Village Mansion For Sale At £4.1m, Comes With Butler Who Cannot Legally Be Removed
A seventeenth-century red brick house on the edge of Cuddington Longmoor has come to market at a guide price of £4.1 million, with the selling agents describing it as "a rare opportunity", "substantially navigable", and "sold with occupant".
Nethercombe Warren, Grade II* listed and built in 1663 by a wool merchant who was reportedly afraid of open spaces, offers eleven bedrooms, four snugs, two dens, a Jacobean staircase the brochure says "arrives", and a hereditary manservant in the basement who conveys with the property in the same way the boiler does.
The covenant, attached to the deeds in 1704 and never successfully unpicked, states that the house may only be transferred on the condition that the serving man of the household transfers with it. The current holder of the post, the eleventh of his line to occupy the lower ground floor, has served the family since before the last two owners were born, and the particulars list him under Outbuildings And Ancillary.
"I want to be clear that he is not a fixture, because a fixture can be argued about," said the agent handling the sale, a man in a quilted gilet who asked to be described as "the third-best agent in the Vale, on a Tuesday". "He is a term. You are not buying a house with a man in it. You are buying a man, and the house comes free in the sense that it doesn't, it's £4.1 million."
Clause nine is where most buyers stop reading and start drinking. On the death of the serving man, the owner of the day is required to bury him in the garden, specifically in the south-facing bed between the espaliered pears, in a plot the brochure calls "a mature planting opportunity" and the survey calls "soft going".
The Buckinghamshire Panel for Domestic Covenants and Residual Interment, a two-person body operating above a tyre fitters in Thame, has examined the clause and found it "binding, ancient, and frankly nobody's favourite". The Panel's presiding officer said 71 per cent of historic Vale properties carry a clause of comparable weirdness. Asked how that figure was reached, he confirmed the sample was four houses, that two of them were the same house approached from different directions, and that the finding was "impossible to disprove without digging, which is exactly the sort of thing the clause is trying to avoid".
The serving man himself declined a full interview, on the grounds that he has not been asked a question by an owner since 1997 and would prefer to keep his record intact. He did confirm, through the dumbwaiter, that he has met six owners, outlasted five, and considers the sixth "a bit fast round the corners". He has already chosen his spot, which he describes as having good afternoon light and a view of the tennis court, "playable in principle".
Two bedrooms clustered around a small second kitchen are offered as possible self-contained accommodation. The agent was firm that these are not for the serving man, who has never been upstairs and has said he would find it disorientating. "Traditionally that would be staff," the agent said. "Realistically, in this market, that is where you put the adult children who said they were moving to Bristol in 2019, and where they will sit, listening to a bell ring in the floor, wondering who is answering it."
Viewings are by appointment. The agent recommends comfortable footwear, a charged phone, and not going down to the basement with a chequebook until you have read clause nine twice.