9 Bed House For Sale Coplowe Lane, Bedford, MK44

A Grade II* listed house on the site of a former fortified manor house with a moat (an ancient scheduled monument), a tennis court, outbuildings and over 24 acres of gardens and paddocks. Bletsoe Castle was created by John de Patishull, who received a licence to crenellate an existing manor house on the east side of Bletsoe in 1327. In 1421 the house descended to Margaret Beauchamp who married John Beaufort, 1st Duke of Somerset.

Their daughter, Margaret Beaufort, mother of the first Tudor King Henry VII, was born in the house in 1443. The house later passed down in the St John of Bletsoe family. In the late 16th or early 17th century, a new building was erected around the castle, quadrangular in design. Much of this later building was pulled down, leaving a much smaller building, but still incorporating parts of the older castle within the older medieval earthworks.

The present house is of late 16th century origins and was used as a farmhouse from 1813. Only the outer walls of the original Elizabethan fabric remain. The old moat, which is an ancient scheduled monument, can still be traced for a considerable distance around the old walls of the castle.