Not many people can boast that they live within walls steeped in both ancient history and British sitcom history – it’s a pretty niche combination, right? Well, if you’re able to fork out £1.5 million, the bragging rights could be all yours.
Wigmore Abbey in Adforton, Herefordshire, belonged to the late Only Fools and Horses actor John Challis, who played Boycie in the series. He bought the property with his wife in 1998 and renovated it over the course of 20 years.
As well as being Challis’s abode IRL, it became Boycie’s country retreat in the spin off series Green Green Grass – a world away from the character’s Peckham estate in the original series.
In his 2016 book ‘Wigmore Abbey: the Treasure of Mortimer’, Challis recalled his first impressions of the building and wrote that it was ‘even more extraordinary inside than out’.
The Grade I-listed house was built within the ancient ruins of Wigmore Abbey and includes a hatch to a tunnel that used to connect directly to Wigmore Castle. The Abbey was destroyed by the Welsh in 1221, but was almost completely rebuilt in the late fourteenth century.
Mark Wiggin Estate Agents is selling the property and describe it as having a ‘tremendous display of original period and character features throughout’.
The new owners will get to enjoy seven bedrooms (including two ensuites), a huge living room with a magnificent stone fireplace, a drawing room, a refectory and a library. A number of the rooms have maintained some of the ancient structures, including a four-foot wall in the refectory, which is thought to have belonged to the original twelfth-century building.
You can find out more about the property on the Mark Wiggin website.
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