A grand English country house with extensive manor grounds that open directly onto Cornwall Park has hit the market. Photo / Supplied
A grand English country house with extensive manor grounds that open directly onto Cornwall Park has hit the market. Photo / Supplied
Heads up Downton Abbey fans - one of Auckland's most stunning homes is now on sale, and it proves you don't need to visit the motherland for a taste of English country manor life.
Draped in clinging ivy, the historic brick home at 37 Claude Rd in Epsom spans sevenwood-panelled and art-filled rooms.
Known as Marire - meaning peace and positivity - Auckland Council has valued it at $9.25 million, while its Tudor-esque interiors are likely one of Auckland's best settings to display ancient tomes and busts of bygone generals and admirals.
The home's library offers a fine setting to display old tomes and busts of bygone admirals and generals. Photo / Supplied
Outside, its 4241sq m landscaped garden fuses lawn and forested grove so that the home nestles in the city's heart while giving airs of the countryside.
The garden also opens onto Cornwall Park, which stretches away like a private extension of the manor grounds.
"You will immediately appreciate just why this incredible offering has had just two families since its construction over one hundred years ago," the home's marketing agent Unlimited Potential states.
"A rare jewel and a very rare opportunity."
Interested buyers will need to put in private offers as the home as been put on sale as price by negotiation at a time when Auckland's housing market has boomed over the past year.
Epsom's median home value hit $2.05m in February, according to data by analysts OneRoof and Valocity.
That was a $340,000 or 20 per cent jump on the same month a year earlier.
The Epsom home has its own tennis court and expansive 4241sq m landscaped garden. Photo / Supplied
Built in the early 1900s for the Winstone family - who made their money as building material suppliers - it was designed by architect William Gummer with the intention of recreating an English manor 12,000 miles across the sea.
The Winstone family then kept the home for 70 years, before the latest owners, Tony and Hazel, bought it in 1988.
They earlier told Herald Homes they had lovingly preserved the house's formal side, made up of four big bedrooms, a library, lounge and separate dining room.
"Everything we've done, including adding bookshelves because oddly there were very few and even setting the lounge up as a media room, with a screen that comes down from behind a dark wood pelmet, has been seriously considered," Tony said.
The home has seven wood-pannelled and art-filled rooms. Photo / Supplied
Marketing photos reveal some of the home's grand features and Tony and Hazel's touches.
That included a wood-crafted staircase and entrance way and wood-panelled ceilings, walls and doorways.
Statues, busts and a sketch-drawn Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin are among faces peering down from the many artworks, while a towering grandfather clock greets new arrivals in the hallway.
A grand English country house with extensive manor grounds that open directly onto Cornwall Park has hit the market. Photo / Supplied
Views from the dining room open onto the forested groves, evoking romantic ideas of Sherwood Forest.
Outdoors, the hedge-lined garden likely keeps the gardeners busy, while an old drystone wall marks the border between the home's grounds and Cornwall Park.
Secluded and private, Tony told Herald Homes that as a tennis fan he plays every day on his own court, while Hazel joked it was possible to sunbathe naked in the manor grounds with nobody ever seeing you.
