The Old Hall, 32 Church Street, Baston, PE6 9PE
Background
The Old Hall at 32 Church Street, PE6 9PE is a grade II listed property dating back to the 1600s. It has been owned by the same family since 2010 when it was last sold for approximately £520,000 (land registry public domain)
Since that time, the owners have made a significant number of alterations and upgrades including:
replacement of all windows with bronze casement windows in 2018 by https://www.bronzecasements.com/ for £50,000
refurbishment of the roof around 2012 by heritage roofing stamford, price unknown, estimated to be £125,000.
construction of a garden room in 2014 price unknown estimated to be £80,000
alteration of ground floor heating systems to underfloor heating and addition of thermostats per room in 2014. Cost unknown, estimated to be £20,000.
Alteration of 2 open fireplaces to wood burning stoves
refurbishment of the kitchen and 3 bathrooms, earlier than 2020, cost unknown estimated to be £80,000 total.
various other minor alterations and adjustments such as wifi and security cameras.
​
Subsequent history
The house has not been lived in since at least 2020. The owners have tried repeatedly to sell it since this time, with the initial starting price of some £1.85 million. This was with pelham-james:
https://media.onthemarket.com/properties/13587329/1459903029/document-0.pdf
Following years of lack of interest, the owners dropped their price in 2024 to £1.65 million via Savills of Stamford,
Still, without significant interest, the price dropped further to £1.5 million, bringing us up to date with the current sellers, fine and country:
Comments on current sale price
The adjusted price for age comes in at £887,000 searching by PE6 9PE and the last sale price of £522,000 in 2010:
https://www.nationwide.co.uk/house-price-index/
Taking this into account with above upgrades and alterations, assuming that they followed listing building consent gives a total estimated value of £1242000 or £1.242million.
Within the area, several other houses of a similar character and size have sold for lower figures than this such as:
the priory at Northborough for £1.15million
The old vicarage at Langtoft for £1.1 million
A large 7 bedroom listed, collyweston slate home of a similar age to the old hall at Tallington for £1.2million.
​
The above value for the old hall also assumes figures on several of the alterations and repairs made. This comes from correspondence the author of this site has had with a local buyer who's account I will summarise below.
​
Excerpts from an interview with a recent prospective buyer of the Old Hall (October 26th 2025) interview by Chris Smith, property researcher
The buyer wishes to remain anonymous and wishes me to state that any views expressed below are personal opinion only but can largely be demonstrated with facts and experiences in his attempt to purchase the Old Hall.
The buyer gives an account of a sale agreed in principle, with the house being removed from the market, only for the sale to inexplicably be shut down by the seller a few weeks later.
His account is as follows:
''my wife and I were excited that our offer of £1.35 million on the Old Hall was accepted by the seller. We knew that this was over and above what we felt the house was worth, but as we loved it so much we agreed together that we would go for it. This was not without some significant soul searching and financial analysis on our part. This plan involved not only obtaining a mortgage on the Hall but also on our current property which we had been unable to sell due to the state of the market, instead opting for a plan B to rent to help cover the interest on the Hall's mortgage. Valuations were done for both properties and mortgage plans made. Solicitors were instructed at a cost to us. Rental agreements were set up for our current property involving spending time arranging for photos of this and a valuation and contract to be set up by the rental agents.
We felt things were progressing and had mentally prepared for the move despite the financial stretch and the price agreed which we both felt was higher than the actual worth of the property.
The seller, mainly being motivated by greed, we felt had sent an excel document with a long list of possible items that could be purchased seperately from them at the time of the sale. A lot of this was extraneous furniture and gardening equipment which we didn't need, but we were a little surprised to see every curtain and blind in the house itemised and priced up along with a static solid wooden play frame for children that had been built in the garden.
Naturally, none of this was of interest to us, being as it was, overpriced and coming in at a figure in excess of £17,000. The standard formula applied by the seller seemed to be one third off the price of the item purchased as new. Given that a lot of the items listed were at least 5 years old with no consideration given for depreciation, really we felt that again this was simply a greed-snatch attempt to extract more funds from us which we declined.
Apart from this, things were progressing as expected with our survey booked and awaited.
One Monday we received an email out of the blue from the estate agents simply stating that the seller was reneging on the agreed sale and in fact didn't want anything else to do with us. He even went as far as to state that under no circumstances would he sell us the Old Hall.
There was no explanation offered for this turn of events.
I can only summise that either he felt that it was his duty to somehow guard the property against a certain brand of buyer he himself deemed to be substandard culturally in some way or that he had decided that the agreed price was in fact too little for him (bearing in mind the house was listed originally at £1.85 million this is the more likely explanation).
I would like to thank Chris for this opportunity to tell our story and hopefully to inform other prospective buyers to forewarn them mainly of the following points:
1)The house is overpriced, the owner is motivated only by greed
2)The owner will not be transparent when pushed on works done, receipts or guarantees or most concerningly, whether any works carried out had listed building consent in place. Buyers should bear in mind that a failure to do this can result in fines up to £20,000 as well as 6 months in prison.
3)The owner stated that they have 'multiple other properties' they don't seem motivated to sell despite the house being listed for sale for 4-5 years. The owners seem content to let this fabulous house remain empty in the long term, blocking it from use by families for future generations.
4)The owners will most likely remove themselves from the sale on a whim. We were lucky in that we only lost some fees in solicitors but other buyers may not be so lucky.
​
To sum up, forewarned is forearmed.
​
Finally, the village of Baston is facing some difficult times ahead. The oversubscribed A15 is about to get very much busier with a planned cemex quarry feeding onto it. The boundary of which comes within 600m of the Old Hall:
https://thetfordquarry.consultationonline.co.uk/
There are also plans for over 250 new homes to be built on the other side of the A15 to the Hall, once again feeding to the A15.
The above will most likely devalue the Hall, especially given the proximity of the quarry, which can in theory lower the water table and cause subsidence with movement of tree roots. The Hall has multiple large mature trees within close proximity.''
​
​
​
​