Preston Road, Charnock Richard, PR7

Introduction

There are homes that are well built, and there are homes that are genuinely conceived. The Beeches is the latter.

The approach alone sets a standard. Beyond the gates a sweeping carriage driveway leads to a façade of real distinction - Arts and Crafts in its inspiration, its roofline laid in hand-selected Vermont Green slate, shipped from New England and chosen with the same conviction that runs through every decision made in the creation of this house. The fenestration and sense of proportion feel considered rather than constructed and the mature plot wraps the property in a privacy that feels absolute.

Step inside and the interior rewards immediately. Muted, considered tones punctuated by carefully placed splashes of colour create a palette that feels both calm and alive. A bespoke English oak and double glass staircase rises from the entrance hall beneath ornate contemporary chandelier pendants, the whole space announcing clearly that what follows has been finished without compromise.

Over 5,000 square feet arranged across three floors - a formal sitting room with space for a grand piano, an open fireplace, and to the rear a breathtaking open plan family, dining and kitchen space where a soaring gallery ceiling floods the space with light and volume. The kitchen is a statement of contemporary confidence, handcrafted and fitted with appliances of the highest specification. A cinema room with constellation ceiling lighting, a gymnasium, utility room, and handy downstairs WCs.

To the first floor, three bedrooms and a study, the principal suite commanding its own dressing room, a statement bath en suite with unique tiling and mood lighting, and a private balcony over the gardens. The second suite mirrors this level of luxury. Above, a self-contained guest suite occupies the entire top floor - a living space flowing to a bedroom and en suite, offering a degree of privacy and independence that makes it as versatile as it is special.

Outside, the property breathes. One and a half acres of mature gardens, sweeping lawns and a paddock unfold in complete seclusion, the boundaries of the plot softened by established planting that provides both beauty and privacy in equal measure. A substantial terraced patio extends the living space of the house seamlessly into the landscape, whilst a covered outdoor kitchen and dedicated entertaining area ensure the gardens are as functional as they are beautiful - a space designed to be lived in, not simply admired. A detached garage of generous proportions houses a private home office to the rear, looking out over the grounds - a thoughtful addition that speaks to the way this home has been conceived as much for modern working life as for family living. The whole is set within greenbelt land, ensuring that the peace, space and rural character that make The Beeches so rare are not just present today, but protected permanently.

Homes of this quality, at this scale, in a setting of this privacy, come to the market rarely. Built with a specific vision and executed without compromise, The Beeches stands as one of the finest private residences in this part of Lancashire - entirely in a class of its own.

The Approach & Entrance Hall

Where the house makes its first promise

The Beeches announces itself before a single door is opened. Wrought iron gates, lettered in gold and hung between rendered piers with stone copings and globe lanterns, part onto a cobbled threshold and a carriage driveway that sweeps around a central circle of setts. The house stands square to the approach, its render bright against Vermont slate, twin lawns split by a flagged stone pathway leading the eye directly to the front door. To either side, the driveway curls away behind established trees, and beyond the rooflines the land opens toward the distant moors.

The detail rewards a slower look. A leaded stained glass window sits beneath a sandstone arch bearing the date stone of 2015, a quiet declaration that this is a house built recently but conceived in a far older tradition. Solid oak double doors, ironmongery in black, sit recessed beneath their own slated canopy.

Inside, the entrance hall delivers the moment the exterior promises. A bespoke English oak staircase rises through the heart of the house, its glass balustrade set against a hand-finished botanical wallpaper that climbs the full height of the stairwell, colour and pattern used with real confidence. Above, the galleried void carries not one but two sculptural glass chandeliers, suspended at different heights so that light tumbles down through the space rather than simply hanging in it.

This is a hall to be lived in, not passed through. It is where coats are shrugged off and the day is set down, where guests pause mid-sentence and look up, where the light changes hour by hour as the sun moves around the house. Descending the stairs on a dark December evening, the chandeliers lit and the front door standing open to arriving friends, you understand exactly what the architect intended: not an entrance, but a welcome.

Some houses have hallways. This one has an overture.

The Lounge

A room that understands the difference between quiet and silent

The formal lounge runs to over twenty five feet, a room of genuine scale that manages, remarkably, to feel intimate. At its far end a deep curved bay, glazed in leaded casements, bows out over the front lawns and draws the afternoon light across the full width of the room - a setting made for a grand piano. At the room's heart, a wood-burning stove sits beneath a substantial dark timber mantel, raised on a slate hearth, with integrated ceiling speakers and softly recessed lighting completing a space engineered for evenings.

This is the room for the last hour of the day. The stove lit and ticking, lamplight rather than overhead light, the sky going dark over the front garden. It is a room that asks nothing of you - big enough for a full house at Christmas, calm enough for one person and a book on a Tuesday night.

Every home needs one room that slows the clock. This is it.

The Kitchen, Dining & Family Space

The engine room of a life lived well

At the rear of the house, everything opens up. This is the space the introduction promised: a single sweeping run of kitchen, dining and family living, engineered for light, volume and movement, with walls of bi-folding glass on two elevations that retract fully to dissolve the boundary between inside and out. When they are open, the kitchen, the terrace and the covered outdoor kitchen beyond become one continuous room, the garden simply another part of the floor plan.

The kitchen itself is handcrafted and handleless, dark timber-grained cabinetry rising full height against stone-toned work surfaces, with a substantial central island beneath a floating ceiling raft edged in warm concealed light. A bank of Neff ovens and warming drawers sits within its own illuminated surround, the induction hob set into the island beneath a flush ceiling extractor, and every working surface is lit precisely where it needs to be. It is a kitchen of contemporary confidence, but a practical one - built for the school-morning rush as capably as the twelve-cover dinner.

Beyond the dining area, the family room delivers the volume the house has been building toward. Here the ceiling soars to a full gallery height, rooflights washing the space with sky, twin sculptural glass chandeliers echoing those in the entrance hall, and an internal galleried window looking down from the floor above - so the house talks to itself, level to level. One wall carries a hand-painted mural finish in soft golds, teals and ochres, a genuinely singular piece of decoration that gives the room its character without saying a word.

On a warm Saturday in July this whole space earns its keep. The glass folded back, food on the go at the island, the sound of the garden drifting in, people moving freely between kitchen, terrace and lawn without a single door in their way. Half the year lived with the walls open. The other half, watching the weather from the warm side of the glass.

Most houses have a kitchen. This one has a centre of gravity.

The Cinema Room, Gymnasium & Practical Spaces

Rooms for the loud nights and the early mornings

Off the hallway, the cinema room is a proper one - not a lounge with a projector, but a dedicated, acoustically clad screening room. Textured sound-absorbing walls in deep bronze, a full-width cinema screen above low cabinetry, ceiling-mounted projection, and recessed perimeter lighting around a raised central panel set with fibre optic constellation lighting - so that when the main lights fall, the ceiling becomes a night sky. Deep carpet underfoot and wall washers on the flanks complete a room built for total immersion: film nights, box sets, match days with the sound turned up and the rest of the house none the wiser.

Across the hall, the gymnasium runs to nearly twenty feet, wrapped on two sides in glazed French doors and leaded casements that flood the room with morning light and open directly to the outside. A full mirrored wall, timber flooring, integrated ceiling speakers and wall-mounted screen make this a genuinely equipped home gym rather than a spare room with ambitions - a place for the six-thirty session with the doors open to cold air and birdsong, done and showered before the rest of the house stirs.

The practical spaces are handled with the same care. A guest cloakroom is finished in stone-toned surfaces with a wall-hung suite and a leaded stained glass window in green Art Nouveau leafwork - the same glasswork that greets visitors beside the front door, a small thread of craftsmanship running through the house. A fully fitted and plumbed utility room sits off the kitchen, and a separate boot room serves the rear entrance - the unglamorous, essential machinery of family life, kept exactly where it should be: out of sight.

The best houses take the practical as seriously as the beautiful.

The Landing

The pause between the public house and the private one

The staircase rises past a full-height wall of botanical grasscloth, wall lights washing the pattern as it climbs, and arrives at a galleried landing of genuine size - less a corridor than a room in its own right. The oak and glass balustrade wraps the stairwell on two sides, the chandeliers hanging in the void below and beside, so that moving between floors means moving through light. From here the staircase continues upward to the guest floor, and doors lead off to the bedrooms.

Even the journeys between rooms have been considered.

The Principal Suite

The last thing you see at night is your own garden

The principal suite runs to over twenty three feet and holds the entire rear elevation of the first floor. Bi-folding glazed doors span the room's full width and open onto a private balcony behind a frameless glass balustrade - breakfast in the morning sun, the whole garden below, the treeline beyond and not another building in sight. Inside, a wall of upholstered panelling runs behind the bed and along the dressing side of the room, warm concealed lighting traces the ceiling perimeter, and integrated speakers and wood-grain porcelain flooring complete a room finished to hotel standard but designed for real life. A dressing room sits en route to the bathroom, keeping the suite itself entirely calm.

The en suite is the room the introduction promised. A statement bath sits within a stone-topped surround faced in stacked natural slate, backlit so the stonework glows, set between two windows beneath a floor-mounted filler in the slate wall. Twin countertop basins rest on a floating vanity with illuminated surfaces, mood lighting washes the floor and walls at every level, and pendant lights drop beside the bath. Deep water, warm stone, low light - the last hour of a long day, spent well.

Some rooms you sleep in. This one you retreat to.

The Second Suite

A suite with its own address

The second suite doesn't open off the main landing at all. It is reached by its own galleried landing - a light-filled mezzanine above the family room, where opening rooflights pour sky down through the void and a glazed oak balustrade looks over the double-height space below to the gardens beyond. It is a genuine in-between room, made for a chess board and two chairs, and it gives the suite beyond a sense of arrival and separation no corridor could.

The bedroom itself sits under the sloping eaves at the front of the house, a calm, generous room with fitted furniture running beneath a leaded window, its own glazed door onto the landing void, and a wall-mounted screen tucked into the gable. Then the bathroom delivers the suite's signature moment: a freestanding oval bath set against a full wall of stacked black slate, wall-mounted filler emerging from the stone, a walk-in rainfall shower behind frameless glass with a mosaic slate floor, illuminated display niches, and a floating vanity beneath a backlit mirror. Cream stone against near-black slate - the same confidence as the principal en suite, resolved in reverse.

Guests will ask to stay. Family will ask to swap.

The Bedrooms, Study & Guest Floor

Room for every version of family life

The remaining first floor rooms carry the same care as the suites. A further double bedroom sits at the front of the house beneath a part-vaulted ceiling, its curved bay of leaded casements fitted with a deep upholstered window seat over built-in storage - a made-to-order reading spot with the front garden and trees beyond. A crisp shower room serves this side of the landing, fully tiled with a walk-in shower, floating vanity and mosaic-framed mirror. The study completes the floor, fitted on three sides with dark timber desking and cabinetry beneath its own corner bay - a genuine working room, positioned away from the bedrooms so a late night at the desk disturbs no one.

Then the staircase rises once more, and the top floor reveals the guest suite the house has kept in reserve. This is a floor, not a room: a first bedroom area with fitted wardrobes flowing through to a second sleeping space beyond, rooflights overhead, the eaves giving everything a soft, tucked-away geometry, and a fully tiled en suite shower room with walk-in shower and floating vanity finishing the arrangement. Visiting parents for a week, a boomerang graduate, an au pair, teenagers claiming their own kingdom - it will hold whatever shape family life takes, at a remove that suits everyone.

A house that never asks anyone to compromise.

The Gardens & Grounds

An acre and a half, and not a single overlooked corner

The plot is the quiet triumph of The Beeches. Approaching one and a half acres in all, it is wrapped on every side by mature hedging and established trees, so that from the lawns the outside world simply isn't there. To the front, the carriage driveway provides parking for a small fleet - a dozen cars without crowding - behind gates and walls, with twin lawns and specimen trees softening the approach. To the side of the house, a paddock extends the grounds further still, a genuine rarity this close to the village and the motorway network, and a parcel of land that will set imaginations running: ponies, an orchard, a wildflower meadow, or simply space held in reserve.

Behind the house, the gardens are laid out for living. A substantial porcelain terrace runs the full width of the rear elevation, directly off the bi-folding doors, with a sunken hot tub, planted borders and slate-dressed beds stepping down to a sweeping lawn cut in stripes and framed by deep laurel hedges. At its head stands the covered outdoor kitchen and entertaining pavilion - oak-framed under its own slate roof, with a wood-fired pizza oven on a brick base, stone worktops, a sink, integrated lighting, heating and a wall-mounted screen. This is not a barbecue corner; it is a second kitchen that happens to stand in the garden.

August bank holiday is what this garden was built for. The pizza oven up to temperature by early afternoon, the terrace full, children on the lawn, the bi-folds open so the kitchen and garden run into each other, and the evening going on as long as it likes - because everything anyone needs is already out here.

Most gardens are something to look at. This one is somewhere to be.

The Garage & Home Office

Four cars, a workshop, and a working life apart

The detached garage block is a serious building in its own right - over 1,500 sq ft in total, slate-roofed to match the house, with a garage of exceptional scale: over forty five feet long, enough for four cars, the collection, the workshop, or all three, with a separate boiler room and WC keeping the practical services out of the main house entirely.

And then, at its rear, the surprise: a dedicated home office looking out over the grounds through a full wall of bi-folding doors that open onto the terrace. Slate-tiled floors, fitted lighting, integrated speakers and space for a proper desk arrangement rather than a token one - a genuine place of work, separate enough from the house that the day has a beginning and an end, close enough that the commute is a coffee carried across the garden. For anyone running a business from home, or simply guarding the boundary between work and family, it may quietly prove the most valuable room on the plot.

Work from home, without working in your home.

The Location

A village setting with the world within reach

Charnock Richard is one of those Lancashire villages that people find and then quietly stay in. A proper village community with its own church, primary school and pubs, surrounded by greenbelt farmland, yet placed with almost unreasonable convenience: the M6 and M61 are minutes away in either direction, putting Manchester, Liverpool and the Lake District all within easy reach, while mainline stations at Chorley and Preston connect to London in under two and a half hours. Beyond the hedges to the rear, the fairways of the neighbouring golf course roll away toward the West Pennine Moors, whose hills shape the horizon from the upper floors of the house.

Everyday life is well served. Chorley's markets, restaurants and supermarkets are a short drive, Standish and Eccleston offer more, and the school run is spoilt for choice, with the village primary a walk away and a strong selection of independent and grammar options within striking distance. It is the rare combination buyers at this level ask for and seldom find: genuine rural privacy, without a single compromise on connection.

Countryside at the gate. Everything else within the half hour.

An Owner's Note

There was a house on this plot when we found it, but it wasn't the house the plot deserved. So in 2015 we took it down and started again, and we built the home we had always imagined - every material chosen ourselves, from the Vermont slate on the roof down. Nothing here is a developer's decision. All of it was ours.

What we could never have designed is how it would feel to live in. Summers with every door folded open and the garden full. The pizza oven lit and the evening running on. Winter nights in the cinema room, all of us under one blanket. Working in the garden office with the doors open and the lawn in front of me, wondering why anyone drives to work at all.

We built it to be the last house we'd ever need, and in every way that matters, it was. It is simply time for its next family. Whoever you are, you are inheriting the best decision we ever made.

EPC Rating: B

Disclaimer

Every care has been taken with the preparation of these property details but they are for general guidance only and complete accuracy cannot be guaranteed. If there is any point, which is of particular importance professional verification should be sought. These property details do not constitute a contract or part of a contract. We are not qualified to verify tenure of property. Prospective purchasers should seek to obtain verification of tenure from their solicitor. The mention of any appliances, fixtures or fittings does not imply they are in working order. Photographs are reproduced for general information and it cannot be inferred that any item shown is included in the sale. All dimensions are approximate.