WINSLOW HALL is the finest surviving house built by England’s greatest architect, Sir Christopher Wren, and is a trophy almost without rival. As you approach through the gently rolling north Buckinghamshire countryside the house, near Aylesbury, stands proud of every building in the village like a Cunard Queen, complete with soaring funnels. This is not simply because the village street is lined with nothing taller than thatched cottages: Winslow Hall would look large and grand in London or even Paris.

Better still, this is the Rolls-Royce of English domestic architecture. Wren was used to designing imposing public buildings, and only the very best materials and craftsmen would serve. More than one million bricks were used in building Winslow Hall, which is as handsomely detailed as the Royal Hospital at Chelsea (the rafters in the roof are nearly a foot square, for example). Wren’s patron was William Lowndes, Secretary to the Treasury for 30 years from 1695.

The second miracle of Winslow is that the view from the house survives on both sides. The south-facing entrance front looks out across the road to a 15-acre field gently undulating like parkland. Last week it was filled with baaing ewes and young lambs; there is not a building in sight all the way to Bicester. On the garden front the broad grand axis ends in a ha-ha, with the bowling green beyond barely visible amid tall trees. The garden is very attractively planted with mature flowering shrubs, including a wistaria neatly trained into an umbrella canopy. To one side is a walled garden large enough to lose a tennis court – or two.

The present entrance is through a pavilion block to the side of the house with an imported but gorgeously carved portal good enough to be by Inigo Jones. The internal plan of Winslow is simple. There are four main rooms on each of the two main floors with the remarkable convenience of a cabinet or closet opening off each, now turned into bathrooms, drinks room and serveries. A splendid oak staircase at either end make every room easily accessible.

The glory of the interior is the wealth of very fine oak panelling, matched by the chunky glazing bars of the tall sash windows. The main floor (a raised ground floor) contains a drawing room opening out in the garden and a dining room served by a pantry and dumb waiter descending to the kitchen below. These splendid but rather old-fashioned arrangements reflect the fact that the house has been little altered since it was bought in 1959 by Sir Edward Tomkins, Edward Heath’s Ambassador to Paris when Britain joined the Common Market.

The second floor contains an unexpected survival of the 17th-century practice of having a grand room (40ft long) at the top of the house. It has a low ceiling, and is potentially a wonderful family room, although it could serve (I hardly dare say it) as the now requisite private cinema.

Winslow comes with a remarkable amount of accommodation for a town house, including a garage pavillion with two self-contained apartments. The one caveat is that the chapel and a priest’s house are let to the Roman Catholic Church. Given that Winslow is in a village, hopefully buyers will see this as a neighbourly arrangement.

FACTFILE

WHAT YOU GET: Grade I listed gem set in 22 acres; six bedroom suites; two self-contained flats. In all, 10,000 sq ft.

WHERE IS IT: Ten miles from Aylesbury; trains to Marylebone take an hour.

PRICE: £3m. Savills, 020-7499 8644 or Jackson-Stops & Staff, 020-7664 6646.

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