Blackmore Vale Hidden Houses
Thu 17 Jul 2025 10:00 AM - 5:00 PM BST
Chantry Farm, DT10 1NU
Description
Enjoy exclusive tours of three contrasting houses with delightful gardens and interesting histories hidden away in the Blackmore Vale.
Discover Grade II* Chantry Farm, home to generations of wealthy gentleman farmers, dating from the 16th and early 17th centuries. The house has stone mullioned windows under a terracotta sweep of clay-tiled roof, its façade cloaked in Virginia creeper. At right angles to the house is another old stone building, once used as stables and just behind these are three large stone barns, now restored. The house is full of charm and character with many original features including 18th-century panelling, an open kitchen fireplace with a chamfered stone head, and original stairs with moulded close strings, heavy turned balusters, square newel-posts with ball finials and heavy moulded handrails.
Next explore Shillingstone House, built in 1879 by the Forbes family, (cousins of the Portmans), the seat of the Earl of Chesterfield and since 1946, the home of the Salt family. Set in 30 acres of stunning Dorset countryside, the house is in a secluded world of its own in a village known as Shilling Okeford until late in the last century; the name derived from the Norman Eschelling family.
Hanford House © Chris Downer / Hanford School
Later, discover Grade II* Hanford House, built in the Jacobean style in 1604 and completed in 1623 by Sir Robert Seymer, who was a teller of the Exchequer, subsequently knighted in 1619, and whose family had lived in Hanford for several centuries. The small Gothic chapel was added in 1650 and contains several memorials to the Seymer family having originally been used as an apple store. In 1947, the house and grounds were bought by the Reverend and Mrs. Clifford Canning and converted to a school. In 1959 the school was taken over by their daughter, Sarah. After retiring as headmistress in 2003, she handed the school over to the Hanford School Charitable Trust which now runs it.
Tickets £100, including tea and cakes at Chantry Farm and a two-course pub lunch at the Saxon Inn, Child Okeford. Lunch options to be made available to attendees in June 2025.
Booking opens at 9.30 am on 6 January 2025
Location
Chantry Farm, DT10 1NU