High Street, Harrold, Bedfordshire, MK43

BEAUTIFUL FORMER TITHE BARN, EXTENSIVE WALLED GARDENS AND PLANS FOR ANNEXE – WITH A FAMOUS POP CULTURE CONNECTION

A wonderful, Grade II-listed, detached and thatched, 5-bedroom stone home in the heart of Harrold, the riverside village that’s full of facilities and lauded in national newspapers as part of ‘Bedfordshire’s Cotswolds’. Said to have originally been the late-17th century tithe barn to the ancient parish church nearby, Mulberry Lodge has also hosted one of The Beatles for dinner. Surrounded by its own walled gardens nearing half an acre, the property comes not only with a range of brick and slate garaging and barns, along with plans to turn them into an annexe, but also your very own underground air raid shelter.

Less than 20 minutes from the county town of Bedford, its fast trains to London and its world-renowned Harpur Trust private schools, Mulberry Lodge is ready, with no onward chain, for you to put your stamp on both house and gardens.

Look forward to entertaining friends in the lovely bay-windowed, oak-floored, dining room where Paul McCartney once ate, drank, played a child’s guitar – left-handed, of course - and treated Mulberry Lodge’s ‘60s family, the Mitchells, to the then unrecorded ‘Hey Jude’. A fabulous family home with a fascinating history, destined to witness many more happy times in the future.

Just 450 feet from your front door is the lovely, little pre and primary schools rated ‘Good’ by Ofsted. A few paces further on are two pubs, one to which McCartney and his entourage, including “a large English sheepdog”, retired after dinner at Mulberry Lodge until the small hours. Before eating, they’d all visited another pub in the other direction, which is now a fine Indian restaurant.

Hit some balls on floodlit courts behind Harrold Centre, the exceptional village hall. Play cricket on the playing fields. Children have a scout hut and play park. Your dog has fabulous country walks, as well as an award-winning country park with lakes and beautiful river meandering through the meadows, in which to meet up with four-legged friends; while you can treat yourself to coffee and cake in the café. Let yourself out through the old arched door through the garden wall to the pathway by the side of the brook and along to the surgery. Something for everyone in the place described by Derek Taylor, Press Officer and friend of The Beatles, as “a Miniver hamlet on the Ouse.”