A Private View: a magical family home that hums with history

Every house has stories, but some have so many narratives woven through them that they seem to practically hum with their own history. Parsonage Farm, a 17th-century house sequestered in the centre of the quiet Oxfordshire village of East Hagbourne, is one such house. Sitting at a table in the kitchen, listening to the homeowner, Sir John Lucas-Tooth, and one of his daughters, Maria, talk about bringing successive generations together here, you can practically hear the children’s laughter float across the lawn and, beyond it, the splashes and shrieks as they jump into the swimming pool, while the adults lounge on the grass, gin and tonics in hand, sun filtering through the large catalpa tree.

John, 92, has three daughters, seven grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren. It’s hard to conceive of a more imagination-igniting place. “There is a little airfield near here and sometimes, when you’re sitting outside in the summer, a tiny biplane will fly over,” Maria says. “It’s as though there’s been a time warp and you’re in the 1930s.” It’s Professor Kirke’s house from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, made real. “One night, I remember some of the cousins were staying over in some bedrooms at the top of the house,” Maria says. “I went to check on them and they had climbed out of the window, onto the parapet that runs around the base of the roof. So naughty!” And when the children tire of exploring the house’s many levels, they have three acres of land, dotted with yew topiaries, sprawling outbuildings, ancient woodland, a pond teeming with tadpoles, and that deep, freshwater swimming pool to keep them busy. 

Parsonage Farm is no less magical for grown-ups. One of John’s fondest memories is playing croquet on the lawn at midnight with a candle atop each croquet hoop. While his daughters visit him regularly, John now lives here alone after the death of his wife, Caroline, two years ago. He is clear-eyed about the reasons for leaving: he is moving to live with another of his daughters, Alice, in Suffolk, where he plans to renovate an outbuilding. “Look, I’m 92,” he says. “I want to be able to have a comfortable old age with some of my lovely things and my lovely family, and be happy. I have had a lovely life here, and my family have been incredibly happy here, but it’s time …”

Parsonage Farm was originally the home of a sheep farmer, but the main building was extended in the 1700s in the grand, Queen Anne-style, with large sash windows, high ceilings and voluminous proportions. These were rooms meant for entertaining in a building designed to show the rest of the village just how well you were doing. When John and his wife, Caroline, bought the house in 1965, they employed the services of Caroline’s friend, the interior designer William “Billy” McCarty-Cooper, to re-do the interiors. “I didn’t want to,” John recalls, “because he was a glitzy American, and I wanted to keep the pastoral style. Caroline and I had an extremely close and happy marriage, but we had an honest quarrel about it. Caroline said, ‘I think we should have him down to lunch,’ and he came and fell in love with it and said he could really do something special.”

Happily, Parsonage Farm retains a pastoral feel, though one infused with McCarty’s hazy, mid-century allure. “I think Billy did a very good job, very much with my wife’s say,” John says, approvingly. “Some of the furniture he chose I bitterly regret vetoing,” John says. “But mainly it was the cost! He would say: ‘I’ve found these lovely little chairs, but I’m afraid they’re a bit expensive – they really want £10,000 for them. And I would say, ‘Billy, wash your mouth out!’”

While John is clear he does not want this story to be about his own life, he has lived such a full and remarkable one it would be remiss not to mention a few details. After attending Eton, and then Balliol College, Oxford, he founded two companies, which he sold to Oxford Instruments and Bausch & Lomb, respectively. He has written numerous scientific papers on X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy, and lectured on the “admittedly somewhat esoteric” subject all over the world. At the age of 52, he joined Lazard bank, managing and advising private equity and corporate venture portfolios.

A chance encounter with the financial manager of The Rolling Stones prompted his next career move. John went on to manage the band’s finances for the next 20 years. It was a high-flying existence but, talking to John and Maria, you feel it was very much grounded by Parsonage Farm. “When I was working with The Rolling Stones, Caroline and I led a lovely, rackety life all over the world. But when it came to Parsonage Farm, her desire to make it as perfect as possible was very much for her own satisfaction; she had no wish to show it off whatsoever.”

John’s latest chapter is the restoration of a collection of about 1,000 19th-century jigsaws, which he keeps in their original individual fabric bags, hanging in an outbuilding. Previously, John ran a puzzle library, where people would pay an annual fee for access to the puzzles, which he would send out four at a time. There are puzzles on a good number of the surfaces in the house, and when he finds pieces missing or damaged, he meticulously restores them. “I’m absolutely no artist, but I’m quite a good craftsman,” John says, demonstrating how he is fixing some water damage on a small section of a puzzle. The puzzles are “devilishly difficult,” primarily on account of them not coming with pictures: it’s just a bag with a small label with a word or two “description” (say, “The Trichologists”), the size, the level of difficulty, the number of pieces, and whether or not they are interlocking. “I’m getting quite good at it, but it’s a stupid skill to have. Literally useless.”

Sir John hopes to re-open the puzzle library once he is settled in Suffolk. He is at once nostalgic and pragmatic about the move. “There are two John Lucas-Tooths and we give a different answer on a different day,” he says, when asked about his hopes for the future of Parsonage Farm. “The first answer is that I would only think of selling if somebody wanted to keep it exactly the way it is. And the second answer is, I don’t give a damn! They can do whatever they like with it.” He pauses a moment. “It’s a deeply emotional question,” he says. “I do know that I’ve been incredibly happy here, and I think my family has, and we’ve really loved it. And I do hope somebody respects it. Respects its emotion.”