On your marks, get set, buy! Great British Bake Off stately home near Bristol has £350k knocked off the asking price as 2018 series starts

The nine-bedroom Georgian pile is on the market for a reduced price of £4.65 million. Soggy bottom not included. 
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The location for some of the greatest moments in the Great British Bake Off’s history has had £350,000 knocked off its asking price as the hit show returns to Channel 4 for its ninth series on Tuesday, August 28.

The famous Bake Off tent was in the grounds of the Somerset stately home for the third and fourth seasons of the baking competition.

The series later moved to a country estate in Berkshire but Harptree Court near Bristol was the filming location for the 2012 and 2013 series.

The sprawling nine-bedroom estate provided the perfectly landscaped backdrop to the Custardgate scandal – the infamous moment when Deborah accidentally used Howard’s custard instead of her own to make trifle in series 4 of the show.

Ruby Tandoh also made it through to the all-female final in the same series in 2013.

The owners of the Georgian country house were heavily involved in filming, with the production taking over several rooms, and owner Linda Hill cooking three meals a day for cast and crew over 12 weekends of filming.

One of the nine bedrooms was used as a green room for Mary Berry who, as Linda told the Telegraph, would pop downstairs to hug the Aga on cold days.

Other bedrooms were commandeered as production offices, while the billiards room became a mess hall.

Bake Off Bridge: this wooden ha-ha crossing was added by the production crew

A wooden bridge built by the crew to cross a ha-ha — a concealed, sunken ditch designed to stop livestock crossing into another a paddock — still joins the garden and a field.

The house has also been used as a bed and breakfast with four rooms available for guests as well as a luxury treehouse, which is included in the sale.

The website features a glowing review from Prue Leith, who took over judging duties from Mary Berry when the programme made its controversial move to Channel 4 last year.

Linda and her husband Charles, both in their sixties, put the house on the market for £5 million but have since dropped the asking price. They plan to move somewhere less hard work to look after.

It is the first time in nearly 100 years that the house has been put up for sale.

Original features:  rare Georgian touches include neo-Classical columns

Originally built in 1797 by Charles Harcourt Masters of Bath in the neo-Classical style of the time, the house and grounds are full of original features.

Pedimented doorways and window casements, moulded cornices, marble fireplaces and Doric columns are found throughout the property.

The two semi-circular bays looking out over the gardens and the unspoilt Chew Valley beyond are also distinctive Georgian features.

There is a stable cottage next to the stable yard with seven boxes, workshop, kitchen and tack room. There is also a substantial kitchen garden, spring-fed lakes, tennis court, parkland fields and mature woodland in the grounds.

Now that's what we call a showstopper.