Sir Christopher Wren's house - yours for £4.25m Wren, England's most celebrated architect, had been dead 62 years by the time that Eleanor left her mark in his dining room. By then, of course, he had left a mark of rather greater significance. St Paul's was just the greatest of more than 50 churches he built in London. His genius also lies behind the Royal Naval College at Greenwich and much of Hampton Court itself. Evolving over time: the house's sweeping staircase Yet spotting such historical mementoes as this triptych of graffiti is not the happy task of a museum curator, or research academic. For Wren's dining room, and the 650sq m house that surrounds it, is not an architectural site of pilgrimage. It is no equivalent of Dickens's home in Bloomsbury, which has been given the red velvet rope, admission prices and "exit through the gift shop" treatment. Rather, this house is in private hands. And now, for the very first time, it is for sale. What a house it is. Its earliest features date to the early 16th century, when it formed part of the complex around Cardinal Wolsey's newly-built Hampton Court that was appropriated by Henry VIII. When, 150 years later, Wren was appointed Royal Surveyor by Charles II, he was given lodgings at each of the royal palaces, from St James to Windsor. At Hampton Court he lived in what became known as the Old Court House, on Hampton Court Green. It is just yards from the palace's famous western gate, through which so many millions of visitors have walked. And Wren's work at Hampton Court was intense, as William and Mary decided to completely update the palace in a contemporary style. Only Mary's premature death in 1694 stopped their project, leaving Hampton Court the architectural cocktail that it remains today - a late 17th century Eastern front yoked to quintessentially Tudor origins. Wren's original insurance document As Wren passed into his extreme dotage (he lived to the almost unbelievable age, for the 17th century, of 90) he should by rights have moved out of the Old Court House. He was dismissed from his role as Royal Surveyor in 1718, when he was 86. By that stage, however, Queen Anne, rewarding what she called "an old servant to the Crown" had granted him a 50-year lease to the property. That lease ran from 1708, passing to Wren's son, also Christopher, and then grandson, Stephen. The lease then reverted back to the Crown, with subsequent lessees including generals, admirals and earls. In 1958, however, the lease was passed from Buckingham Palace to the Crown Estates, which sold a 99-year tenure to Ronald Lee, an antiques dealer. A decade later, the remaining 89 years of the lease were sold to Toby Jessel, who two years later became the Conservative MP for Twickenham, which he remained for the following 27 years. Now 78, Jessel still lives in the house, with his wife Eira, and two stereotypically solid, cheery, labradors. He has been in situ for 45 years, but has decided to move on. "We're trying to be sensible," he says. The house and the garden are too big for us now. We've got it up to scratch. But it will be difficult to keep it up to this standard in our eighties. Link to the past: Toby Jessel may have added his own touches, but he is well aware of the house's historical links with the Wren family (Pic: Heathcliff O'Malley) In the decades that the Jessels have lived at the Old Court House, however, one crucial thing has changed. In 1984 Crown Estates sold the freeholds of many of its properties to lease holders. Jessel came to be the first non-royal owner of the Old Court House's freehold. And it is that freehold that is now on sale for the first time. I arrived on foot, walking across the bridge from Hampton Court station. Of course, as any reader of Hilary Mantel's bestselling books centred on Henry VIII's reign knows, in Tudor times traffic was busiest not on the roads, but on the river itself. Magically, the Old Court House is the only house on Hampton Court Green (other than Hampton Court itself) to have a garden that stretches down to the river. There, at the end of a lawn featuring a mature tulip tree, as well as fig trees, walnuts and crab apples, are steps leading down to the murky grey water. It's not hard to imagine a barge pulling up, and the pale face and inquisitive, rodent-like eyes of Thomas Cromwell looking up from the jetty. Hans Holbein painted Cromwell's portrait around 1533, and some of the brick wall in the garden probably dates from around then too. As do cobbles in the courtyard outside the garage (itself under a timber frame roof which must be almost as old). When Wren came to live in the house, however, it was already feeling its age. Though repairs were made from 1670, by 1706 Wren was complaining of "great decay." So, not long into his own 50-year lease, Wren began an almost complete overhaul of the house, and thus it is that most of the current building dates to the early 18th century. In the 1730s and 40s, Wren's son added the south half of the house, adding three bedrooms above a magnificent first-floor drawing room, which is illuminated by beautiful sash windows looking out towards the river. "It is the standout room in the house," says Patrick Glynn-Jones from Savills, which is handling the sale. Houses of this ilk are few and far between. I can see someone getting emotionally engaged by it, with all its fabulous historical features. The palimpsest of building work from different eras does not end there. Almost every owner, it seems, has added, deleted, or modified something. Which seems extraordinary, but as a Crown Estate property, the house was not listed until 1984. Now it is Grade II*. A spacious bedroom Some of the changes have been happy, some less so. What Wren would think of the Greek-style frieze around the master bedroom it is hard to say. The his and hers baths, which lie side-by-side adorned by green marble and classical columns with painted floral motifs, are barmy in a wonderful way, but no doubt not to everyone's taste. And the pantry, like most of Jessel's additions, seem to have been made in the first decades of his ownership, rather than more recently. All of which means that now, like Hampton Court itself, the Old Court House is a distinctly quirky combination of styles. But in that lies its charm. Unlike most houses, this one should not leave prospective buyers primarily considering what to change. Though you would want - permissions allowing - to rip out those electric fireplaces, and get back to the original hearths. And Jessel himself is engagingly happy to admit that the decision to install a concrete balustrade on the balcony outside the drawing room was that of a much younger man. Instead, it is a house that you want to explore for what is there. For there is the stone stairway, worn by centuries of passage, and scored for better grip, where generations of visitors from the river entered the house. There is the pretty fountain that Wren installed himself. There is the cellar, where the kitchens stood long ago, and the vestiges of the narrow staircases which run behind the principal rooms, where servants once scurried up and down carrying dishes and drink. There is, too, the fine detail on the brass lock that Wren installed on his dining room and, of course, on the window pane, that graffiti, transmuted by the alchemy of time from vandalism to curiosity. It, as much as anything, is a token of the uniqueness of this building. But then, most visitors these days arrive not by river, but by the street. And there, by the front gate, is the blue plaque, serving as reminder, if any were needed, that "Sir Christopher Wren, 1632-1723, Architect, lived here." Wren's six-bedroom/three-bathroom house in Richmond is on sale through Savills for £4.25m (020 8614 9111)