TAKE my advice: don’t even think of buying this splendid property unless you are willing to dedicate the next ten years to pursuing country sports, entertaining, giving house parties, dinners, dances, concerts and the occasional rout. To fund this hedonistic lifestyle there are abundant opportunities to hold events in your walled gardens, as well as five cottages for holiday lets.

Like the best limousines, Guyzance Hall, near Alnwick, Northumberland, comes with stacks of extras, such as an Edwardian ballroom that recalls transatlantic liners before the First World War. Nor is this a coincidence, because the Milburn baronets for whom Guyzance was built had made a fortune in shipping and coal.

Buy Guyzance, which has an asking price of £7 million, and your 727 acres will border those of the Duke of Northumberland, whose land extends to Alnwick eight miles to the north. Your three miles of salmon, sea trout and brown trout fishing along the River Coquet are both double and single-banked. The duke’s estate looks after a spectacular 20ft-high weir, a broad half-moon dam built by John Smeaton, the designer of the Eddystone Lighthouse.

I drove into Guyzance through the west lodge, which stands on the edge of a broad stretch of the Coquet. The drive ascends through woods for half a mile to emerge in a grand gravel sweep, with the most stately walnut tree I have seen. The original farmhouse, which dates from 1800, has been extended by the Milburns into a long castellated south front with a battlemented central entrance tower and a gabled half-timbered wing in the Surrey Arts & Crafts style. The entrance is through a porch at the west end added in 1894. This opens into a broad mosaic-floored hall leading to two grand oak staircases. To the right is a handsome dining room, with early 18th-century pine panelling.

The ballroom is entered down a sweep of wooden steps. There are inglenooks at both ends, with pretty Elizabethan plaster ceilings and a minstrel gallery. The appeal of the house is that all the main rooms are set on the long south front. Five of the first-floor bedrooms have bay windows, providing panoramic views across lawns down towards the river, with parkland rising impressively on the far bank. From the large terrace on top of the tower, you look east to a sparkling line of azure sea four miles away.

The castellated farmyard has been transformed into a sheltered paved garden (now ablaze with hydrangeas), where marquees can be set up for parties. In the corner is a large octagonal Edwardian summerhouse – a real suntrap with wraparound windows on the first floor. Beyond, the impressive tennis court is contained within another walled garden.

As befits an aristocratic home, there are two air-raid shelters: one for the family, another for the servants, both with electric light. And when winter gets you down, take the Milburns’ advice and make the half-hour drive to Newcastle airport for a direct flight to Nice. Details: Knight Frank 020-7861 1066

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