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English Country House With Musical Connections Heads to Auction

Neil Diamond and Leonard Cohen stayed at the house, which is selling with a guide price of £1.4 million

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Luxford House

Austin Gray
Luxford House
Austin Gray

A Grade II-listed house in the English countryside where Neil Diamond and Leonard Cohen sang is hitting the auction block on Dec. 7 with a guide price of £1.4 million (US$1.86 million).

Parts of the six-bedroom Tudor mansion, known as Luxford House, in Crowborough, East Sussex, date back to 1510.

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The property was extended and renovated in the 1930s, when it was purchased by Sir Hugh Beaver, the director general of the Ministry of Works during World War II who later the founded the Guinness Book of Records, according to a news release.

The house, which has "been tastefully restored," according to its listing with Auction House Sussex, has six bedrooms, four bathrooms, four reception rooms, almost two acres of gardens filled with specimen plants and fruit trees and original period features including oak panelling, floors, beams and doors.

The auction house didn’t respond to requests for comment. The affiliated brokerage directed Mansion Global to its news release.

After Beaver's death in 1967, the house was rented to Tony Stratton-Smith, the founder of British record label Charisma Records. It was during Stratton-Smith’s tenure that the house became known for its musical connections. Neil Diamond’s 1971 album "Stones" features a stone wall in the property's gardens on the cover and Genesis spent the summer of 1971 at the house, where they wrote the album "Nursery Cryme," the news release said.

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Its current owners, who have lived in the house for 13 years, have decided to relocate, according to the news release.

In his autobiography, Genesis singer and drummer Phil Collins wrote, "But here in summer 1971, a year on from my joining Genesis, band life rolls inexorably distractingly on and we decamp to Luxford House in Crowborough."

"The house is a beautiful Tudor pile, a picture-postcard mansion with a decent outbuilding that will do for the songwriting sessions," Collins continued."We eat great meals prepared by one of the roadies, we drink red wine by the barrel, we repair to the rolling lawns to play croquet."