Estate was purchase by Captain Oscar Gross, who founded his own shipping line. The ships in the fleet were the Huntsland, launched 1954, the Huntsville, launched 1957, the Huntsfield, launched 1958, the Huntsmore, renamed 1951, and the Huntsbrook, renamed 1951. An oil painting of the Huntsland can be found in the snooker room.

Following the death of Captain Gross’s wife, Huntsland House was sold off by the Gross family, and passed through a number of hands until reaching its current owners, who commissioned a major restoration of the building in 2020-2021.

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