Greenlands Lane, Prestwood, Great Missenden, Buckinghamshire, HP16

About The House Cont'd

The front door opens to an entrance hall with a pantry and walkthroughs to both sides of the kitchen/breakfast/family room. The kitchen accesses an inner lobby with the main staircase and doors to the study and a dining room with a newly fitted cloakroom. A walkthrough past the second staircase leads to the sitting room. A corridor off the entrance hall accesses the boiler and utility rooms, and a library area with an external door and a staircase to the hobby/sewing room. Steps lead down to another lobby with a staircase rising to office/bedroom five and doors to the double and single garage/store. An external door in the double garage opens to another lobby area with a door to a studio and a staircase to the west side of office/bedroom five with a shower room. The main staircase accesses the family bathroom, bedroom three, en suite bedroom four and the principal bedroom suite. A door from bedroom four’s dressing room leads to a landing accessing bedroom two and the second staircase.

Kitchen/Breakfast/Dining Room

Remodelled in 2008, the open plan area has pillow edged stone flagged flooring throughout. The kitchen area with tongue-and-groove panelling to dado height has four windows overlooking the courtyard. Both dual aspect breakfast and sitting areas have windows overlooking and French doors opening to the gardens; the family area is vaulted and has a modern fireplace. Measuring over 24 ft. by over 11 ft., the kitchen area was fitted by Martin Moore with painted Shaker style base and wall units with granite worksurfaces and splashbacks and an inset double ceramic sink with a waste disposer. A Britannia range cooker has tiles behind and a mantel with an extractor and shelf above. Integrated appliances include a Samsung American style fridge/freezer and a Miele dishwasher. The configuration of the three areas creates a family friendly space that has a circular flow due to the island built around the range cooker and breakfast bar, which has seating space in the kitchen and breakfast areas.

Study

Very much part of the old house is the lobby accessed from the kitchen. It has the main wooden staircase to the first floor set in walls with horizontal and vertical exposed beams. There is an understairs cupboard with fuse boxes. A door leads to the dual aspect study which has windows overlooking the south-facing and side gardens. The room is fitted with modern office furniture including a desk and cupboard storage.

Dining Room

While there is room in the breakfast area for an eight-seater table, there is a separate formal dining room in the 17th-century wing of the house. The walls and particularly the ceilings in the historic building have many original exposed beams, some even evident in the floor and there are original latch-and-brace cottage doors. The 16 ft. long dining room has an area with a quarry tile floor, which has beamed walls enclosing a partially glazed external oak door (once the front door) and a door to a cloakroom. Prominent in the main dining room is a brick inglenook fireplace with a metal canopy above an open grate resting on a brick hearth (we are assured by the owners of a ‘good draw’). The original bressummer is over the fireplace and there are wooden lintels above the two casement windows overlooking the front garden, which are double glazed as throughout the house.

Sitting Room

The triple aspect sitting room is over 15 ft. square and sited in the gable end of the original house. It has double windows overlooking the courtyard, a window in the end wall, and one in the south side overlooking the front garden, creating a naturally well-lit room. The room has a further brick inglenook open fireplace, similar to that in the dining room, and notable exposed wall and ceiling beams, including a chamfered spine beam with chamfer stops.

Panty, Boiler Room, Utility Room

As the original front door is not used, a stable door opens from the courtyard into the entrance hall leading to the kitchen area. In the entrance hall is a double-doored coat cupboard and an over 7 ft. by over 6 ft. pantry with built-in shelving. Further along the corridor is a boiler room with two, approximately two-year-old Worcester gas fired boilers, the Ultrasteel hot water cylinder, and a water softener. The utility room has a quarry tiled floor and an internal window borrowing light from the two corridor windows overlooking the courtyard. It has wooden fronted base and wall units with a solid wood worksurface and an inset Belfast sink. There is also floor-to-ceiling storage, space and plumbing for a washing machine and tumble dryer, and room for an American style fridge/freezer.

Library Area and Studio

At the end of the corridor is a door to the library area in the 19th-century brick and flint building overlooking the courtyard with a partially glazed external door, built-in shelving along two walls, and a staircase to the hobby/sewing room. Steps lead down to another lobby which has doors to the double garage and the garage/store and a flight of stairs to the office/bedroom five. An external door opens to another lobby with a staircase to the rear of office/bedroom five and a door to the studio which has a window overlooking the drive.

Principal Bedroom Suite

The triple aspect principal bedroom is in a later part of the house with a hipped roof and is defined by the shape of the eaves. It has two dormer windows overlooking the courtyard and the garden, and a gable end window facing north. Half the north wall is devoted to built-in floor to ceiling wardrobes and there are a matching dressing table and further built-in storage. A door leads to a four piece en suite bathroom with a pitched roof, a side window, and fully tiled walls and floor. There are twin basins in a marble topped vanity unit with storage beneath, a walk-in glass screened shower, and a WC.

Family Bathroom

A corridor with a dormer window over the courtyard accesses the fully tiled four piece family bathroom which has raised windows overlooking the garden. The vanity unit has drawers and cupboards with a marble top and an inset hand basin; it also conceals the WC cistern. Also included are a curved door corner shower, a panel bath, and a heated towel rail.

Bedrooms Two, Three and Four

The interiors of bedrooms two, three and four reflect the fact that they are in the 17th-century part of the house and have notable exposed timbers. Bedroom three is the smallest of the rooms but still measures over 16 ft. by over 13 ft. It uses the family bathroom and is dual aspect with windows overlooking the gardens, one dormer, and the shape of the chimney breast rising from the dining room below.

Bedrooms Four, Dressing Room and En Suite Bathroom

Dual aspect bedroom four leads off the landing from the main staircase via a cottage door. Measuring over 16 ft. by over 11 ft., it has dormer windows overlooking the south garden and the courtyard. The vaulted room has exposed beams and a glazed panel revealing an area of historic wattle and daub construction. A door leads to the dressing room with a dormer window over the garden, fitted wardrobes, and loft access. A further door opens to the partially tiled, L-shaped en suite bathroom which is situated in the bay overlooking the courtyard. As well as exposed beams, it has a WC, a pedestal basin, an airing cupboard with a heater, and a corner bath.

Bedroom Two

Bedroom two is accessed either from bedroom four or from the landing at the top of the secondary staircase rising from between the sitting and dining rooms. This landing has an airing cupboard with shelving and a heater. Measuring over 16 ft. by over 12 ft., bedroom two has two dormer windows overlooking the courtyard and south garden and a window in the gable end overlooking the garden. It is vaulted with fine brace beams and visible 17th-century carpenters’ marks.

Office/Bedroom Five and Shower Room

Stairs in the lobby adjacent to the library area rise to form a gallery on the first floor in office/bedroom five. Part of a late 20th-century extension above the garages, the room has three dormer windows overlooking the drive and one overlooking the garden. There are seven timber doors to ample eaves storage and a cupboard with sliding glass doors, built to house guitars. Currently used as an office and seating area, this over 26 ft. by over 17 ft. room could be used as a home office or as an independent bedroom for intergenerational living due to the en suite three piece shower room, with a travertine tiled floor, and the adjacent staircase that has an external door in a lobby on the ground floor.

Sewing/Hobby Room

This galleried room in the room over the library area has two Victorian sash windows in the brick and flint elevation overlooking the courtyard and another over the rear garden.

Garages

The garage is a modern rendered building with a hipped clay tile roof with dormer windows and feather cladding on the gable ends. There is a double garage with an up-and-over door to a resin floored garage with plastic internal panelling and shelving. There is light and electricity and an internal door to the lobby by the library area. The single garage is currently used for storage, accessed from the same lobby and with wooden shelving.

Barn Annexe

The barn annexe building was built in 2018 to resemble an agricultural building and has approximately 2,286 sq. ft. of accommodation set over two floors. Built on a brick base with timber clad elevations, it has a front door behind wooden barn doors in the front, and Velux windows in the roof. This building has greater potential, subject to permission, but currently there is a bedroom with a laminate floor, built-in floor to ceiling cupboards, and a partially tiled en suite shower room with a walk-in shower, a WC and a basin.

Other Outbuildings

There is a timber framed barn near the garden boundary with French doors leading to a dual aspect gym with a store behind, also with a window, and on the other side double doors lead to a garden room again with French doors to the front. Nearby, behind a clipped laurel hedge, is a garden store with double doors and a personnel door used for garden machinery. There are two summer houses, two further stores and a sentry-box shed. Please note that there is an area in the garden that has had the preparatory excavation work for a swimming pool that is currently under Astroturf.

Gardens

Brick posts with electrically operated gates access the gravel drive ahead of the double garage and the barn/annexe. An arch in a rendered wall leads to a brick paved courtyard enclosed on three sides by the house. An established border with a pergola separates the south side of the drive from the south facing garden which is laid to lawn, bisected by a path from the original porch in the south front, leading to the listed lychgate. The largest area of the enclosed garden faces east and is also laid to lawn with mature trees such as fir, silver birch, and ornamental cherry; there is a Victorian standpipe. A gravelled area with prairie planting has a path to a summer house and other outbuildings; nearby a decorative stone well houses a tank of rain water harvested from the barn/annexe roof. There are stone paved patios and behind the double garage a stone terrace is partially sheltered by a clay tiled roof in keeping with the house. A kitchen garden is deer-proofed by walls and fences.

Situation and Schooling

Located off a lane on the edge of the village, the property has immediate access to country walks through open fields and woodland. Prestwood village centre has a village hall, a post office, public houses, hairdressers, and dental and GP surgeries. Prestwood Gym and Fitness Club has tennis courts, a cricket pitch, and a floodlit five-a-side football pitch. Great Missenden (2 miles) offers greater amenities including shopping, a main line station to London Marylebone and a tennis club. The area has pubs, restaurants, farm shops, and private and state schools such as Prestwood Infant School. The property is within catchment for the local grammar schools.