Attention, bargain hunters!
Five years ago, you would have needed £9 million (about $11 million) to buy Luckington Court, the Cotswolds estate that played the Bennet family home of Longbourn in the BBC’s iconic 1995 adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. But the house was quickly withdrawn from the market, amid rumors that the soon-to-be-married Prince Harry and Meghan Markle were considering the purchase.
The royal couple passed on the deal, and apparently everyone else did, too, because Luckington Court is on the market again – and this time the asking price is a mere £6 million ($7.3 million).
The house is still as desirable as ever, at least if your tastes run to eight bedrooms, seven bathrooms, decorative woodwork, fireplaces galore, French windows, nineteen acres of land, and an array of outbuildings, including a stable block, a dovecote, and five cottages, several of which sound large enough to satisfy even the exacting taste of Robert Ferrars.
The history of the property stretches back to King Harold II, the last ruler of England before the Norman Conquest, and encompasses a diverse series of inhabitants, from seventeenth-century Bristol merchants to twentieth-century equestrian trainers.
“This exemplary English country dwelling house, with its elegant well-proportioned rooms, good ceiling heights and tall sash windows, provides not only a wonderful home and place to live but also a profitable Estate, with expanded farming, residential and commercial income streams,” promises the real estate listing.
Still, signs point to continued problems unloading the property: Although the listing came to the attention of journalists (for example, here and here) only last week, the house has been on the market since May.
Blog readers will recall that Luckington isn’t the first Austen-linked home – or, in this case, fictionally Austen-linked home -- to take its time finding a buyer: Scarlets, the eighteenth-century Berkshire mansion once owned by Jane Austen’s maternal uncle James Leigh-Perrot, was marketed in 2017 and then again in 2021, apparently with more success the second time around.
Will Luckington Court have similar luck this year, or will its price have to fall even further, amid continued economic weakness and political turmoil in Britain? Hard to say. This bargain-hunting is a tricky business.