A property with a connection to Royalty and intrigue goes under the CP Bigwood hammer when their next sale takes place on Thursday, September 22.
Astley House, Breach Oak Lane, Corley, is part of a total of 139 lots being brought forward at 11am at Aston Villa Football Club.
A five bedroomed period property believed to date from the 1820s, it has a guide price of £380,000-£420,000.
Set in grounds of just under five acres, it is said to have links to Lady Jane Grey, the Nine Day Queen, who resided at nearby Astley Castle.
Jane was nominal queen of England for nine days in 1553, as part of an unsuccessful bid to prevent the accession of the Catholic Mary Tudor.
She lost her head for her pains.
Astley House incorporates: Ground Floor: porch, entrance hall, access to cellar, lounge, sitting room, kitchen/diner with range and pantry, conservatory, lean-to and WC. First Floor: landing (with boarded loft access), five bedrooms, shower room and
bathroom. Outside: various sheds and outhouses, timber garage and two natural ponds (one of which has a spring).
A triangular piece of woodland off the drive is considered to be “ancient woodland” and as such may be part of the Forest of Arden.
Ron Darlington, CP Bigwood’s joint head of auctions, said: “The property is a fantastic opportunity for someone, but is need of modernisation.
It would make a fabulous family home – there is nothing like somewhere with the whiff of history about it.”
A great-granddaughter of Henry VII by his younger daughter Mary, Jane was a first-cousin-once-removed of Edward VI.
In May 1553 Jane was married to Lord Guildford Dudley, a younger son of Edward’s chief minister, John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland. When the 15-year-old King lay dying in June 1553, he was persuaded to nominate Jane as successor to the Crown in his will, thus subverting the claims of his half-sisters Mary and Elizabeth.
But when the Privy Council decided to change sides and proclaim Mary as Queen it was all over for Jane. Convicted of high treason in November 1553, she was executed the following year.
