THE people who live in the Oxfordshire village of Charlbury will feel the loss
when the actor Freddie Jones leaves his home in the village after 30 years.
Jones is the kind of personality that makes a community hum. Megastars, the
Madonnas and Dylans of this world, bring little but disruption and general
inconvenience, walled up behind their security perimeters while packs of
paparazzi stalk the town.
As one of Britain’s leading character actors, regularly appearing on
television, from The Avengers to Emmerdale, Jones has
contributed a lot to Charlbury, supporting the theatre society and backing
fundraising efforts and campaigns to preserve local amenities. But he does
not attract the media scrum.
So Charlbury will miss him and his wife, Jenny, when they move from the lovely
stone-built townhouse where they have lived for so long to a more manageable
house near Bicester.
The couple moved to the Cotswolds town from Kent when their family outgrew
their mock-Tudor cottage. “I did an extraordinary deal. We sold the place in
Kent for £30,000 and a friend said there was an old doctor’s place in
Charlbury that was falling down but going cheap. So we bought it in 1977 for
£28,000, hoping we had enough left over to renovate it,” Freddie recalls.
Remember that price: £28,000.
Crinan House is a classic Cotswold townhouse, dating mainly from the 16th
century but extended and refaced in Georgian times to bring it up to date —
stone cladding is nothing new. It was suffering from decades of minimal
maintenance and bodged DIY jobs, and it was Jenny Jones who shouldered most
of the burden of transforming it. “It was infinitely depressing, but my wife
said it could be beautiful. In her hands it became welcoming and started
smiling,” says Freddie.
The decorative scheme seemed to consist entirely of nicotine-stained white
emulsion, which was gradually covered with a rich palette of creams, blues,
ochres and greens. New bathrooms were installed and the garden reclaimed.
A horrid aluminium porch over the garden door was replaced with an elegant
Victorian-style diamond lattice window plus a carved canopy over the door.
The process took time, work being dictated by the wild fluctuations in
income that every actor endures. “We had very limited resources, but at the
times we had a bit more money we did the best we could,” Freddie says. The
result is a house that has grown organically rather than been transformed by
the instant makeover of interior designers.
Many in the film and theatrical world have graced the table in the
country-style kitchen at Crinan House with its Aga, enormous butcher’s table
and the array of decorative but evidently frequently used pans hanging from
one of the beams. Julie Christie, Ned Sherrin and Caryl Brahms have all
eaten there.
One of Freddie Jones’s less well known stage credits was appearing as Bristow,
the office anarchist, in a play at the ICA in London, based on the cartoon
strip by his longstanding friend Frank Dickens. Dickens arrived at the
couple’s New Year party this year in short sleeves, unaware that it was
supposed to be Victorian style.
Two staircases, a formal one from the entrance hall and a back stairs that the
servants would have used, lead to a warren of bedrooms and bathrooms on the
first and attic storeys. Most of the bedrooms have south-facing windows,
wide antique plank floors and old beams.
The half-acre garden, beautifully laid out with a brick patio area and a stone
pond, rises at the back to a large stone barn containing a workshop, garage
and valuable storage space.
An orchard lies beyond the drive, which also serves the house behind. It might
be possible to build in the orchard, subject to the lifting of a covenant
and obtaining planning permission. Neither of those procedures is likely to
be easy.
The house was also the cradle of a new generation of theatre talent. The
couple brought up three boys in the house, including Toby Jones, star of Infamous,
the highly regarded Truman Capote biopic that is to be released here soon.
Not that Freddie’s career is anywhere near over. He has just completed several
episodes of Emmerdale, in which he plays the vicar’s father —
the one who helped his wife to end her life and was never forgiven by their
son. “Old actors never retire, they just die,” Freddie booms.
Freddie feels blessed to have lived in such a house, given his humble origins
in prewar Stoke-on-Trent. “We loved it like some precious relative, and I
dare not think what we’ll do when we leave it empty. It is a long way from a
rented house in the Potteries. I feel a tremendous sense of privilege to
live in a place like this,” he says.
Crinan House needs modernisation, especially in the bathrooms, but a
sympathetic buyer with a light touch will find the house repays tender
loving care with interest.
Conventional wisdom advises waiting for spring before putting a house on the
market. But this year buyers are crowding local estate agents’ offices, so
Crinan House may not stay on the shelf for long. The price? Remember how
much he paid for it all those years ago? Crinan House is now for sale for
£1.25 million.
Crinan House is for sale via John D Wood, 01865 311522.
BUYER'S GUIDE
When looking for a house in the Cotswolds, try to avoid the tourist honeytraps
of Broadway, Bourton-in-the-Water and Stow-on-the-Wold.
If there is a pub near by, check that it is not a gastropub; not only will it
be too expensive to eat in, but the street will be crammed with diners’
cars.
Weekenders, who used to be seen as parasites, are now settling in, working
from home via broadband and visiting London midweek. If this is your dream,
check broadband availability, as it has not yet penetrated everywhere.
Prices range from £250,000 to £300,000 for a three-bedroom terraced cottage;
from £500,000 to £800,000 for a three-bed detached cottage; from £750,000 to
£1.5m for a four-bed detached house with a large garden; from £1.5m to £3m
for a Georgian rectory with up to ten acres; and from £2.5m for a country
house.
Charlbury is a town, not a village.
Rich, Charlbury, UK