Posted on September 22 2007
If you have a spare £925,000 you can pick up Byleat, the quintessential English country house built in the 1920s by the wealthy wine merchant Francis Clark, who used rather immoderate prizes to reward himself and guests for accurate fly casting: “When Clark owned it, he liked to practise precision fly-casting from the first-floor balcony, casting his flies on to circular wooden discs that his butler would place on the lawn and then awarding himself a bottle of fine wine according to his score. As for skilful visitors, they were given a bottle of Hawkers sloe gin if they won.” In the London Telegraph.