A medieval legacy

BRITAIN’S oldest inhabited houses are lasting monuments, both to the skill and ingenuity of the craftsmen who built them and to the life and times of the owners who lived in them, as the history of three houses of medieval origin currently on the market clearly shows.

For sale through Savills (01732 789700) at a guide price of £4.25 million, The Old Palace at Wrotham, near Sevenoaks, Kent, was one of several ancient manors owned by the Archbishops of Canterbury that lined the ‘Archbishops’ Trail’ from Canterbury to Lambeth. Although the exact date of its construction is unknown, reliable sources, which include the Domesday Book, indicate that the palace was granted to Christ Church, Canterbury, by the Anglo-Saxon King Ethelstan in the year 964.