I took the children to an extra-smart English wedding a couple of years ago. Once I had settled them down in their pew, I looked about a bit and noticed that, of the 400 or so extra-smart English guests packed in around us, my two fresh-faced offspring – aged 5 and 8 – were the youngest people in the church by about 20 years.

The happy couple were not close friends. As I sat there, feeling slightly embarrassed, I recalled someone rather formal calling a week or so previously to inquire whether the children would be attending. I had said they would. And that had been the end of that. More or less. Or not quite, if I’m strictly honest. She had also hinted that “not many other children” would be present. Perhaps I should have picked up on that.

On the other hand, the wedding was during the day on a Saturday, as weddings tend to be, and she didn’t actually say they couldn’t come. We working ladies don’t see our children much in the week. My daughter had a lovely dress she was keen to wear. And I thought weddings were meant to be family affairs. So, there we were, waiting for the bride to show up in a £5,000 white dress that, of all the guests, only my daughter would probably truly appreciate. The children were sitting nicely, and all was going swimmingly until somebody in penguin uniform bustled over and ordered them out.

A suite with a magician had been reserved specifically for them at the hotel across the square, he told us. Well, the children wouldn’t leave without me, so the three of us, in our wedding finery, did the walk of shame back up the aisle, across the square, to the wretched hotel, where we spent a miserable morning being glowered at by the horrible magician, who clearly sensed our disgrace and resented having to perform before such a tiny audience.

The moral, obviously, is not to take your children where they’re not wanted. Trouble is, in England, people never want children to be anywhere at all. Which brings me to Swallowfield Park, a 17th-century country house near Reading, Berkshire, that has been refurbished and divided into 23 one- and two-bed flats. Residents come from all countries and professions – there’s even an air hostess among them, apparently – but they all have to be over 21.

“If you think about it,” the agent said when I expressed surprise, “this sort of environment doesn’t exactly lend itself to kids.” Depends how you look at it: the house has 26 acres of glorious park-land, with two rivers, a lake, a croquet lawn and a walled garden. “Personally, I’d be pretty miffed,” she went on, “if I bought into a place like this and found there were loads of shrieking children running all over the place.” Actually, the ban isn’t legally enforceable, so if a resident were to have a baby, there isn’t much they could do about it – something worth knowing for those still in the invisible stages of pregnancy.

Pre-trolley-dolly days, the house belonged to various aristocrats and important personages, among them the great-grandfather of William Pitt, who paid for it with a diamond thathad been sewn into an Indian servant’s flesh.The servant died after the wound was opened to retrieve it, and the house is said to have been haunted by him ever since.

Fast-forward to the mid-20th century, when lots of aristocrats were finding themselves short of servants, Indian or otherwise. Swallowfield Park was sold to the Country House Association, which divided it into a handful of small, kitchenless flats. The ageing gentlefolk who rented them ate together in one large dining room and spent their evenings playing bridge. Forty-odd years tottered by. The house, once so splendid, lost a bit of its glitz.

Things took a turn for the better in 2004, however, when it was sold to its current corporate owners, who, though clearly childphobic, have refurbished the public rooms (drawing room, dining room, library) with enormous elegance and installed kitchens in the flats.

The house came with a few sitting tenants, for whom dinner is still served each night in the public dining room, but slowly, obligingly, they’re dropping off their perch. As I write, five of them cling on. The flat I visited had recently been “released” by a sixth.

It’s a one-bedder on the ground floor, priced at £365,000, with a monthly service charge of £600, including a contribution towards council tax – and it’s stunning. The kitchen, though tiny, is light and decently finished, with new oak floors and maple worktops. Both sitting room and bedroom are large without feeling overbearing; the former has four enormous windows opening onto the lawn. It’s indicative of the management’s mentality, I think, that the secret door that once led directly from the old library to the bedroom has been blocked off and turned into a cupboard.

“We so nearly sold this place the other day,” the agent told me. “I had a couple with me, and I swear they were this far from signing on the dotted line. But they wanted to show their son before deciding. He was a bit of an artsy-fartsy from London, and the moment he walked in, I knew he didn’t like it.”

I may be an artsy-fartsy from London, too, but the flat is amazing. And children, as we all know, are messy, noisy and almost always irritating. Yet a world without them would be a wretched place. Ask the people of Hamelin.

Apartment 19, Swallowfield Park, Berkshire £365,000

What is it?A one-bedroom flat in a 17th-century country house Where is it?Five miles south of Reading

Who is selling it? Hamptons; 01628 407340, www.hamptons.co.uk

Kids in tow? Here’s what £365,000 buys elsewhere

Cornwall

A two-bed flat in a GradeII-listed building in Fort Picklecombe, at Maker Point. Once used as an officers’ mess, it has oak floors and a terrace with a sea view. Marchand Petit; 01752 675880, www.marchandpetit.co.uk

Shropshire

This 18th-century cottage, with four bedrooms and three reception rooms, faces the Norman church in historic Alveley. The patio leads to a vegetable patch and apple trees. Nock Deighton; 01746 767767, www.nockdeighton.co.uk

Hampshire

A chalet-style home at the end of a private road in Horton Heath, five miles from Southampton. It has four bedrooms, three bathrooms, a conservatory and plenty of parking. Goadsby; 023 8062 0550, www.goadsby.co.uk

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