Scotsgrove, Thame, Oxfordshire, OX9

Location of Little Scotsgrove

Just inside the eastern Oxfordshire border and east of Oxford, the property lies between the historic Oxfordshire market town of Thame and the Buckinghamshire village of Haddenham, and is surrounded by agricultural countryside with a neighbouring working farm. The house has a shared driveway off the A418 Aylesbury Road. Passing through brick crenelated piers, there is parking in a courtyard at the front of the house opposite the double garage. At the rear there is a walled garden leading to a further garden. The paddock that accompanies the house, as well as the stable block, make it a suitable for equestrian or country pursuits. The studio room above the double garage and the separate annexe offer scope for versatile living.

About the House

The house has 2,988 sq. ft. of accommodation over two floors with two staircases. On the ground floor with its entrance hall, there is a sitting room, a kitchen/dining room, a garden room, a utility room, and a cloakroom with a wet room. A covered passage connects the front to the rear courtyard and annexe. A corridor runs from the sitting room to two ground floor bedrooms and a staircase to the first floor landing, accessing a family bathroom, a separate WC, a double bedroom, a single bedroom/study, and the principal bedroom with an en suite shower room. Accessed from the siting room, there is an upstairs drawing room.

Ground Floor

A wooden front door opens to a tiled entrance hallway, with a leaded window and two gothic shaped arches which access a utility/boot room, a garden room, the three piece cloakroom with a wet room, a sitting room and the kitchen/dining room. A corridor with half obscured windows to the side and tongue-and-groove panelling to dado height, runs from the sitting room past the kitchen area through an arch and a modern oak door to access a single and a double bedroom. At the end of the corridor an Arts and Crafts stripped wooden staircase with carved newel posts accesses the first floor, it has an understairs cupboard with glazed panels and a wooden door. A passage connects the front of the house to the rear courtyard and annexe, assessing the utility room on the way. The radiators on the ground floor in public areas are covered.

Kitchen/Dining Room

The kitchen/dining room can be accessed through a glazed door from the entrance hall or from a glazed door in the front; by the door is a low cupboard housing the cold-water tank. Two leaded windows overlook the front and there is a step to the flagstone floor, testament to when the room was a dairy; there are original exposed horizontal and vertical beams. Painted base and wall Howden units, including a plate rack, line the painted stone walls, there is a wooden worksurface with a butler’s sink, a Smeg range cooker and space for a full-size fridge/freezer and a dishwasher. In the dining area there is space for a table for six/eight people, on the right of which is a larder with shelves. A step leads to the corridor.

Utility/Boot Room and Passage

Diagonal from the kitchen and accessed from the entrance hall, the tiled floor utility/boot room (originally the coal hole), has windows to both sides and houses the gas-fired boiler. There are wooden fronted base and wall units, a butler’s sink and space and plumbing for a washing machine and tumble dryer. A door from the front of the house, to the right of the low brick wall, opens to a covered, brick-paved passage, which runs past and accesses the utility room, and opens to the rear courtyard and the annexe. There is a row of pegs on the wall and access to a storage void above.

Sitting Room

The sitting room (once the servants’ hall), has three leaded windows with deep quarry tiled sills, overlooking the walled garden. Between these windows the chimney breast (prominently red brick on the exterior gable end), has an open fireplace housing a woodburning stove with a moulded mantel above and a quarry-tiled hearth. The door frames and skirtings have traditional Edwardian moulding and there is a cupboard with moulded double doors and shelves. There is a pitch pine parquet floor.

Drawing Room

A staircase with turned balusters from a corner of the sitting room turns up to the first floor drawing room, the balusters continuing into the room. The drawing room has dual aspect leaded windows with quarry tiled sills in the gable end, overlooking the walled garden and extended views beyond, and from the side overlooking the gardens of Scotsgrove House. One of the single glass panes in the leaded side windows has remnants of a hinge mechanism, once used to aid ventilation when the room was a day nursery. (All the leaded windows in the house have been overhauled by the current owners, the brass and copper fittings carefully restored.) The chimney breast has a functioning open brick fireplace with a moulded stone surround. There is cornicing and a dado rail.

Garden Room, Cloak/Wet Room

Accessed from the entrance hall, the garden room, added some twelve years ago, has bespoke oak French doors with full length flanking windows overlooking the terrace in the walled garden and a sash window at the side to the annexe courtyard. The room gives a view over the gardens and the surrounding landscape. The cloakroom, also reached from the entrance hall, has a white two piece suite and a step to a tiled wet room with a power shower, a heated towel rail and a raised, obscured window borrowing natural light from the garden room.

Two Downstairs Bedrooms

Two bedrooms are accessed from the downstairs corridor. The first is a single bedroom (four) with a leaded window overlooking the front. Once used as a storage room for the kitchen, the room has oak window frames with vestiges of the fittings used to hold mesh screens over the windows in the summer; there is a pole high in the ceiling from which hooks were once hung. The quarry tiled table top built into the wall, now used as a desk or dressing table, also recalls the room’s heritage. Bedroom two is a double room, again overlooking the front, which was once a scullery. There is an exposed beam in the ceiling from the original building, the decorative remains of a fireplace, no longer open, and a blind arch alcove in one wall. Full height, built-in bookshelves line another wall.

First Floor

An Arts and Crafts staircase from the ground floor corridor leads to the upstairs landing (a limited area of the house with a hanging freehold). The staircase turns a corner beneath original windows with gothic-shaped mullions and leaded pains overlooking the garden of Scotsgrove House. Three further steps to the right, lead to a storage cupboard, a family bathroom and a separate WC. To the left, a landing accesses a double bedroom, a single bedroom/study, and the principal bedroom with an en suite shower room. (At the end of this landing there is a doorway, currently not used, into the drawing room.)

Principal Bedroom

The dual aspect principal bedroom has one set of original leaded windows overlooking the gardens of Scotsgrove House, reached through a decorative elliptical arch. The other windows are the distinctive set of leaded dormer windows in the front façade, overlooking the front courtyard. The room has a decoratively moulded panel which was once a hatchway when the room was a dining room, and a built-in cupboard. Tucked around the corner of the bedroom, and through chamfered vertical beams, is an en suite with a double shower, a WC and a basin.

Two Bedrooms and Family Bathroom

On one wall the dual aspect double bedroom three has a built-in Smallbone wardrobe with double and flanking doors and on another wall matching storage and drawers housing a central, Corian marble basin with brass taps. Single bedroom five, currently also used as a study, has an alcove with a shelf, a glazed door borrowing light from across the landing and a circular light tube which effectively takes natural daylight (and moonlight), from a glazed space in the roof. The family bathroom has a window above the door and sash windows overlooking the front courtyard. There is a corner bath, a basin and WC, a single power shower, a heated towel rail and a storage cupboard with louvred doors. There is access through a hatch to loft storage (the entire roof space), and the water tank.

Annexe

Converted from old bull pens and dog kennels, the annexe is accessed via a stable door. Vaulted, with Velux windows and exposed timbers, it retains the character of the original building. The wooden floored living space is divided by the original shoulder-high pen (with imbedded metal rings and drinking troughs visible), creating an additional sitting area or another bedroom with a door to the yard overlooking the paddock. The windows replace functional spaces in the masonry and the door to the single bedroom one has a wooden grill and a hand-held wooden slide, once used for dogs. The kitchen, with a wooden floor, has a sink with mains water connected and a driftwood effect laminate work surface, base units, and space and plumbing for a fridge. A newly-installed shower room adjacent to bedroom one, has a laminate floor, tongue-and-groove wall panelling, a shower, a basin and a heated towel rail; the two-piece, wood-lined cloakroom has a tiled floor. The annexe has electric (truncated)

The Grounds

Passing through the decorative brick piers in the front tarmacadam courtyard, there is the double garage on the right and parking spaces for two cars directly in front of the house. A double wrought iron gate in a low red brick wall opens to a paved area leading to the front and kitchen doors. At the rear of the house there is another courtyard, enclosed by walls, with curved steps down to original red and ‘blue’ brick paving. Once adjoining the Edwardian kennels, this annexe courtyard, which is a sun trap, has evidence of runs constructed for the dogs. The courtyard accesses the annexe and has the original iron dog kennel gates to the walled garden, on the left, and to the informal gardens leading to the paddocks and the stables with the woodland in the distance.

Rear Gardens and Paddocks

The south westerly walled garden, with extensive views, is seen from the sitting and drawing rooms and accessed from the garden room, which opens to a terraced seating area in the garden. The walled garden is laid to lawn, with established herbaceous borders and a formal clipped box centrepiece. Enclosed by a red brick and a rendered wall on two sides, the end is enclosed by a low rubble stone wall with a metal gate which leads to an informal area of lawned garden planted with mature trees, bordered with shrubs, and enclosed by post and wire fencing. This area leads down to the paddocks, enclosed by more post and wire fencing and bordered on the right at the end by a row of mature poplars. Beyond and to the left is an area of natural woodland with indigenous, deciduous trees. To the right from the courtyard, is a kitchen garden, lawned and with stone parterres, with beech and lavender hedging, apple trees and a mature tulip tree.

Stable Block

Accessed through the kitchen garden, the timber, L-shaped stable block backing onto the neighbouring farm and overlooking the paddock has a tack room and three stables, (currently used as a wood store). The largest stable with double doors in the gable end, doubles up as a tractor store or garage depending on need.

Double Garage

Facing the façade of the house across the courtyard is the originally Victorian coach house that has been converted into a double garage with two rooms above. Two sets of bespoke double doors with multiple glazed panes at the top open to a concrete floored space with a covered garage pit in the ground and timber-lined walls, with windows and original storage cupboards on the right. A modern pine staircase with turned balusters accesses the wood lined second storey with a galleried room leading through a glazed wooden door to a studio room with windows overlooking the courtyard.

Services

The property is supplied with a private water supply, shared septic tank drainage, mains gas and electricity.