Set in stone: House on the island where the Magna Carta was signed hits the market for £4.5 million

Houses connected the River Thames are often affluent successful history, but this six-bedroom location successful Runnymede comes with an wholly unsocial artefact: the chromatic wherever King John whitethorn person sealed the Magna Carta.

The aptly named Magna Carta House contains a specially built “charter room” that holds the chromatic slab wherever the 13th-century King attempted to broker bid with his unruly barons.

The precise determination of the Magna Carta signing has been mislaid to the mists of time, but the land is considered a beardown contender for the detent. Owned by Richard de Montfichet, 1 of the revolting landowners, it was acceptable successful a spot wherever the stream curves, putting it retired of scope of agelong bowmen stationed connected the banks.

England’s nobles had risen up against their King pursuing a bid of unpopular fiscal policies resulting from a protracted warfare with France. A assembly of 25 barons made King John hold to a charter of freedoms that constricted the monarchy’s powerfulness implicit the nobility. This effort to broker bid was unsuccessful and civilian warfare soon broke out, with King John dying of dysentery a twelvemonth later.

Although the Magna Carta was constricted successful that it chiefly enshrined the rights of the landed, alternatively than the state of the communal people, it has been held up arsenic 1 of the archetypal clip successful past that a monarch conceded they were not supra the law, sowing the seeds for Britain’s democracy.

The location itself was built successful 1834 by George Simon Harcourt, the High Sheriff of Buckinghamshire, to commemorate the sealing of the Magna Carta.

Harcourt believed the land was the astir apt determination for the pact signing, and helium commissioned the charter country with its octagonal woody array inset with the chromatic upon which the charter was said to person been sealed. The country is secured with aggregate locks, with acheronian woody floors, stained solid windows and the crests of King John and the 25 barons adorning the walls.

Originally a much humble chromatic house, the spot was elaborately extended successful the aboriginal 20th period with arched windows and reclaimed Jacobean paneling topped by a Welsh slate roof.

A expansive reception hallway opens onto respective reception spaces and a banquet hallway that tin spot up to 20 guests. Featuring a ample unfastened occurrence place, the hall’s paneling is believed to person been reclaimed from Bisham Abbey.

There’s a secondary, smaller eating room, survey and impermanent bath downstairs, with the six treble bedrooms and 2 household bathrooms connected the archetypal floor.

Magna Carta House is acceptable connected astir 4 acres of island, linked to the mainland via a tiny roadworthy bridge, and with its ain backstage mooring. Also included successful the spot is simply a detached five-bedroom cottage that is successful request of afloat restoration.

“Homes connected backstage islands with extended grounds and their ain moorings, are highly sought-after, and Magna Carta House offers astir 5,000sq.ft. of surviving space, six bedrooms, six receptions arsenic good arsenic immense scope to refurbish and expand,” said Soren Ravaux, committee manager of Waterview.

The location is simply a “perfect, secluded residential estate” said Ravaux, suggesting “its adjacent custodian could make a unsocial boutique edifice here, taxable to the indispensable consents.”

Its spot successful history, astatine the bosom of the world-famous Runnymede memorial landscape, a solemnisation of ideology and liberty, is bound to pull planetary interest.”