THE vast, Grade I-listed Jacobean Dorfold Hall, just outside the market town of Nantwich in Cheshire, was built, so the story goes, for a visit by James I. Completed in 1621, the property and its surrounding estate of 101 acres have been in the home of the Roundell family ever since, making a few detours along the way down the female line.
Many of the original 17th-century interiors have been beautifully preserved, such as the ornate plaster ceiling in the drawing room, commissioned in 1621 to celebrate the unification of England and Scotland. Changes over the centuries have included a remodelling of the ground floor by architect Samuel Wyatt in 1771. Later, in 1862, William Nesfield was commissioned to rearrange the landscape. During the