Meon Valley Country Houses

Enjoy exclusive owner-guided tours of three contrasting, interesting and beautiful homes in Hampshire’s quintessentially English Meon Valley.

Explore Bereleigh House, an early- to mid-19th century country mansion, built by Richard Eyles, a prosperous local businessman, banker and mayor of Petersfield. It replaced an earlier building with medieval origins, which became a sub-manor after the Black Death and later served as a country estate. The house is mostly stucco, with some brickwork in Flemish Garden Wall bond with blue headers and some interesting features such as a mid-19th century classical porch of a Tuscan order with two columns in front of two pilasters. The garden elevation has a veranda on columns with two wings from 19th and 20th centuries.

Bereleigh House

Later, discover the Grade I Court House, the medieval manor of East Meon and the best preserved residence of the Bishops of Winchester, which consists of a great hall and two-storey wing, commissioned by William of Wykeham. His master mason, William Wynford, one of the greatest of 14th-century architects, remodelled the nave of Winchester Cathedral and designed Winchester College and New College, Oxford and this is Wynford’s only surviving domestic building. 

Court House © Shazz cc-by-sa/2.0 Creative Commons Licence.

Finally, explore Grade II* Hall Place, a late 17th-century house built by Isaac Foxcroft and extended with additional wings in the early 18th century to create a minor gentleman’s residence, and an extension in 1900 when the grounds were also planted with avenues and walks forming broad vistas. The design lies between the geometrical designs of the 17th century and the informal parkland of the Georgian period. By 1901 three avenues of beech and yew, having a length of 750 yards, still remained. The present appearance of the grounds owes much to the knowledge and flair of the American designer Lanning Roper and Sonia Cubitt, a gardener who lived in the house for fifty years in the middle of the last century. On the west front she created lawns flanked by raised borders, planted water meadows as a small park and made a rose garden as a victory celebration in 1947. The house was the home of the Queen's grandmother where she spent many of her childhood summers.

Tickets £108 including a two-course lunch at the Seven Stars Inn. Lunch options to be made available to attendees in June 2026