Pickford Pays £5.75m for Kerfield House in Cheshire

Jordan Pickford paid £5.75 million for Kerfield House near Knutsford on 30 April 2025.

The England and Everton goalkeeper bought the Georgian-style manor with his wife, Megan Davison, on Chelford Road in Ollerton. Land Registry records show the detached freehold sold for £5.75 million in April, which is £750,000 under the £6.5 million guide quoted in sales details that January.

Kerfield House Sold for £5.75 Million in April

The house sits behind gates on the Knutsford side of Chelford Road, a short run from the market town that already prices neighbouring piles in the same bracket. Ollerton Grange, on the same road, changed hands for £8,388,920 on 31 July 2024.

Pickford’s new home is not a nameless “royal manor.” It is Kerfield House, built in 1860 as an L-shaped Victorian villa and recut into classical form in 1912. Sales details from January 2025 put the floor area at 12,780 sq ft on 2.83 acres of formal garden, with topiary, a terrace, a greenhouse and a four-car garage.

KERFIELD HOUSE IN FIGURES

• Floor area: Sales details put the house at 12,780 sq ft.
• Grounds: About 2.83 acres of formal garden and drives off Chelford Road.
• Sleeping rooms: Five principal bedrooms plus a one-bed guest flat and a two-bed flat, eight in all.
• Leisure: An indoor pool and sauna, three reception rooms, and a four-car garage.

Those numbers explain the discount as much as they explain the ask. A house this size in the Cheshire belt still has to find a buyer who wants stairs, service rooms and a pool hall rather than a new-build box. At Premier League pay, £5.75 million also looks less like a splurge than a way to park money in bricks, especially £750,000 below the posted guide.

Percy Worthington’s 1912 Georgian Makeover

The “Georgian” tag on Kerfield is a costume, and a good one. Sidney Goldschmidt, who owned the house in the early 20th century, hired Percy Scott Worthington FRIBA to strip a plain Victorian villa and give it a classical front.

Worthington’s office, Worthington Thomas and Son, rebuilt the entrance on the centre line, hid the old roof behind a parapet, and replaced a jumble of small rooms with a hall and staircase. The new face is Ruabon brick with a dragged finish. English oak went on the floors and panelling. The drawing room, with bedrooms over it, was new work.

An existing house was gutted and re-arranged internally, and faced externally with Ruabon bricks having a “dragged” face. The old house, which was altogether lacking in architectural distinction, was built of white brick, with a Welsh-slated roof.

Architects of Greater Manchester, from Recent English Domestic Architecture, 1912

That is the sweep of stair and columned porch later write-ups treat as original Georgian fabric. Worthington gutted and rearranged the old villa so well that casual visitors now read 1860 as 1760. Gerrard and Sons of Swinton were the contractors. Cockayne’s of Sheffield handled plaster, panelling, heat and electric light, and Miller of Earp, Hobbs and Miller in Manchester did the carving.

A later owner, Natalie Shrigley-Fiegal of the Pears soap family, put a large round tub in the main bathroom, one more layer on a house that has been altered every time the money in it changed.

Who Stayed When Ferranti Owned Kerfield?

Sebastian de Ferranti, grandson of the engineer who founded the family firm, bought Kerfield in the 1970s. He was managing director from 1958 and chairman of Ferranti from 1963 until 1982, when he left the Ferranti electrical engineering firm his grandfather had built out of meters, dynamos and power stations.

Bonhams, selling the house’s later contents, says de Ferranti hosted the Queen and Prince Philip at Kerfield, along with Earl Mountbatten and the then Prince Charles. Philip was a close friend. A 1964 polo photograph already places the two men on the same field, years before the Cheshire house became a stop on a royal diary.

GUESTS NAMED BY BONHAMS

• Queen Elizabeth II: Stayed at Kerfield as a guest of de Ferranti.
• Prince Philip: A friend of the host, and a guest in the house.
• King Charles: Then Prince of Wales, listed with the same visits.
• Earl Mountbatten: Named with those royal stays, plus other public figures.

Kerfield was not de Ferranti’s last word in Cheshire bricks. After he left the chair, he commissioned Julian Bicknell to raise Henbury Hall near Macclesfield, a Palladian house on a 500-acre estate, finished in 1987. Charles laid a foundation stone there. The Queen and Philip stayed at Henbury too. The two houses get mixed up in short write-ups because the same host sat behind both visitor books.

The deeper family thread runs through high-voltage power generation in Britain. Sebastian Ziani de Ferranti, born in Liverpool in 1864, designed the Deptford power station and held 176 patents by his death in 1930. His grandson used the wealth from that line to keep a door open for the palace in a Knutsford villa, then built a private Palladian set-piece once the company chair was behind him. He died on 15 October 2015, aged 88.

The Johnsons Spent 38 Years Filling the Rooms

John and Elaine Johnson bought Kerfield in 1987, the same year Henbury Hall was finished, and lived there until the 2025 sale, 38 years. Their daughter, the Knutsford dealer and decorator Holly Johnson, grew up with the hall as a warehouse, showroom and family house at once.

Elaine gave each room its own scheme, with De Gournay papers and trims from Paris houses. Holly, buying in France, Holland and Italy, fed the collection. A Pleyel Lyon et Cie grand was craned out of a chateau near Montauban because it would not fit any door. Bedroom furniture attributed to Zwerner came from Paris and Nice. A painted-glass Japanese lantern came from a client in Holland.

The grand piano by Pleyel Lyon and Cie was craned out from a chateau near Montauban in France as we couldn’t get it through any of the doors.

Holly Johnson, on her parents’ collection, Bonhams

Charlie Thomas, Bonhams’ UK group director for house sales and private collections, said John and Elaine “built an impressive collection based on a shared passion and knowledge of antiques and design.” Christopher Payne, writing in the catalogue, argued they showed “real connoisseurship, combined with a deep interest and knowledge,” rather than filling rooms for comfort alone.

The furniture did not convey with the freehold. Bonhams offered the contents at New Bond Street on 11 September 2025, with viewing from 18 August, in a sale hung beside a Downton Abbey exhibition. Holly’s own clients have included Eddie Redmayne and Richard E. Grant. The house Pickford bought was, for four decades, a working gallery with a pool.

HOW KERFIELD CHANGED HANDS

1. 1860: Built as an L-shaped Victorian villa in white brick with a Welsh slate roof.
2. 1912: Sidney Goldschmidt has Percy Scott Worthington recut the house with a hall, stair and classical porch.
3. 1970s: Sebastian de Ferranti buys Kerfield and hosts senior royals.
4. 1987: John and Elaine Johnson buy the house and spend 38 years filling it with antiques.
5. 30 April 2025: The freehold sells for £5.75 million; particulars had asked £6.5 million in January.
6. 11 September 2025: Bonhams sells the contents in London, including a Fornasetti trumeau and the Pleyel piano.

By the time the lots went under the hammer, the Johnsons, both in their 80s, had already left. Pickford and Davison took a stripped classical shell, not the Pleyel and the Fornasetti.

Pickford’s Old Cheshire House Cost £2.1 Million

The jump in scale is from a gated modern five-bed Pickford bought in 2018, the summer after England’s World Cup run in Russia. He was 24, newly engaged to Davison, his school-years partner and a University of Sunderland graduate. They married in 2020.

That house overlooked a golf course and came with a cinema room, a jacuzzi and an artificial-turf garden. Kerfield replaces clean lines and a hot tub with Worthington’s stair, a pool hall and two apartments that can take guests or staff without opening the main gallery of bedrooms.

TWO CHESHIRE HOUSES, SEVEN YEARS APART

Davison has been in the deals from the start. The 2018 purchase was reported as a move-in with his then fiancée. The Kerfield freehold is in both names. The couple are not new to Cheshire; they are trading a modern box for a house that needs the care a listed-feeling pile always needs, whether or not a statutory listing sits on the file.

Property Records Caught Up in January

The sale closed on 30 April 2025. The public record did not catch wide notice until early January 2026, when the price hit the sold-price files and the first reports named a royal link without naming the house.

That lag is normal. Land Registry updates often trail completion by months, and a quiet freehold in Ollerton does not announce itself. By January the Johnsons’ furniture was already long gone to Bond Street, and Pickford had been in the house through a new Premier League season.

Kerfield will now live a fourth life: Victorian villa, Ferranti guesthouse, antiques family seat, and a goalkeeper’s family home. The royal bedrooms Bonhams still advertises in the house’s past are, if they survive as bedrooms, rooms for a North East couple who started in Sunderland and learned Cheshire in a five-bed with a cinema.

Worthington’s hall was built to impress Goldschmidt’s visitors. De Ferranti used it for the palace. The Johnsons used it to hang Fornasetti and crane in a piano. Pickford’s job is to keep the roof on and the pool plant running, on a road where the next-door sale already cleared eight million.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Kerfield House the same place as Henbury Hall?

No. Kerfield House is the 1860 villa on Chelford Road in Ollerton, near Knutsford, that Sebastian de Ferranti owned in the 1970s. Henbury Hall is the later Palladian house he built near Macclesfield with architect Julian Bicknell, finished in 1987 on a 500-acre estate, on land his father Sir Vincent had bought in 1957 after knocking down an older mansion.

What from Kerfield House went to auction in 2025?

Bonhams sold the Johnsons’ contents at New Bond Street on 11 September 2025. Catalogue highlights included a Piero Fornasetti “Architettura” trumeau from about 1959, estimated at £20,000 to £30,000; a kingwood Pleyel baby grand of about 1912, estimated at £20,000 to £30,000; a Wright and Mansfield Adam-style cabinet of about 1870, estimated at £15,000 to £25,000; and a large Italian marble bust of Pericles, estimated at £10,000 to £15,000.

Who carried out the 1912 work at Kerfield House?

Percy Scott Worthington FRIBA designed the rebuild for Sidney Goldschmidt. Gerrard and Sons of Swinton were the builders. Cockayne’s of Sheffield did decorations, plaster, panelling, floors, heating, hot water and electric lighting, and Miller of Earp, Hobbs and Miller of Manchester did the modelling and carving, as recorded in Recent English Domestic Architecture in 1912.

How is the eight-bedroom count broken down?

January 2025 sales details listed five bedrooms around a first-floor gallery, with his-and-hers bathrooms to the main suite, a library that opens to a one-bedroom guest apartment, and a further two-bedroom apartment on the second floor. Counted together that is eight sleeping rooms, which is how the sold house is described in the price files.

Pickford now holds a house Worthington recut for a Cheshire industrialist, that de Ferranti opened to the palace, and that the Johnsons spent 38 years turning into a private museum. The next visitor book will be a footballer’s.