Detached house for sale in Church End, Ravensden, Bedfordshire MK44

First-class, five-bedroom, modern family home, with fabulous countryside views

A super 5-bedroom, detached family home in the heart of the lovely Bedfordshire village of Ravensden, with garden backing onto fields and with glorious views over the surrounding countryside. Set well back from the lane behind hedging that encloses the front garden and driveway, and with a double garage complete with planning permission to link to the house, this is the first time for nigh on 30 years that Alcyon has been ready to welcome a new family.

Ravensden is particularly well-placed, about 5 miles from the County town of Bedford with its world-renowned Harpur Trust private schools, its outstanding Free School and fast trains to London in under 40 minutes. Far enough away to avoid constant traffic noise, yet still only minutes from a good road network; the village is about 25 miles equidistant of Cambridge and Milton Keynes.

Not only does the adjoining village of Renhold, which you can walk to across the fields, have a shop with post office as well as a pub and village hall, you have all three in Ravensden too. Wander along the brook to the corner shop, pop across the road to the highly thought of Horse & Jockey Free House for Sunday lunch or just a great pint and walk the children to their little primary school (and playing fields) a couple of hundred yards away and recently rated “Good in all areas”.

Play golf at the Mowsbury Course, just 2 miles along the country lanes, a similar distance to Pells Farm Shop and Nursery, described as “a hidden gem in the heart of rural Bedfordshire”. It’s even closer if you walk or cycle – and this is walking and cycling country par excellence. So many facilities on your doorstep, and in a lovely, peaceful place. Alcyon is quite a find.

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What a lovely environment in which to live. From your front bedrooms glance over your front garden, with its bee-friendly beds of lavender, irises, foxgloves and false dittany, and across the lane past historic thatched cottages to the Grade i-listed Church of All Saints, a view described in archives as “this ancient church standing atop its hill as it has done for centuries, in a scene that is truly rural England.”

The view from your back bedrooms is even better. You and your guests can throw open the curtains come sunrise and fling open the doors of the Juliet balconies to ridge and furrow fields that have never seen a modern plough. Suddenly, mornings cannot come soon enough.

Alcyon is full of flexible space and natural light, with a particularly versatile room downstairs, currently used as a study, and a welcoming hall large enough to sit in while you and your dog wait for tardy members of the family before venturing out along one of the many bridleways and footpaths with which the village is blessed.

And in winter, you’ll love to come home to logs ablaze in the beautiful fireplace, with its late C19th surround and fender that came from Bedford’s Panacea Society.

Come summertime, open the sitting room to the garden terrace through huge sliding doors, with the breakfast area of the kitchen extending out through bifold doors spanning its entire width, a more uplifting outlook difficult to imagine. Your housewarming will go with a swing. Dinner parties will sizzle, guests milling around the island sipping aperitifs chatting to the cook, steak searing on the induction hob, steam effortlessly disappearing downwards.

And in a garden that will suit everyone from the budding footballer to the green-fingered creative, pick greengages and quince, or simply relax in perfectly peaceful privacy, enjoying the beautiful silver birch and crab apple in one corner, the winter flowering cherry in the other - and those glorious, far-reaching views. Alcyon stands where Ravensden’s school once stood. The children gained a new place to learn, and you’ve gained a super new home in the most wonderful spot.