Bates Lane, Souldern, OX27

In the same family hands for over a century, a surprisingly large (c.1,800sq ft) three bed 19th century cottage with the most delightful, lengthy garden, in the centre of the village. Charming in the current form, the potential to create a stunning family home with garaging/ home office space is significant.

Souldern is a small village on the North Oxfordshire border, seven miles south-east of Banbury with roots going back at least 900 years. For those in the know it is one of the few remaining truly secluded villages, tucked away off a single entry road and hence almost unknown to most. This is what gives it the feeling of a peaceful lifestyle mostly lost today. There is an excellent pub/restaurant The Fox Inn, a Norman church, a chapel, a village hall, plus play area and playing field. Souldern is also one of the few villages in the area served by high speed fibre-optic broadband, making working from home truly viable. Banbury, Brackley and Bicester are all within easy distance with a good range of shopping and leisure facilities, and there are shops in many of the nearby villages. Bicester also offers the unrivalled facility of Bicester Village as well as a 45-minute rail service to London Marylebone. The M40 motorway at junction 10 is about three miles away and access to both Northampton and Milton Keynes is also straightforward.

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Home Farm House is just lovely. Home to one of the oldest families in the village, it was once part of the village store hence it is unusually large. Every room is a great size, and almost all have good sized windows, ensuring it has the rare privilege of great natural light throughout. The house is so tucked away you would have difficulty knowing it's there, yet once you find it everything from the large driveway with space for a double garage or a home office, to the gorgeous and lengthy garden, set it apart as a uniquely unusual property. In its existing format the house needs a lot of updating - the usual situation of being loved by the same family for many years, who saw no need to change it. However, with modern electrics certified, and a new boiler, much of the work is really more about making it what you wish, and resetting the clock on the decor and maintenance. Within that there are opportunities to create a fabulous glazed room looking over the garden, and to amalgamate the huge hall and kitchen into one large family/breakfast/ kitchen space, amongst others. And the garden being the envy of every other cottage on the lane, when finished this will be one of the most coveted houses of its type.

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The porch to the side of the house opens into a hall that really surprises us. Effectively, it's a useable room by itself, more than ample as a dining space if desired, with a rather lovely herringbone parquet floor, and off to the right is the downstairs cloak room. Next door to the hallway, the kitchen is equipped with a range of units round two sides plus a terracotta tiled floor, and windows to two walls make this a very positive, light room. However, our feeling is that the most likely evolution of these two rooms would be to amalgamate them, which would transform the downstairs with a new room of seriously generous proportions that would provide the perfect mix of kitchen area and breakfast/ dining space. Beyond the hall, underneath the stairs, a door leads to stone steps that run down into the cellar. With a tall ceiling, flagstone floor and the remains of the coal chute entrance in evidence, this is a lovely place to get a feel for the history of the house. This could be easily converted to another habitable space if needed, and otherwise it simply provides some pretty generous storage. To the left, the living room is rather charming, with the fireplace plus the French doors to the garden immediately drawing your eye. Evidence of the age of the house can also be seen with the large ceiling timber running across above you. It's a bright, positive room and in addition the just off-square proportions make it very easy to use. Opposite, the dining room offers more of the same. Just off-square, with a rather fab Art-Deco style fireplace flanked by bookshelves, it's an elegant room that is easy to use. Further French doors to the rear lead into the conservatory , which is currently a double-skinned polycarbonate-roofed room with exposed stone walls, off which is a passageway that, unusually, leads back to a door directly onto Bates Lane. This would, we feel, lend itself well to creating a very upmarket sun room with a lantern roof, from which to enjoy the view over the gorgeous gardens.

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Climbing the stairs to the first floor, the landing is wide, and bright by virtue of a window to the rear. Three bedrooms range off this space. Either side of the landing, the two largest bedrooms mirror the dimensions of the reception rooms below. In place of shelving in the alcoves, there are fitted cupboards providing generous storage. And both look out towards the gardens at the rear. The smallest bedroom (pictured in this brochure) is still by most measures an ample double room. Windows to two sides provide the same great light as is the case with the kitchen beneath it. Serving all three, there is a separate bathroom and WC. The bathroom features both a bath and a separate shower, such is the size, and the WC next door would also be large enough to host a shower if desired. NB it appears there is potential here to combine both washrooms to create one huge bathroom, or perhaps connect the bathroom to bedroom two as an en-suite. Note that the loft above the rear part of the house is a very good size, subject to some investigations it might provide space for more bedrooms.

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Outside, at the very front off Bates Lane the access between two cottages leads into the conservatory. However, it is not currently used. The driveway in off Bates Lane reaches a large parking area, next door to which there was once a double garage hence erecting another building of this type - or a home office/ gym - should not present a problem. Next to it the path leads to the porch at the side and onwards to a stone outbuilding that provides good storage for garden tools etc. Beyond the conservatory, the space opens out dramatically into the most wonderful garden that runs down the back of a number of the cottages on the lane. It is peaceful, wide and mature, mostly lawn with various planted areas that include a broad range of shrubs and flowers, flanked by a number of mature trees. To find such a garden attached to any cottage in a village is rare. The potential for what could be done with this garden is endless. A home office here would be idyllic, although we suspect getting any work done with these visual distractions might be a challenge!!