House of secrets in Beaulieu

Above: Stunning grounds

Above: A view over the garden

Above: The feature staircase

Above: Home comforts

Above: The spacious living room

Saltmarsh is a house which guards its secrets well. Built for his own use by yacht designer Captain G. Rockingham Gill in the early 1930s, it was requisitioned by the Special Operations Executive – known as ‘The Secret Army’ – in 1942.
Exactly what went on in this six-bedroom home is still cloaked in mystery, although there have been hints about some of the arts of warfare taught here during the dark days of World War II.

“Apparently a gamekeeper was put in here so that he could teach members of the SOE skills such as how to capture a pheasant silently and how to live off the land,” Janet Leakey tells me. “Apart from that we know very little about what happened here.”
It is thought this house of secrets has been for sale only once before in the last half-century. Janet’s parents, engineer Oliver Brooke and his wife, Betty, bought it in 1973, when they returned from 30 years living in Kenya.
With their younger daughter, Fiona, they settled in this idyllic spot on the Beaulieu River. For the last ten years, until her parents passed away, Janet has been living here, caring for them and bringing up her two daughters, Tanya and Mary.
 
Magical grounds
Situated in the heart of the Beaulieu Estate, a third of the perimeter of the four-acre gardens are on the Beaulieu River and the magical grounds have been well maintained by the same gardener who has worked with the family for 35 years.
“The house is freehold within the Beaulieu Estate, which is just across the bridge at the bottom of the garden,” Janet explains. “There was already a pond here, but my father got a digger and dug out a much larger lake. It’s a wonderful house and garden for children, really like something out of Swallows and Amazons.
“My father never had to buy any wood during the time they lived here – he always had enough from the grounds.”
He also planted many specimen trees among the sweeping lawns and, at this time of the year, the lake is alive with water lilies.
“We have nesting moorhens and mallards, ducks and so much wildlife,” says Janet. One of the joys of the house is that it was obviously designed to make the most of its setting and many of the windows have views of both the garden and the lake.

Light interior
The house itself has a versatile and attractive layout, easily adaptable to the needs of its owners. Downstairs, the stone-flagged entrance hall leads to a drawing room which has a large conservatory leading onto the garden. “You can sit here in pouring rain and still enjoy the view,” says Janet.
From the hall there are doors to a cloakroom, the dining room and the kitchen. An oak staircase climbs to the first floor. From the kitchen, which has a generous walk-in larder, there is a utility room, leading in to the library, and then a door to another sitting room with a bay window and door to the garden. From here there is access to a bedroom and bathroom but also a beautiful cast iron spiral staircase.
This is an alternative route to the first floor, where there are four bedrooms and an attic room. The triple aspect master bedroom has a door to a spacious dressing room which could become an en suite – although there are already two bathrooms on this floor. On the third floor there is another bedroom and another bathroom.
Light floods into the house through the many floor-length sash windows and many of the rooms are twin aspect and have glorious views of the grounds. Outside there is a large garage, workshop, stables as well as a huge barn.
“My father had a forge in the garage and he also made boats here,” says Janet. “My sister kept her horse in the stables.” The front of the house has separate access to the outbuildings, an ‘in-and-out’ driveway and parking for several cars.
“What I shall miss most about this house is the feeling of space,” she says. “We don’t overlook anybody and nobody overlooks us. We have both privacy and light.”