Well Street Cottage

Ardington sits quietly in the Vale of the White Horse, a couple of miles east of Wantage, and it has the unhurried quality of a village that has not changed a great deal, in the best possible sense. It is an estate village, most of it still in the ownership of the Ardington Estate, and that continuity shows: the streets are neat, the stone consistent, the church of the Holy Trinity dating in part to around 1200. The Boar's Head, the village pub, has served the village for generations. Properties in Ardington almost never come to market. We are lucky this one has.

This Grade II listed cottage stands on Well Street, one of the quieter corners of the village, and it has the bones of a very good house. The living room gathers around a stonework fireplace with exposed beams above; the dining room leads to a cellar below; the kitchen has a pantry alongside. Upstairs, three bedrooms carry the same period character, with a large family bathroom completing the first floor. Behind the house, a courtyard garden is enclosed by a low stone wall.

The cottage is offered with scope for modernisation, which at this price and in this village is simply an invitation to do things well and at your own pace. Wantage is close for everyday needs, and Didcot Parkway, seven miles away, which puts London Paddington within forty minutes. The Ridgeway runs along the crest of the Berkshire Downs a few miles south, and the Uffington White Horse, cut into the chalk some three thousand years ago, is an easy drive away. Wantage itself was the birthplace of King Alfred the Great, a small reminder that this part of Oxfordshire has been significant for a very long time.