With its perfectly soaring Jacobean-style architecture, leaded windows and enchanting walled garden, all set within 17-plus acres of East Sussex countryside, Grade II* Listed Possingworth Manor is the rural idyll of an English country house.
Despite its tranquil appearance, however, the 11-bedroom, 8,500 sq ft manor near Uckfield has had a disproportionate share of drama over the years, as the site of some legendary lovers’ tiffs, and with links to royalty past and present, literary and artistic icons and wartime heroes, to boot. The world’s most famous pair of royal mistresses (Alice Keppel and her great-granddaughter, the newly crowned Queen Camilla), Vita Sackville-West’s lover Violet Trefusis and Major Pat Reid, author of the Colditz stories and one of the few people to have ever escaped the infamous German prison, all have histories indelibly tied to the beguilingly serene home.
Although largely built in the 1650s, the ashlar-faced manor has origins dating back to 1281, where a grand house on the site was first recorded. Its present incarnation is thanks to a Thomas Offley, who had his initials carved for posterity above a doorway on the east side of the house. In 1830 a fire destroyed the south wing and was rebuilt 100 years later – noted by Historic England to have weathered so well that it ties in seamlessly with the rest of the house.
In 1864, the estate was bought by Louis Huth, who with his wife, Helen, was an influential patron of the arts. A partner in the merchant bank Frederick Huth & Co, which had been established by his father, he collected and commissioned works by some of the greatest British artists of the 18th and 19th centuries, and was a forward-thinking fan of the Symbolist and Aesthetic movements. In fact, Helen was painted by both James McNeill Whistler and GF Watts – by Watts as all innocence in white, with a backdrop of foliage and flowers, and by Whistler as a Velazquez-inspired portrait in black. Finding the manor too small for their gallery-worthy art collection, however, the couple built another, neo-Gothic manor nearby, where they could display their treasures.
Between 1918 and 1919, Possingworth’s history gets its real headlines. The home, on the edge of the village of Waldron, was rented by Alice Keppel – Edward VII’s long-term mistress and Queen Camilla’s great-grandmother – in a desperate bid to avoid the scandal that was engulfing her daughter, author and socialite Violet.
Deeply in love with the writer Vita Sackville-West, who she had known since childhood, Violet (who called Edward ‘Kingy’ as a little girl), was persuaded by her mother to enter a loveless marriage with the handsome soldier Denys Trefusis, to stop the gossip circulating in Edwardian high society. Violet and Trefusis lived together at the house, although their tenure here didn’t do much to quell Violet’s passion – she wrote many letters of longing to Sackville-West from the home. Virginia Woolf would later immortalise the women’s love affair in Orlando: A Biography, with Violet the inspiration for the fictional character of the Russian Princess Sasha.
Both women would also go on to write their own fictional accounts of the affair – Sackville-West in Challenge, and Trefusis, who never achieved the literary fame she so craved, in Broderie Anglaise.
In the early 1920s, Donal Howard, the 3rd Baron Strathcona and Mount Royal, bought Possingworth, rebuilding the lost wing in fine Jacobean style and adding a grand 14th-century fireplace to the hallway, plus external lead guttering decorated with a beaver – a homage to his Canadian heritage. To war hero Major Pat Reid, the manor’s owner after the second world war, it must have seemed a veritable palace, with its series of moulded-ceilinged, wood-panelled reception rooms, ornately carved stonework and views over East Sussex’s outstanding rural beauty.
In 1942, Reid became one of the few people to have ever escaped the grim German prison fortress of Colditz Castle, perched 250 ft above the surrounding terrain and enclosed by 7 ft thick stone walls. After an earlier, foiled attempt, he broke for freedom along with two other prisoners, by cutting through the window bars of the prisoners’ kitchen, climbing out onto a flat roof and escaping via a narrow air shaft that led to open parkland.
With their parents no longer alive, the four Neville children have decided to put Possingworth Manor on the market, for £4.5m
Later Possingworth residents included Sir Robert Craigie, the British Ambassador in Japan between 1937 and 1941, and intellectual giant and journalist Rebecca West, who covered the Nuremberg Trials for the New Yorker, and probably worked on her seminal 1942 travel book, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, about Yugoslavia on the brink of war, while staying at the home.
Its present owners, then, have had a lot to live up to. In 1990, Sir Roger Neville, who served as chief executive of the Sun Alliance insurance group, and his wife, Lady Brenda, bought the house. Along with their four children, Rupert, Elizabeth, Georgina and Henrietta, they opened up the house to huge gatherings of families and friends, and held four weddings, christenings and some legendary 18th and 21st birthday parties here.
‘Our father had travelled extensively during his career, and for his retirement wanted to find a ‘project”’, Rupert says. ‘Possingworth was just this, presenting an opportunity for them to get creative with beautiful fabrics and fittings for the interiors and acquire more antiques. They were also avid gardeners, so much was work was undertaken to maintain the impressive garden infrastructure, including the walled ha-ha and sunken paved area and magical walled garden.’
The grounds, which also include a swimming pool, a detached two-storey barn with workshop and a revolving summer house crafted from upcycled materials, were installed in the walled garden, and were regularly opened up for local events.
With their parents no longer alive, the four Neville children have decided to put Possingworth Manor on the market, for £4.5m. ‘We have so many favourite memories, of the beautiful views from the upstairs rooms and the calming atmosphere throughout the house and gardens – an amazingly peaceful retreat in an increasingly busy world,’ Rupert says. ‘We all feel Possingworth is not the same without our parents’ presence: they were the life and soul of the house. We hope we will find someone with a similar passion for Possingworth, and then we will know it will be in safe hands.’
He’ll regret, though, not having more time to delve more deeply into the period Violet Trefusis spent at the house, and to explore her literary legacy. ‘There has been a lot of focus on her affair with Vita Sackville-West,’ he says, ‘and this seems to have overshadowed her own literary talents, which are now becoming more recognised’. Sounds like the perfect project for Possingworth’s new owner, then.
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