Marshcourt and The Holt

Enjoy exclusive owner-guided tours of two contrasting houses each with a fascinating history and interesting period features.

Enjoy an owner-guided tour of Grade I Marshcourt, an Arts and Crafts style country house, constructed from quarried chalk and designed and built by Sir Edwin Lutyens between 1901 and 1905. The gardens were designed by Lutyens and Gertrude Jekyll and are listed Grade II*. The house was built for Herbert Johnson, a stockbroker who became a lifelong friend of Lutyens, who interspersed pieces of black flint and red tiles in the masonry. The exterior design of the house is Tudor with mullioned and transomed windows and twisted brick chimneys. The north entrance front on the higher ground is two-storey in an E-plan with the facades displaying predominantly horizontal lines. The south, garden front is taller, less symmetrical, and with emphatic vertical lines. The west end of the south front is dominated by chimney stacks. The interior design is neoclassical. The oak-panelled hall features two friezes carved in chalk, with classical festoons. The dining room is panelled in walnut veneer. Ceilings have highly decorative plasterwork. There are chalk fireplaces and even a chalk billiard table. 

Later explore Grade II* The Holt, developed in the 17th century in a style associated with the lesser gentry and later copied in the colonial United States, but incorporating an earlier Tudor house, evidenced by internal “post and pan” oak partitioning. This could have been the screen of an early ground floor Tudor hall, moved when the house was rebuilt in 1689 and returned at a later stage to be placed at the head of the staircase. In the 18th and 19th centuries there were strong links with the Long family of Preshaw. The house is approached through woods and a yew grove with undulating lawns. The front of the house is pedimented and retains traces of the warm ochre wash prevalent in the 18th century. The rear side of the house is very different from the William and Mary cube of the front with an additional wing added and an intrusive water tower. In 1955 this was reduced and the wing remodelled.

Tickets £100 including a two-course lunch at the Mayfly Inn, Leckford. Lunch options to be made available to attendees in August 2026.