An enormous Kent country estate has gone on the market for £32 million – in what is set to be one of the “sales of the century”.

Linton Park, the impressive mansion overlooking the Weald, is prominent in the view for all motorists journeying to Maidstone along the A229 from Staplehurst.

For its staggering price-tag, you get the 12-bedroom Grade I-listed Georgian mansion house, with its six reception rooms, plus 440 acres of land.

Country Life magazine describes it as “one of the biggest country house sales of the century so far”.

The house – by far the most expensive on the market in Kent - sits within its own parkland, woodland and farmland, overlooking the River Beult.

The entrance to the estate is on the northern boundary, and has its own listed lodge building.

The house is reached via an avenue of lime trees ending in a turning area around a lavender fringed island.

The house was designed by Robert Mann in around 1730, but was later extended for the fifth Earl Cornwallis, by Thomas and William Cubitt in 1825.

They added a third storey to the original house and built two-storey wings on each side.

The north entrance is at ground level, but as the house is built into the slope, this is effectively first floor level along the southern front.

The garden floor below has large windows opening onto the southern terrace.

The current owners have carried out extensive renovations throughout.

The house comprises an entrance hall, east and west ante rooms, a salon, dining room and morning room, each with floor-to-ceiling sash windows giving spectacular views over the Weald.

There is also a breakfast room.

A canti-levered staircase leads to the first floor where a wide landing runs the length of the house leading to four bedroom suites on the south side and four on the north.

A secondary staircase leads to the second floor which provides a further four bedrooms and a sitting room with views over the Weald and surrounding parkland.

The secondary staircase also leads down to the garden level where rooms have high ceilings and large windows with those on the southern front having French doors out onto the wide terrace.

A wide central passageway gives access to a large summer room, commercial kitchen, garden room, estate office and vaulted room.

Along the northern front. the rooms include a billiard room, cloakrooms, staff room, lift lobby, various store rooms, and a substantial boiler room with oil-fired boilers.

A back door at the end of the garden floor gives access to a hidden parking area accessed by a spur from the main drive, which has three electric car-charging units.

From the basement, stairs lead down to a small cellar with wine bins around the walls and a separate small store room.

Outside, the gardens themslves are Grade II*-listed and extend to 20 acres.

The main house comes with three other residential properties: the Coach House, North Lodge and South Lodge.

There is also a set of farm buildings which are let on commerical leases and a cricket pitch.

Included in the £32m price tag are a further 14 properties, generating a potential rental income in the region of £350,000 per annum, but these could be sold separately, with offers around £17.5m invited.

Also included is a separate plot of land, known as Ranters Land, and comprising 89.4 acres of arable land along with six acres of mixed woodland, which is currently let out.

That also could be bought separately – for £1m.

The mansion has previously been owned by Olaf Hambro of the Hambro banking family, who bought it from Lord Cornwallis in 1937.

It was once described by Sir Horace Walpole as “The citadel of Kent; the whole county is its garden.”

Following Hambro’s death in 1961, Linton Park was acquired by the Daubeny family who 13 years later sold it to the Freemasons, when it briefly operated as girls’ boarding school.

It was acquired by its current owners, the international agricultural company Camellia Group PLC, in 1985, to act as its UK headquarters.

Further details of the property can be viewed here.

It is on sale through Strutt and Parker.