British Heritage
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Sissinghurst was a run-down Elizabethan mansion with farm workers’ housing, vegetables and hop gardens when Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson bought it in early 1930, and by the late 1930s its garden was open to the public for a shilling
Bateman’s has 1634 carved above its main entrance, and Rudyard Kipling, who had recently declined both a knighthood and the post of Poet Laureate, bought the house and 33 acres in 1902, two years after first seeing it. 
History When Beatrix Potter died in 1943, she left 4,000 acres and 14 farms in the Lake District to the National Trust on one condition: they had to keep grazing Herdwick sheep. More than 80 years later, the Trust still honors it.
Royals
In 1985, Princess Diana danced with John Travolta at the White House in a gown by the London designer Victor Edelstein. 34 years later, Historic Royal Palaces bought the dress for £264,000
In 1980, the Duchy of Cornwall bought Highgrove, a Georgian house near Tetbury, as a country home for Prince Charles. Since he became king the Duchy has passed to his son, and Charles now pays rent to live in the house he spent more than 40 years gardening The latest
HistoryCaspian Barn at Farmoor, the five-bedroom 17th-century barn conversion outside Oxford where Florence Pugh grew up, carries a guide price of £1,650,000 with Knight Frank, and reports say her parents bought it for £950,000 in 2011Caspian Barn at Farmoor, four miles from Oxford, is listed with Knight Frank at a £1,650,000 guide price; reports name Florence Pugh's parents as owners.
HistoryA copper-alloy signet ring engraved with a reversed letter R, late 15th or 16th century and thought to have been worn by a merchant, has come out of the river silt just downstream of Powick Old Bridge, with a fired lead musket shotWorcestershire County Council says archaeological works at Powick Old Bridge have recovered a merchant's signet ring, a fired musket shot and an 1899 ha'penny.
HistoryIn 1971, Roger Saul and his mother, Joan, founded Mulberry. 55 years later, the luxury brand still makes about half its bags in Somerset
HistoryIn 1970, Sir Roger Daltrey bought Holmshurst Manor, a Sussex manor house. More than half a century later, The Who frontman still owns it
HistoryIn 1862, Sandringham was bought for the 20-year-old Prince of Wales for £220,000. He set every clock on the estate half an hour fast for winter shooting, and “Sandringham time” lasted until the night George V died there in 1936Sandringham was bought for the Prince of Wales in 1862. He set its clocks half an hour fast for the shooting, decades before Britain had summer time, and by dawn after George V died there in 1936 they were back on Greenwich Mean Time.
HistoryIn the 1980s, a woman paid £10 for a ring at a car boot sale in west London and wore it for 30 years thinking it was costume jewelry. In 2017 it turned out to be a 26-carat diamond and sold at Sotheby’s for £656,750