Piers Court covers more than 14,000 square feet
(Picture: Rightmove)A Grade II-listed Georgian manor house in Gloucestershire which was once home to the novelist Evelyn Waugh has been sold at auction for £3,160,000.
Piers Court, near Cirencester, was listed for sale on November 29 with a catch: prospective buyers would not be able to view the property, despite its £2.5 million price tag.
Nor would they be able to see the house in its current condition, because the sitting tenants, who are paying just £250 a year in rent, were refusing to leave the property or allow estate agents or buyers in.
The tenants, who are reportedly superfans of Evelyn Waugh, were served a Notice to Quit in August, but have not vacated the property. According to Knight Frank’s listing, “a prospective buyer should take their own legal advice regarding this.”
Even so, the eight-bedroom house has sold online today for £660,000 over its reserve price of £2.5 million. The auction was contested by four people, who collectively placed 49 bids for the property.
Waugh was gifted the country estate by his wife Laura Herbert’s grandmother in 1937. He, Herbert and their children lived there for 19 years — except during the second world war, when the mansion was let to a convent school.
He wrote many of his novels in the house’s library, including Helena, The Loved One, Men at Arms and Officers and Gentleman.
Brideshead Revisited, Waugh’s most famous novel, was written in a hotel in Devon in 1944, during the house’s convent school years.
During the family’s time there, Waugh hosted several famous friends and intellectuals, including Grahame Greene, Nancy Mitford and John Betjeman.
The family moved in 1955, prompted by an intrusion onto the property by two reporters from the Daily Express, who wanted to interview Waugh.
“I sent them away and remained tremulous with rage all the evening,” he wrote in his diary.
Today, the stately home covers 14,564 sq ft, with six reception rooms, six bathrooms and 24 acres of land.
Described as “one of the most beautiful houses in Gloucestershire”, it has its own tennis court, croquet lawn, park and paddocks, as well as seven outbuildings, including a Grade II-listed coach house, two-bedroom apartment, potting shed, stables and wood store.
The property was last inspected in early 2019, when it was purchased by its current owners. Then, according to the listing, it was “extremely well presented”, with plenty of space for entertaining.
Downstairs, there is the classical Georgian hall, from which the drawing room and library, flanked by a large bay window, are accessible.
The rear of the house is Elizabethan, housing the kitchen, wine cellar and self-contained staff wing, while the bedrooms are on the two floors above.
Piers Court was bought by millionaire and former BBC executive Jason Blain for £2.9 million in 2019, reportedly at the behest of Helen Lawton, an Evelyn Waugh superfan and one of the property’s current tenants.
It was bought through a company called Winston’s House Ltd, with Blain, Lawton and her partner Bechara Madi as directors. According to the company’s records, Lawton and Madi both resigned on April 15, 2019, the day that the house was purchased.
Winston’s House Ltd’s last annual reports show that the company owed nearly £1.5 million to creditors in 2021, and is currently in receivership, with Hoare & Co taking control of Piers Court and putting it up for auction.
“The house is not for sale, it is coming off the market,” Lawton told The Times. “We’ve been through hell in the last three weeks. This is going to become very big public knowledge.”
Now that the property has been sold, that remains to be seen.
