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.
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