A VALE grade II listed country house is up for sale and the buyer can literally live like a lord.

Sheriffs Lench Manor, in Sheriffs Lench, near Evesham, is on the market for £790,000 and its current owner, Richard Spalding, is also relinquishing his title.

But the title does not come with the property and will have to be negotiated with Mr Spalding, who bought the title when he moved into the five-bedroomed house, which also features Victorian outbuildings, 10 years ago.

Its style is described as Queen Anne, but whether or not the building was constructed during her 18th century reign is not certain.

What is certain, is that the house was inherited by Sir Edward Goodere in 1707, who was an MP for Evesham and the first baronet of his line.

Its history became more interesting when the manor became the subject of a fight between feuding brothers Sir John Dinely Goodere and his brother, Samuel, who murdered him in a bid to secure the rights to the property, but was found guilty and executed.

The estate was then passed on to Sir Edward Dinely-Goodere, who presumably unhinged by his father's crime and died in a lunatic asylum in Middlesex in 1761.

In later years, it was owned by the Reverend W K W Chafy, who purchased the manor for £10,000 in 1824, and Mr G F Bomford, a member of a long-standing East Worcestershire farming family, who wrote a booklet of reminiscences Other Days: Other Ways, which was published by his daughter after his death in 1934.

The manor house, which is being sold by Andrew Grant estate agents, is also believed to stand on the site of a medieval village.