St Catherine’s Court may be a Grade-I listed manor house dating from the 13th century, but its recent past is rather rock ’n’ roll.
Bond Girl Jane Seymour used to own own the manor house, which is currently listed for £12.5 million with Savills.
The Live and Let Die star spent a day filming Jamaica Inn at the Elizabethan mansion the Eighties. “We had one day's filming here, and by evening […] I had fallen in love with the place,” she told Architectural Digest.
She bought it with her husband, David Flynn, in 1981 and renovated the 11-bedroom house and 14 acres of gardens.
When Seymour remarried film director James Keach, the couple began renting out the house as a film set and recording studio.
The Cure recorded Wild Mood Swings and Bloodflowers at St Catherine’s Court in the Nineties, and Radiohead recorded most of OK Computer there.
Thanks to its acoustics, the ballroom seven as the main studio with the library serving as the control room. Plus with so many bedrooms, there was more than enough space for the bands and all their equipment.
Robbie Williams also rented the house in the Noughties, and New Order recorded bits of Waiting for the Sirens’ Call at the manor house in 2005.
All the celebrities and their entourages turning up in this quiet corner on the edge of the Cotswold’s eventually annoyed the neighbours.
Seymour, who only lived there for three months of the year, was branded the ‘absent neighbour from hell’ for the ruckus caused by her high-flying tenants. She eventually sold up in 2012.
The stone manor is saturated in history, having originally been built for the monks of Bath Abbey as a priory grange. After Henry VIII broke with Rome and dissolved the monasteries, the King granted it to his tailor John Malte in 1546.
In some scandalous historical gossip, it was rumoured that Malte was given this generous gift after naming King Henry VIII’s rumoured illegitimate daughter, Ethelreda Malte as his own.
It was Malte who inherited the house. She attended Elizabeth I’s coronation in January 1559 and died that same month. Malte is rumoured to be buried at the church next door to St Catherine’s.
Her husband John Harington swiftly remarried and his son, also John, became courtier of Elizabeth I. He occasionally fell out of the Queen’s favour for writing saucy poems, and while he was sent away from court he invented the flush toilet.
By 1841 St Catherine’s Court had fallen into disrepair when it was bought and renovated by Colonel Joseph Holden Strutt.
Inside the manor is a labyrinth of corridors, accessed via the stone porch of the old chapel. Stone mullioned windows, some still with stained glass, light rooms with ancient wood panelling and oak floors, with ornately carved ceilings.
The living room has a stone fireplace and window seats over looking the garden, while the drawing room (currently set up as a cinema room) and dining room are connected by heavy wooden doors that can be opened to create one large entertaining space.
St Catherine’s Courts gardens are listed on the Register of Historic Parks and Gardens.
A bowling green that dates from the Jacobean era is bordered by ancient yew trees, while lawns and terraces are connected by stone walkways and wisteria-covered walkways planted with roses. An apple orchard is reached via an avenue of cherry trees, and there are tennis .
Gertrude Jekyll, noted garden designer of the 20th century, wrote of the gardens that there was not a house “within the length and breadth of England, whose charm of ancient beauty and of lovely, restful pleasure-ground, can rival that of this delightful place”
The future owner of St Catherine’s Court would also become owner of a Grade II-listed barn, a five-bedroom lodge house, and an old school house with three bedrooms and its own garden.
“Both charming and imposing, St Catherine’s Court and its gardens are set within a stunningly beautiful hidden valley that leave one spellbound,” said Ed Sugden of Savills Country Department.
“Now restored to its former glory, St. Catherine’s Court not only represents a wonderfully idiosyncratic family home, but one that is equipped to entertain on a truly grand scale.”
