After Rowland Clegg-Hill, the third Viscount Hill, died bankrupt in 1895, it
passed to George Whiteley, a Liberal MP who became Baron Marchamley and made
a number of additions including an indoor swimming pool.

But it was sold in 1926 on his death. Over the years parts of the original
estate were sold before its final break-up after the First World War.

The wider Hawkstone Park is now a separate property, including pleasure
gardens, a Norman castle, a series of follies and two 18-hole golf courses,
conveniently situated for any buyer of what was once its main house.

However the hall still has extensive, landscaped grounds.

For the past 90 years, the estate, near Shrewsbury has been owned by the
Redemptorists, a Roman Catholic missionary organisation, and mostly used as
a seminary.

It built a Romanesque church in the grounds in 1932 to replace the lost chapel
and in 1962 replaced the north-east service wing with a residential wing
comprising 50 single bedrooms.

In case that is not enough space, there are two additional houses in the
grounds.

Hawkstone Hall’s visitors over the years have included Samuel Johnson, the
writer and lexicographer, who described being captivated by the estate in
his diary in 1774.

“By the extent of its prospects,” he wrote, “the awfulness of its shades, the
horrors of its precipices, the verdure of its hollows, and the loftiness of
its rocks, the ideas which it forces upon the mind are the sublime, the
dreadful and the vast.” In recent years, the hall has been run as a retreat
for priests, but the trustees have decided to sell.

It was originally put on the market for £5 million, but the trustees have
reduced the price to £4.25 million. It works out at around £97 per sq ft,
one eightieth of the price of a property on One Hyde Park, Knightsbridge.
The full sum could buy a three-bedroom terrace house in Queen’s Gate Mews,
South Kensington, or a two-bedroom flat near Piccadilly, central London,
currently on the market with Chesterton’s.

The hall is for sale with estate agent Barbers and Reeves and Partners, which
expects a member of the super-rich is the most likely buyer, turning it back
into a single home.

Mike Artham, the managing director of Barbers, said: “You get a lot for the
price, particularly when you compare it to parts of London where the same
amount of money may only buy you a small flat.”