Cavendish Hall is a Regency country house of great charm, set in a small well-timbered park on the outskirts of a timeless village deep in the countryside loved by John Constable. It came to us through the exceptional generosity of its last owner, Pamela Matthews, who had lived here as a child in the 1920s. In 1964 she married as her second husband T.S. (Tom) Matthews, a distinguished American journalist, writer and former editor of Time magazine. Knowing that she had always loved the house, he bought it for her.

Cavendish Hall has played no part in national events, but it is one of those solid and gracious country houses that enrich the local scene and help define the tone of our ancient villages, both through its residents and those who have worked for them. It has inspired happy times, affection and deep loyalty.

Built circa 1800, Cavendish Hall was bought in the 1830s by Dr John Yelloly, sometime physician to George IV. The Yelloly family owned it for over a century, and for most of this time it was let to a succession of tenants, the sort of honest middling gentry who people the novels of Austen and Trollope.

The Matthews themselves were a colourful and interesting couple. T.S. Matthews, a prolific author in his own right, counted among his friends some of the great literary figures of the twentieth century, including Robert Graves and T.S. Eliot.

Thanks to Pamela Matthews' wish that as many people as possible should enjoy the house she loved so much, Cavendish Hall offers the chance to experience life in a house such as Jane Austen might have known, with a well-stocked library that evokes the house's twentieth-century connections as much as its Regency origins.

Sleeps: 12