Country house for sale in The Thorney Hall Estate, Spennithorne, Leyburn, North Yorkshire DL8

An outstanding c60 acre country estate centred on a handsome recently refurbished Hall with extensive accommodation, sitting in a stunning elevated position in Wensleydale with superb panoramic views over its own land across to Richard iii’s Middleham castle and the hills of the Yorkshire Dales National Park and enjoying 1/3rd of a mile of river frontage and fishing rights to the River Ure.

The property
Thorney Hall is a fine country estate that offers extensive beautifully presented flexible accommodation arranged across three levels. Set in a popular North Yorkshire position close to Leyburn, this handsome property offers the potential for various layouts and configurations and includes multiple reception rooms, four kitchens and 14 bedrooms, some of which has been made into self-contained accommodation. The Hall is currently split into the main house, The Grange and The Dairy Cottage.

The property was previously split and formed separate dwellings, the current owners undertook a substantial renovation, and the décor is elegant and understated, with the generous reception rooms welcoming plenty of natural light through large sash windows. From the front door you are welcomed by an impressive reception hall with doors leading to the dual aspect drawing room, the library with its south-facing bay window, the well-proportioned formal dining room, and the kitchen breakfast room.

The lower ground floor offers an extensive leisure suite of games room/gym and snooker room sporting a full size snooker table together with the granny flat consisting of a sitting room, kitchen and two en suite bedrooms. The utility room also sits to this floor.

The bedrooms for the main house are mostly arranged on the first floor. The principal bedroom has an en suite bathroom and dressing room. There are a further two bedrooms featuring en suite bathrooms and three double bedrooms.

For storage there is a large storage room to the lower ground floor and four former ice houses accessed from the lower ground floor which are simply stunning historic features with their barrel vaulted stone roofs which support a stalagmite field, a unique geological feature of the Hall.

The current owners ensured that during their renovation they preserved original features such as the swale fossil stone and marble fireplaces, the window shutters, the cantilevered stone staircase which was made from East Witton sandstone from a nearby quarry to name but a few.

The Grange has a kitchen, reception room, sitting room, dining room and cloakroom on the ground floor and one en suite bedroom on the first-floor with three further bedrooms and a bathroom.

The Dairy Cottage which can be found on the lower ground floor has a bedroom suite with bathroom and dressing room and a further bedroom and shower room with a kitchen/dining room and sitting room.

The layout of Thorney Hall is ideally suited for a variety of layouts and income streams with the ability to rent out The Dairy Cottage and The Grange separately if desired or they can be used for multi-generational living, staff accommodation, holiday lets or as one dwelling.

Services: Mains water, mains drainage, oil fired central heating<br /><br />Outside
The Hall is set in magnificent, far-reaching grounds and includes several outbuildings. The gated entrance opens onto a gravel driveway, which leads to The Hall, providing plenty of parking space at the front and access to the triple garage. An electric charging point can also be found to the west of the Hall. There are also various additional workshops and a storage room housed in The Hall itself. At the rear of The Hall, there is a stunning south-facing ornamental garden with paved terracing, gravel pathways, and beautifully maintained beds with various shrubs and flowering perennials. A brand new Swaledale style stone barn has also recently been built using recycled stone from a c17th barn at Aysgarth. There are immaculate lawns, border hedgerows and various mature trees, while beyond the ornamental garden there are open fields and meadows, a pond, lake, stream and peaceful wooded areas.

The Hall and its land are a wonderful place for nature incorporating as they do, a diverse mix of river frontage, woodland, water meadows, pastureland, lake, and ponds. The present owners have enhanced this by planting new woodland and extensive native species hedges and by turning former farmland into wildflower meadows under an environmental stewardship scheme. There is a small resident herd of roe deer that live and breed on the estate, a badger sett in one of the woods and stoats and foxes are seen regularly. A water vole has been seen on the lake and otters breed on the Ure immediately adjacent to the Hall. The river supports salmon, trout, and coarse fish, with trout in the lake and beck. The beck is a renowned breeding base for Ure Salmon, and the Ure Salmon Trust released thousands of baby salmon into the beck after a survey confirming its high concentration of freshwater shrimp making it a particularly suitable breeding base. The bird life is simply stunning with a huge variety of birds including buzzards, sparrowhawks, barn owls and breeding swift colony. Regular visitors to the lake include Kingfishers, Goosanders and Mandarin Ducks. Red Kite and Curlew are also regular visitors. A particular feature of the grounds is the arboretum planted around the Hall at construction in 1860. The trees round the Hall are truly magnificent and include specimen species like Wellingtonia (the famed “Giant Redwood”), Blue Cypress and Copper Beech as well as more common species such as Beech, Horse Chestnut, Scots Pine and Serbian Spruce. The Hall benefits from truly stunning panoramic 180 degree views sitting as it does in an elevated position looking out Southwards over its own land down to the River Ure and on beyond to Richard iii’s Middleham Castle and behind it the hills of Coverdale and the Yorkshire Dales National Park. Thorney Hall is “reputed by many to have the finest views in all Yorkshire”. There is a solar scheme that benefits from a feed in tariff with Octopus and is a stable low management income source.

Land:The 56.5 acres of land are a mix of pastureland, woodland, river frontage, water meadow, lake, pond and a stunning beck which bisects the land below the Hall. C30 acres of the pastureland is let to a local farmer on a 19 month fbt.

River frontage and fishing: The Southern boundary of the Thorney Hall Estate is formed by 1/3rd of a mile of river frontage to the winding River Ure with single bank fishing rights. The Ure holds good stocks of Salmon, Brown Trout, Grayling and coarse fish.

History: The Hall was built in 1860 by Lord Bolton as a home for his daughter who was marrying what was reputed to be a penniless army Captain, Captain Ferrand. The Hall was reputedly built to enjoy Lord Bolton’s favourite view of Middleham Castle across the dale and The Hall is indeed centred on the castle which sits at the same height at the same point on the opposite side of the Dale. Lord Bolton endowed the Hall and c800 acres of surrounding farmland onto his daughter and her new husband and it was run as a farm estate by the Ferrand family for the subsequent 100 years until the Hall was separated from the farmland and sold off in 1960. The buyer was the Ministry of Defence who used the Hall as the private residence for the Major General commanding the Catterick Garrison. The current owners have met the former “batman” to the family who talked of being armed with a pistol to protect the family and cooking all the family’s meals on the (still present) original cast iron cooking range in the former servants’ quarters right up to 1969 when the property was again sold, becoming a boutique hotel. It subsequently moved into private ownership and was split into multiple dwellings which were combined once again by the present owners, restoring the Hall to its former glory via a complete refurbishment programme completing in 2016. Thorney Hall also featured in 2 episodes of the original series of ‘All Creatures Great and Small’.<br /><br />Location
The property lies in a picturesque setting on the edge of the small village of Spennithorne, surrounded by beautiful North Yorkshire countryside and within easy reach of the Yorkshire Dales National Park. Spennithorne, as well as The Hall is located in a conservation area. The village has a community owned local pub, a parish church and a primary school, while everyday amenities are easily accessible in Leyburn, one and a half miles to the west. Leyburn’s facilities include a selection of shops, a medical practice and a small supermarket. Schooling in the area includes an outstanding-rated primary school in Leyburn, a secondary school also in Leyburn and the independent Aysgarth School. The A1(M) is 10 miles away, providing access towards Leeds and York to the south and Middlesbrough, Sunderland and Newcastle to the north.