If you’re looking for a historic home, a long lease with the National Trust could be just the ticket

By Chris Hayes

The dream of home ownership is tied to longevity — a place to live in, to make your own and grow old in. But what if you could only have your perfect home for 99 years? Long lease agreements with the National Trust offer precisely that, though there’s a crucial caveat: they’re as rare as hens’ teeth.

The National Trust is the largest private landowner in the country, a charity entrusted with preserving the architectural heritage of the UK. Though most will know it from its numerous stately homes open to the public, it also owns 800 houses and cottages under long residential leases, defined as a tenancy of 21 years or more, with most extending to the maximum term of 99 years.

It’s far from common to find one on the property market, let alone one such as St John’s Jerusalem in Sutton-at-Hone, Kent, a Grade II*-listed moated estate in 24 acres of private grounds. Dating to 1199, it includes a 13th-century chapel, a Georgian-style main house and a range of outbuildings.

With eight bedrooms and four reception rooms in the main building, and an additional two bedrooms in a separate lodge, there’s ample space in the 11,144 sq ft property. A series of renovations add to its history: alterations made in the 1760s by the well-known county historian Edward Hasted are believed to have led him to bankruptcy.

St John’s Jerusalem was originally founded as a commandery, a medieval administrative centre for religious and military orders. From about 1070 it was associated with a hospital in Jerusalem for pilgrims visiting the Holy Land — today the garden includes medicinal plants as a nod to the original “Hospitallers” who occupied the site.

The house is approached by a long carriage driveway that meanders through a former deer park, with seating areas beside the moat and the River Darent, alongside additional formal lawns enclosed by yew hedging and stone pathways. To the south of the house is an orchard, established by naturalist Abraham Hill in 1670, and a nuttery.

The house and grounds are available on a 97-year lease, though living in any such property does come with distinct pros and cons. To begin with, if you wanted to assign or extend the lease your proposal would have to be approved by the National Trust, who will want to verify that the potential leaseholder can be trusted to look after the property. There’s also an annual ground rent and don’t forget that many such long lease homes are required to provide some form of public access to the house or garden, or both. And that’s all on top of the £3.25mn price tag.

Opportunities to lease a National Trust property usually only come up when a private leaseholder chooses to sell. However, access to them is now being challenged in other ways, with some councils calling for the Trust to help address the UK’s housing crisis.

In January, Cornwall Council voted in favour of a motion asking the organisation to turn its 100 short-term holiday lets into permanent rental homes, echoing concerns raised in 2016 by the Tenants’ Association of the National Trust that tenanted properties were being used as profitable short-term lets.

Despite the snags, though, St John’s Jerusalem is clearly a rare opportunity to spend a lifetime in an extraordinary historic building — just 16 miles from central London.

Photography: Strutt & Parker