Tewin, Hertfordshire£2,750,000 Share of Freehold

Marden Hill House

Expansive gardens surround the buildings, creating the feeling of a private country estate with views across open fields and paddocks as far as the eye can see

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This exemplary five-bedroom, two-storey duplex apartment occupies the principal two floors of a remarkable Grade II*-listed late Georgian mansion. It encompasses over 6,000 sq ft of accommodation and is set within immaculate grounds of approximately six acres in the Hertfordshire countryside. Inside, its rooms have exceptionally voluminous proportions, and countless original architectural details have been carefully preserved, including fine plasterwork, chimneypieces, joinery, and a dramatic double-curved staircase. Composed of two apartments with two kitchens, the home can be gently divided to support multigenerational living if desired, or left united. Surrounded by a further 110 acres of open pasture and paddocks, the home is conveniently located close to both Welwyn Garden City and Hertford, with journey times to central London of just 30 minutes.

Setting the Scene

Deep in the Hertfordshire countryside, Marden Hill House is reached via a long pea gravel driveway off Hertford Road that culminates in a spacious area with four designated car parking spaces and an EV charging point. The main house within which this apartment resides lies directly ahead, with ancillary buildings – including the old stable block, now housing further apartments – set discreetly behind a high red-brick wall to the north of the main house. Expansive gardens surround the buildings, creating the feeling of a private country estate with views across open fields and paddocks as far as the eye can see.

The house as it remains today replaces an Elizabethan building that once stood on the site. Marden Hill House was built anew in 1653 and, after several owners, all but the present north wing was demolished and a new design by Francis Carter was erected in the late 18th century for Robert Mackay. In 1818, the house came into the ownership of Charles G. Thornton, then Governor of The Bank of England, who commissioned Sir John Soane to rebuild the main entrance porch and vestibule; the pillars at the entrance were in fact later used as prototypes for the bank’s design. For more information, please see the History section below.

The Grand Tour

The house presents a stately appearance from the driveway. Built from yellow stock brick with Portland stone dressings, it is four storeys high and five bays wide, with the earlier north wing set back from the main elevation, and a newer two-storey rounded bay features at the south elevation. Large six-over-six sash windows define the main façade, flooding the interior spaces with light and forming a pleasingly symmetrical pattern.

The newer Soanian two-storey entrance takes the form of a tetrastyle Ionic porch, featuring double columns originally intended for Soane’s Bank of England development on Princes Street in the City of London. At the first-floor level, tripartite windows are separated by panelled pilaster strips and open to a balustraded balcony from a vaulted first-floor sitting room. Quarter spheres at the bases of the entrance porch flank up to a large, glazed round arch, and fully glazed wedding doors open to steps that lead up to a Yorkstone inner entrance porch with further 2/3 glazed double doors and a segmental pediment on consoles that open to the home’s main entrance hall.

The hall takes the form of a lateral segmental vault with Greek key pattern cornicing and ball mouldings. There are niches in this quadrant’s corners and distyle in antis Corinthian columns lead to the staircase through further mirrored wedding doors. Pedimented doorcases flank the main hall and six-panel doors open to two of the three principal reception rooms.

The main living room lies in the north range of the house, a large square set room with wainscotting; a statuary chimneypiece with a wood burner grounds the room. A grand archway frames the dining area to the rear of the space, and a jib door opens to the north wing, home to the kitchen and service areas, and part of the original 1653 phase of the house and built in the commonwealth era, before the instatement of Charles II. The kitchen is partially lit by clerestory windows and oak worktops rest above contemporary cream cabinetry, while a green Aga range cooker sits to the rear of the room. There is a generous utility room set to one side and steps from the kitchen lead down to a guest WC, and a guest or staff bedroom, with a separate shower room.

In the south range of the ground floor lie two further grand reception rooms, with the rear room (once the home’s ballroom) presenting exceptional proportions. A trio of tall box sash windows are set into a bowed canted bay with views to the paddock beyond. Outside this bay, a stone balcony with balustraded steps leads down to the gardens; these formed what was initially the main entrance to the house, but were moved when Soane made his later alterations. Both rooms have excellent original statuary marble chimneypieces in the Regency style, and elevations are framed with acanthus leaf cornicing.

From the entrance hall, mirrored wedding doors open to a single flight of stairs that return up to two further flights and an incredible iron balustrade with a rosettes-in-diamonds pattern sweeps up the landing. A large oval roof lantern set above floods the space with light, and a Regency plaster frieze frames the uppermost elevations.

The upper storey is currently configured as sleeping quarters with five spacious bedrooms, a further elegant sitting room and two bathrooms for the home. However, this floor is formally arranged as a separate yet connected self-contained apartment, as it also has its own kitchen and utility room, with the suite of grand rooms allowing for further reception spaces if required. It also has its own exterior access from a second hallway at the rear base of the main staircase.

Beneath the home, on the lower-ground floor, is around 560 sq ft of unconverted basement space. Currently used for storage, it has a separate external entrance and excellent ceiling height.

The Great Outdoors

The approximately six-acre gardens at Marden Hill House envelope the house, with mature lawns, flower beds and woodland to the rear. There is also a walled garden, formed mainly of pretty meadow grass and where each apartment also has a section for growing cutting flowers or produce. There are also communal outbuildings for use, including log stores and red-brick sheds.

Additionally, the apartment has sole use of a separate undemised, but private, gated garden. Bound by iron railings it acts as an outdoor living room of sorts, with a slated terrace positioned under an expansive pergola. Lawns lie on either side, and deep flowerbeds are filled with beautiful peonies and roses.

Out and About

The nearby historic village of Tewin has a good range of day-to-day amenities arranged around a Lower Green including a village store with a post office, church, café, public house and popular primary school. There is also a village memorial hall which plays host to community events as well as several active sports clubs. The village lies between the popular towns of Hertford and Welwyn Garden City, both of which offer more extensive shopping, recreational, leisure and service facilities, with Welwyn having both a John Lewis and Waitrose.

The area has a good selection of state schooling including Tewin Cowper C of E VA Primary School in the village together with noted independent schools including St Joseph’s in the Park, Duncombe, Sherrardswood, Heath Mount and Haileybury.

Links to London are excellent: Welwyn North Station (around 10 minutes by car) runs services to London King’s Cross in just 30 minutes, and trains from Hertford North (around six minutes) run directly to Moorgate in 45 minutes. There is also easy access to the A1(M), the M25 and the A10. London Stanstead Airport is just 35 minutes’ drive away.

Council Tax Band: D (ground floor) and D (first floor)
Underlying lease length: 900 years remaining, approx.
Service charge approx. £10,800 per annum (including buildings insurance, grounds maintenance, water, communal areas electricity, waste and a maintenance fund)

Please note that all areas, measurements and distances given in these particulars are approximate and rounded. The text, photographs and floor plans are for general guidance only. Inigo has not tested any services, appliances or specific fittings — prospective purchasers are advised to inspect the property themselves. All fixtures, fittings and furniture not specifically itemised within these particulars are deemed removable by the vendor.

History

In 1550, the Manor of Marden paid a rent of 26 ounces of honey to the abbey of St Alban. Marden was held by the abbey until the dissolution, and in 1539 it was granted to William Cavendish. It then came to Edward North, Master of the Harriers to Edward VI. In 1653 his grandson demolished the Elizabethan building and built a new house on the site, Marden Hill House, high above the Mimram. After several owners, Robert Mackay demolished all but the present north wing in 1789 and it was redesigned in 1790-94 by Francis Carter retaining Jacobean fragments of the house.

It was bought by Richard Flower (the father of Edward Fordham Flower) and became the meeting place of many men of ‘radical and dissenting opinion’ including William Cobbett. Flower emigrated to the United States in 1817, hiring two ships at Liverpool to transport all his belongings. Flower subsequently helped found Albion, Illinois, and wrote about the English Settlement in the state.

The house was sold to Charles G. Thornton, who served as Governor of the Bank of England in the 1790s. Through his connection with the bank, Thornton knew the architect Sir John Soane, surveyor of the Bank of England since 1788, and commissioned him to extend the house. Soane’s work for the Bank of England is largely destroyed but elements of that building were used in his designs for Marden Hill House and still exist, particularly the Aztec-style cornices and the Ionic columns. He designed a vestibule and staircase and also added the Ionic-columned two-storey porch that is a notable feature of the building.

In 1903 it came, at last, to be owned by the Cowper estate, and was leased. During World War II, it was occupied by a boarding school. The building was listed by Historic England in 1952. In 1957 it was owned by a gravel extraction company, which was unable to demolish the building, so leased it to two architects, who signed a 21-year lease.

These young fellows, Colin Huntley and Peter Adams, collaborated with six artists, including Peter Blake, to create a residential collective that was part of defining British pop culture in the 1960s with their unique furniture designs, under the guise of Danad Design. The house went on to be something of a bohemian residential retreat for many years, hosting some of the most recognisable names in British art, film, music and fashion of the late 20th century.