GAWSWORTH village, on the eastern edge of the Cheshire plain, is a place of pure enchantment. You approach along a magnificent lime avenue leading towards the stately 15th-century church set high above the bend that enters the village. Below are a pair of large fishponds – as stately as those beside a château in Normandy.

The Old Rectory is just opposite the church; looking back, the church tower is perfectly framed by noble mature trees. Just beyond, Gawsworth Hall is glimpsed across lawns. This is a place described in the 19th century as “remarkable for the extreme beauty of its situation”, and thankfully nothing has changed.

Once past the ball-topped gate piers you are in a little Elysium, immaculately trim, imaginatively planted and bursting with colour from flowering shrubs. It’s hard to believe that in 1470 the Church could have built a rectory of such splendour with a great hall of the size you will find in the house of a very rich Suffolk cloth merchant. The style is the best Cheshire black and white – “close-studded” with chunky vertical timbers set close together to make a grand display. The entrance porch is a delightful piece of pretty Regency Gothic; the front door, a full 5ft across, is both venerably ancient and massive in construction.

The great hall is still more splendid and cavernous than the outside suggests – rising 27ft with splendid arched trusses supporting the underside of the roof. The high end of the hall opens into the rector’s study with a pair of beautiful chamfered medieval beams forming a cross and handsome panelling introduced by Idris Owen, MP, who lived here in the 1970s. Above, the rector’s bedroom has more handsome exposed timbers, with a fireplace dated 1724. A comfortable study was added at the back in 1870 by the great architect Richard Norman Shaw.

Attached to the house is a cottage, a delightful miniature version of the Old Rectory, with the same close-set timbers and a first-floor hall with a massive roof truss said to be pre1340.

The immaculate garden of the Old Rectory is formed into a series of rooms – one entered through a neat arch in a hedge of clipped holly. At the top the gardens open on to paddocks with a long view across the green Cheshire plain towards the Jodrell Bank radio telescope.

For some people, timber-framed buildings are an unknown quantity. But the Old Rectory is exceptional in the standard of maintenance over many years. This is a house where you can be comfortable the day you move in.

If the Old Rectory was in Alderley Edge, a favourite with footballers, it would command a far higher price. Gawsworth, it seems, is not only a northern paradise but a bargain too.

FACTFILE

WHAT YOU GET: Grade I listed 15th-century house with six bedrooms and attached cottage. Total of 7,020 sq ft.

WHERE IT IS: Three miles to Macclesfield, eight to Alderley Edge, 20 to Manchester.

PRICE: £2.95 million, through Jackson-Stops & Staff, 01625 540340.

For more reviews of the finest country houses for sale, go to timesonline.co.uk/marcusbinney

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