The property has changed hands before, but always behind closed doors. The
current owners, George and Jayne Apter, found Malmesbury House in 2006. They
were living in Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, but wanted to live closer to
the eventing horses that they owned.

“Some of our horses were being ridden by the champion eventer William
Fox-Pitt,” explains George. “He rode our horse Hidalgo when he won a gold
medal in the European championships.

“His stables are near Salisbury, and coming up from Beaconsfield to see him
was quite a journey.

“Malmesbury House was then owned by John Cordle, the Conservative MP. He had
originally acquired the property from Salisbury Cathedral, who had owned it
for hundreds of years. John died in 2006, and Mrs Cordle was not able to
look after it in the way it needed.

“A house like this requires a tremendous amount of care. I do some work for
the Conservative Party. Through those contacts, I found out that Malmesbury
House might be available, and we bought it.”

_{Impressive: the cantilevered staircase}

The property in Beaconsfield was sold to Lord Paul, the Indian
steel billionaire. It continued a tradition of the Apters selling to famous
names.

Their previous home in Little Venice, north-west London, was viewed by Madonna
and George Michael before being snapped up by Lord of the Dance, Michael
Flatley.

Malmesbury House needed a lot of expensive and time-consuming work before it
was even inhabitable. The roof was leaking, the heating needed completely
refitting and many of the rooms had not been lived in for some time.

“We had to shut it for nearly two years,” says George. “Because the house is
Grade I listed, English Heritage were involved right from the start. We
worked with Gerry Steer, a local architect in Salisbury, who had lots of
experience with this kind of building. He was able to restore it to its past
splendour.”

It helped that the Apters knew their way around old furniture. George ran a
film and television prop hire company, supplying James Bond and Harry Potter
films, among others, and has collected antiques for many years. The couple
have a particularly fine collection of satinwood furniture, as well as
paintings. Most of the antiques will travel with the Apters to their new
home. But at present, props from A View to a Kill can be found scattered
liberally around the place.

George’s wife, Jayne, is a keen interior designer, and largely responsible for
the home’s immaculate look. In 2008, they finally moved in with their dogs,
and renovated the house.

_{Grand designs: George and Jayne Apter (ANDREW CROWLEY)}

“You can’t do things overnight,” George says. “It takes time, with a committee
of people to work out what you want with each room. The house is really a
young stately home – it’s everybody’s idea of what a stately home should
look like, but without all the overheads that go with running one. It is
homely, without being a museum.

“One of the great things about the house is that it does not require endless
staff to look after it. We have a gardener who comes in one morning a week,
and a cleaner two mornings a week. It’s not like Blenheim, or Badminton, or
some of these other places that we take the horses.”

Yet while it might not have quite the scope of those famous palaces,
Malmesbury House has plenty of history of its own. Believed to have been
built around 1416, it is situated on the site of Copt Hall, a 13th-century
canonry.

Malmesbury House’s first brush with history came during the Civil War. Sir
George Vaughan, High Sheriff of Wiltshire, stayed here while he raised an
army to support Charles I. That cause was unsuccessful, but a decade or so
later, Charles II remembered the house, when in 1665 he fled London to avoid
the Great Plague. During his stay there, he addressed the people of
Salisbury from an oriel window overlooking St John Street.

The window still bears Charles’s coat of arms. Another famous figure of the
time, the philosopher Thomas Hobbes, was from Malmesbury, and arguably only
survived after the restoration thanks to the protection of the king.

_{The master bathroom}

At the time the house was owned by the Harris family, who took it over in
1660. James Harris II commissioned the stunning new facade of the building.
Some say that it was designed by Christopher Wren, although Pevsner gives no
record of this, and it could equally have been the work of John Fort, Wren’s
master builder.

Harris’s son, James Harris III, was responsible for the original fine decor of
Malmesbury House, which Jayne Apter has more recently restored. He was also
a music-lover, and great friends with the composer George Frideric Handel,
who was a frequent visitor and is said to have given his first concert in
England in the music room. The house acquired its present name from James
Harris IV, who became the first Earl of Malmesbury. (Forty or so miles north
of Salisbury, Malmesbury has its own own interesting history. It is the
oldest borough in England, founded by Alfred the Great around 880AD.
Situated on the border between Mercia and the West Saxon kingdom, it was an
important commercial and religious centre in the Middle Ages. It is listed
in the Domesday Book.)

Malmesbury House is a quintessential Queen Anne design, with a steep pitched
tile roof. A wide front door opens into a hallway decorated by busts of
William Shakespeare, John Milton and Ben Jonson. There is a cantilevered
staircase you can imagine well-dressed women descending for dinner through
the ages.

The main drawing room features intricate plasterwork, a rococo bay window and
a grand marbled fireplace. The ground floor also includes a sumptuous dining
room and a well-appointed kitchen, as well as the music room.

Perhaps the most impressive room on the first floor is the library, where
busts of Plato, Socrates, Homer and other philosophers watch over thousands
of books.

_{George worked on films including Harry Potter and James Bond (WARNER BROS)}

“The hallway and the plasterwork are exceptional, but lots of houses have
excellent hallways and plasterwork,” says Richard Gayner of Savills, who are
joint agents on the sale with Knight Frank. “But the library is my favourite
room. It is truly special. I can’t think of another like it. Gothic is
lovely, and early gothic in particular I think has a great allure.”

There are three bedrooms here, including the rooms King Charles II and Handel
stayed in. The second floor is split into two further levels, with five
further bedrooms taking the total to nine.

Although the house is in the centre of town, it also has a surprisingly large
garden, walled on one side, with mature trees, topiary and a spacious
orangery built in 1629.

A flat spot in the west would be ideal for a swimming pool or tennis court.
But the lack of large grounds, and centre-of-town convenience, are selling
points of the property.

“I have been selling houses outside London for 40 years, and I can’t recall
any of that size with better quality interiors,” Gayner says. “It is a jewel
box. There was a time when people wanted country houses in the middle of
nowhere, but they often come with huge grounds. If you happen to run out of
milk at Malmesbury House, it’s not hard to fix it.”

The other aspect of living in the Cathedral Close – perhaps Salisbury’s
smartest address – is the company. A country mansion can be a lonely place,
and as Gayner suggests, for some buyers, security risks are a concern, too.

Indeed. for all of Malmesbury House’s timeless elegance, George Apter says
that he will miss his neighbours most. “It is a lovely community around
here. We have made plenty of friends and thrown some wonderful parties. We
all get on well, and everyone’s extremely friendly.”

Proof, if it were needed, that even the most beautiful house is only as happy
as the people in it, whether they are commoners, composers or kings.

Malmesbury House, Salisbury, is for sale for £5m through Savills (020 7016
3780; savills.co.uk)
and Knight Frank (020 7861 1080; knightfrank.com).

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