The stupendous vista from Aldworth, as far as the South Coast, mesmerised its owner, the Poet Laureate Alfred Lord Tennyson, in the same way that Camelot must have bewitched King Arthur.

Now, for £10million, you have the chance to own this GradeI listed sanctuary on the upper slopes of Blackdown, the highest point of the South Downs National Park. Tennyson's 60 acres may have shrunk to 12 but you are surrounded by dense woodland belonging to the National Trust. There is a car park at the top where walkers come for the view but once you plunge down Aldworth's long drive you are in your own world, unseen by anyone yet little more than an hour's drive from Fulham.

As you approach the house, two miles from Haslemere, Surrey, stone gatepiers and scrolly iron gates provide further privacy. The drive sweeps on past Tennyson's handsome coach-house to deposit you in front of a triple-arched loggia richly carved with foliage and mythical creatures.

Tennyson, who wrote the Arthurian Idylls of the King between 1859 and 1889, bought Aldworth in the 1860s, when the crowds on the Isle of Wight were beginning to intrude on the peace of his retreat at Farringford. There he wrote of his “careless ordered garden...close to the ridge of a noble down”. At Aldworth he found another matchless view on a virgin plot. The house, built by Sir James Knowles in 1869, is Neo-Gothic but with distinctive French elements, notably the steep mansard roofs, tall spiky dormer windows, and massive chimney stacks. There is a wealth of carved foliage on the façades threaded through lettering that proclaims the glory of God - and Tennyson, too.

Glazed double doors with the original chunky bolts and lock case lead into an entrance vestibule, where Tennyson's ornamental tiles have been revealed in an almost pristine state beneath linoleum. With their intense colour, these tiles should be the overture to the whole house. Instead Aldworth's Gothic spirit has been tamed by a palette of soft creams and beiges, wall-to-wall carpets and a rigorous aversion to clutter.

There are modern gadgets and comforts in abundance, including a centralised vacuum cleaning system, opulent marble bathrooms and a spacious kitchen looking over a delightful sheltered courtyard. The main rooms all look south, with a view through large tall stone-mullioned windows that flood the interior with light on even the gloomiest days. Splendid pointed arched double doors, carved with Gothic tracery, open off a broad corridor running the length of the house. On the left are library, dining and drawing rooms all with lofty 12ft ceilings and on the right a 40ft billiard room looking out over immaculate lawns and a very pretty new ironwork pergola. The billiard room also opens in a spacious new conservatory, with a plunge pool behind.

Upstairs, Tennyson's bedroom looks both south and west, and intriguingly there is a void above the ceiling so that he would never hear footsteps overhead. The second floor is ideal for keeping teenage children out of earshot.

The well-kept gardens have a fully automated sprinkler system with touch-screen controls. A chain of ornamental ponds is kept topped up from a row of colossal water butts at the top of the property, some of which are filled by rainwater run off from the roofs of the house. The property also comes with a helicopter landing pad that retracts into a small hangar on a lower terrace. The upper terrace has a long stone balustrade, in the middle of which is a seated bronze statue of Tennyson. An inscription, from Tennyson's Prologue to General Hamley, reads: “You came, and looked and loved the view, Long known and loved by me, Green Sussex fading into blue, With one gray glimpse of sea.”

With all its technical wizardry, Aldworth begs for a new owner who will go wildly retro, filling the house with strongly patterned carpets, rugs and wallpapers, adding highlights of gold leaf to the cornices and introducing large Victorian narrative paintings. Many of the rooms have finely carved stone fireplaces with plain armorial shields that cry out for the addition of colourful heraldry - whether your own, Tennyson's or the Knights of the Round Table. Log fires need to burn in the grates and grand brass gasoliers to hang from the ceilings.

Spring will be a blaze of colour from azaleas and on a sunny day the unrivalled panorama of blue sky is so intense that distant woods turn blue in the haze, merging with the glimpse of sparkling sea beyond.

Details: Knight Frank, 020-7629 8171

Poets' corners

Dame Edith Sitwell (1887-1964) spent most of her childhood at Renishaw Hall, left, a Grade I listed stately home near Chesterfield, Derbyshire. Dame Edith, who did not get on with her parents, moved to a modest flat in Bayswater, West London, in her mid-twenties, which became a meeting place for young writers. She repaired to Renishaw Hall with her brother during the Second World War.

Rupert Brooke (1887-1915) lived in the Old Vicarage, right, in Grantchester, near Cambridge, before joining the Royal Naval Reserve in 1914; he died of blood poisoning the following year. The house is now owned by Jeffrey Archer, who bought it in 1979.

Dylan Thomas (1914-1953) moved into the Boathouse in Laugharne, Carmarthenshire, in 1949. The beauty of the setting, on a windswept cliff with views over the Taf estuary and Carmarthen Bay, inspired him; works written here include his late masterpiece Under Milk Wood (1953).

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