Open the door at Crowcombe Court and you are dazzled by Baroque plasterwork as lively as carvings by the great Grinling Gibbons. Every day you will be enraptured by swags of flowers, scallop shells, sprays of acanthus, lion masks and proud winged eagles.

Grand early Georgian houses like this can sell for dizzy sums. Jasper Conran bought the Ven in Somerset (asking price £8.5million) and Chicheley Hall, Buckinghamshire, has just sold (guide price £7million). Crowcombe, which is about 45 miles from the Ven and ten miles from Taunton in Somerset, is on offer for just £2.5million. Its setting is ravishing. You catch a first glimpse of it at the end of a 180-yard-long drive. As you draw near, the blemishless orange-coloured brick and Bath stone glow radiantly in the sun.

Crowcombe Court faces south across a tranquil valley. What makes it sublime is the steeply rising parkland beside the house, merging into the glorious hanging woods that crown the Quantock Hills.

It was built over 15 years: Thomas Carew began the work in 1723 as soon as he came into his inheritance at 21. In burning anger he dismissed Thomas Parker, his Devon builder, after he discovered that Parker had pocketed old coins worth a princely £900, found while demolishing the old house. Parker's foundations were taken over by Nathaniel Ireson, a master builder from Warwickshire.

Crowcombe's price takes into account the fact that it comes with just four acres. The park, although beautifully maintained, is not yours. Crowcombe is a work in progress. Over ten heroic years it has been nursed back to life by the designer Richard Anderson and the architectural historian Patricia Smith, who came here in 1999, taking over a run-down nursing home. They recognised that Crowcombe was built for entertainment. As well as making it their home, the couple have recouped the costs of repair by letting it for weddings and events. The entrance hall offers full Roman splendour with two-tier chimneypiece, carved doorheads and the very grandest Palladian archway supported on pairs of columns.

If guests want to party late into the night they are invited into one of the most spacious and impressive country house “basements” I have seen. There is a very large kitchen, more than 30ft long and widening out to 27ft.

The two upper floors contain five en suite bedrooms, then a self-contained guest apartment on two floors with its own reception rooms and four bedrooms. There is a nanny flat, too. Anderson and Smith are now selling because they want somewhere smaller.

For new owners with patience, vision and drive there is an opportunity to complete the restoration of a trophy house that could sell for at least double what is being asked today. The challenge lies mainly in the large stable court to the west of the house, flanked by matching stable and office ranges. These were sold off in the 1980s. One is divided into six flats, the other is effectively one large house. With time, you may be able to buy them back. Precisely this happened at nearby Halswell House, divided into flats, but now miraculously back as one very smart property.

Contact: Jackson-Stops & Staff : 01823 325144

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