Gardener's World: UK Leading Horticulturalist Buys Stunning Old Hall for £2.5m
In August 2023, specialist lender Together announced that Ken Roscoe, an architectural designer and property developer, had bought Stretton Old Hall in Cheshire for £2.5m using a mortgage from the lender. Aged 57 and self-employed, Roscoe had lived in the listed 17th-century house for ten years under a long lease, with his husband.
His garden won the title of Garden of the Year on Channel 4 earlier in 2023, beating 20 other entrants. When he arrived, he said, the site was a vast lawn that took five hours to mow on a ride-on machine. After watching it through a full year, he planned the layout that winter, including screening hedges against the wind, and spent about 18 months developing it. It now has a Mediterranean terrace with olive trees, formal lawns, sculpted spheres, water features, a boating lake, wildflower meadows and a walled kitchen garden reached through a Rajasthani gate, all set against Cheshire countryside views.
The property itself is a five-bedroom farmhouse in eight acres, with a two-bedroom guest cottage, stables, garaging, tennis courts and a swimming pool with pool house. Roscoe said they had considered moving but decided it would be their permanent home.
Roscoe has designed hotels, restaurants and high-end homes internationally and built houses and apartments in Chester and Cheshire, many with Together's commercial finance. He was introduced to Together Premier, its service for high-net-worth clients, which handled the complexity of lending to a self-employed company director. He said his existing relationship with the lender made the process much easier than approaching a mainstream bank.
