Not many houses on offer for £1million come with such a breathtaking setting as Llanbedr Old Rectory, in Denbighshire. Driving from Chester you climb to more than 800ft before descending through the Bwlch Pass to admire the fertile Vale of Clwyd stretching out below - an unblemished expanse of green fields, trees and woods.

The parish church of Llanbedr-Dyffryn-Clwyd stands prominently on a bend as the road enters the village, but the Old Rectory is set back down a quiet country lane. The village school is just 100 yards away, visible from the windows, and you can walk along an avenue to the medieval town of Ruthin two miles away.

East of the house, a line of Iron Age hill forts crowns the Clwydian Hills, which protect you from the north-east winds, while the three acres that come with the house are enclosed and sheltered by mature trees.

Llanbedr has remained miraculously unaltered since it was built in the early 1690s. Sash windows, then still new in England, had not arrived hereabouts, and the entrance front retains leaded panes and wooden mullions. The house is built of a wonderful mellow red brick, with an exotic note added by the roof, which splays out towards the bottom.

The Old Rectory is raised over a low basement to keep it dry, with a half circle of steps up to the front door. Inside, the rooms are laid out with a classic dolls' house plan: two square rooms at the front and two at the back. The hall has the added flourish of a richly patterned Victorian tiled floor, inset with a central carpet motif. At the back, an oak stair - with a full complement of 100 spindles - rises to the second floor.

The Old Rectory was sold by the Church in Wales some 30 years ago, and for the past ten years the rectory has been home to Bodo and Camilla Linnhoff. His intriguing speciality is “to optimise energy systems in oil refineries and chemical plants”. Not surprisingly his pride is the invisible system of central heating. He explains that “the boiler is in the stables so you neither hear it nor smell a whiff of oil”. Heat comes across in military issue pipes, the kind they use beneath airport runways. In the house the pipes are hidden beneath the old floorboards. “My wife collected all the old nails, straightened them out and ensured they went back in exactly the same nail holes. There was no way she was going to have Phillips screws in view,” he says.

Finding that water sat in the basement when it rained, he dug down a foot to create extra headroom and had it tanked and made waterproof. All the woodwork has been waxed and polished, retaining the patina. The best is in the sitting room with characteristic “raised and fielded” panels. Rather than open beams, the room has a plaster ceiling formed into rectangular panels but leaving the central wood beam uncovered.

There is a handsome kitchen (pictured below), and the panelled dining room at the back has a bay window with floor-to-ceiling sashes - three-fold shutters ensure that it is warm at night. Bodo has created three attractive bedrooms in the attic with a bathroom and kitchen. “We didn't want the uniform flat effect of plasterboard,” he says, “and insisted that the new plaster between the rafters was done by hand and distinctly uneven.”

Llanbedr has immensely thick chimney stacks that stand out strongly on the floor plans. Bodo says: “The spaces on either side were no more than dirt holes. We've cleaned them out and put shelving behind the panelling.” On one side of the gravel forecourt is a dovecot with a pretty cupola and weather vane. A spiral stair leads to a first-floor room that could be a bedroom or studio. The coach house and stables would easily convert into a spacious cottage: at present they contain a smart Scandinavia sauna in a neat blond pine cabin.

The Linnhoffs are moving to southern Switzerland. For a keen gardener, the extensive sheltered lawns running down to a stream offer glorious possibilities - perhaps with formal box-edged beds, herbaceous borders, flowering shrubs or an orchard. There's space for them all.

Jackson-Stops & Staff, 01244 328361

FACT FILE

What you get:Grade II* listed former rectory in three acres with six bedrooms, a dovecot and coachhouse

Where it is: Ruthin 2 miles; Denbigh 8; A55 Expressway 13; Chester 21; Liverpool 31

Area: 3,342 sq ft

Price: £1 million

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