FORDWICH is billed as Britain’s smallest town, thanks to its council and town hall. A miniature jewel on the banks of the River Stour, it offers visitors a collection of fine houses.

opens the door to one of the best.

May I, with the utmost respect, beg to differ with my colleague, the photographer, on this superb picture of the Manor House?

It’s the master bedroom, flooded with light as if basking in a Mediterranean sun. It just does not do the room, and in particular its atmosphere, justice.

This is a room from a Dutch interior. It is full of light, shade, and contrast from a hard, northern light, that is then, and only then, softened by the warm, wide floorboards, exposed beams and wall timbers, and cosy four poster bed.

Even without the scientific evidence, this is a room from another age, but definitely from the same northern climate in which we still (just) live. It spans the centuries effortlessly.

Manor House is a 16th century timber framed house that has been meticulously restored to a high standard, complemented by its walled gardens.

Research by English Heritage with tree ring analysis dates the felling of the trees from which it is built to 1556, and its construction, therefore, to the mid 16th century.

The main house is made up of two ranges forming a compact L shape with upper floors timber framed and jettied with plaster infilling recently limewashed in traditional style. The first floor oversailing has a moulded bressumer with the initials MD.

The ground floor elevations are of brick.

The house suffered a small fire in 1996 and the current owners acquired the property the following year and commissioned specialist restorers Cox Restorations to thoroughly restore the house using, wherever possible, traditional methods and materials.

At the same time an outbuilding next to the drawing room was converted into a studio and garaging, creating a courtyard space in the lee of the building, complete with its own well.

The accommodation includes a reception hall, with original flagstones, sitting room, dining room, drawing room, kitchen/breakfast room, cloakroom, studio, four bedrooms, the principal bedroom with an en suite bathroom and sauna, family bathroom and double garage.

The garden is skilfully fragmented: a sunken seating area, trellising to lead the eye from one diagonal to another, quiet patches of lawn, and a delight of a kitchen garden with broad brick pathways between narrow, easy-to-tend beds.

Sit anywhere and the garden is set against a backdrop of mellow buildings, held in their wings against wind and noise.

For all its antiquity, it is a warm and intimate house. The small sitting room, with a fire in the grate, will cheer even a single occupant.

The kitchen has Victorian lattice windows looking over the courtyard, and there is a certain tidiness and rectitude to it that could very easily inspire Mrs Bridges-style fantasies of pie and jam-making frenzies. Thankfully all the mod cons are there to do away with the drudgery, and the blue Rayburn is gas-fired.

Just off the kitchen, sensibly, is the dining room with its rumbustious inglenook, oak flooring and French windows to the courtyard. It is a room for hearty parties rather than twee sterility.

The low-beamed dining room opens onto the high, vaulted ceiling of the drawing room, with exposed main beams, rafters and collars, more oak floorboards and panelled door to the courtyard. A wood-burning stove adds warmth and two Velux windows, light.

It leads, in turn, to the studio, a room that offers scope for imaginative use, perhaps in conjunction with the drawing room.

On the first floor the oak floorboards flow from the landing into the bedrooms, all of which are, unusually, double aspect, bringing in far more light than it would be reasonable to expect.

The main bedroom has a vaulted ceiling, exposed beams and wall timbers, with oak mullion and leaded light windows.

The second bedroom sports its own fireplace and the third makes the most of a dramatic chimney breast.

The bathroom has a roll-top bath and tiled shower cabinet.

A narrow staircase leads to the fourth bedroom up in the eaves with a surprising amount of headroom and a door to an open gallery above the third bedroom.

The Manor House, Fordwich, Canterbury, £750,000.