English castle life with a touch of Canadian heritage has become accessible to middle-class gentry for a price of just $450,000 (U.S.).
One of nine self-contained apartments in Avon Castle, near Ringwood, Hampshire, in England, is for sale.
The castle was constructed in 1872 along a one-kilometre stretch of the River Avon. In 1913, the castle and estate were sold to Charles John Perceval, the 9th Earl of Egmont, who had enough clout to have a private railway station built on the grounds so he could travel up to London.
Canada has a special interest in the property, says Barbara Tumilty, owner of the listed unit with her husband Paul.
When the childless Earl died in 1929, an international search began for an heir to the title. Frederick Joseph Trevelyan Perceval, a man of modest means in Priddis, Alberta, was eventually discovered and named as the legitimate 10th Earl of Egmont. With his young son, he moved in, living frugally in just two rooms of the castle, after selling most of the furniture and art collection to pay expenses.
Frederick died in a car accident a few years later. His 17 year-old son, Frederick George Moore Perceval, assumed the title of 11th Earl of Egmont, but could not afford the upkeep of his inheritance. He moved back to Canada and married his cousin, Ms. Tumilty says.
Years later, the Daily Express tabloid reported that "Britain's loneliest peer has found contentment as a farmer on the Canadian Prairies." On his 900-acre farm called "Little Avon," the locals knew Frederick only as "the best grain seed raiser in Alberta."
In 1938, the castle fell into the hands of a developer, who subdivided it first into offices and then into multiple residences.
The three-bedroom unit for sale today does not have a river view, but the leaseholders share communal castle grounds, which include extensive river frontage as well as salmon and trout fishing rights.
The apartment has a centre hall that runs the length of the unit. The drawing room is 284 square feet in area and has an open fireplace and two sash windows overlooking a courtyard. The kitchen features lime oak cabinetry and a central island. A small outbuilding that houses the oil tanks and central heating boiler provides some storage space.
The castle, on the west bank of the River Avon, is about three kilometres from the ancient market town of Ringwood in the New Forest, which William the Conqueror set aside more than nine centuries ago as his own deer hunting ground.