Catherine Howard's secret love nest: £550,000 home with hidden staircase where Henry VIII wife enjoyed trysts

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It's an episode in history that dramatists have frequently returned to – a story of alleged adultery packed with intrigue. 

Did Catherine Howard, the fifth wife of Henry VIII, really betray the King by conducting an affair with her first cousin, a Royal courtier called Sir Thomas Culpeper? The King had no doubt, sentencing both to death for treason. 

And by declaring on the scaffold before her beheading 'I die a queen, but I would rather have died the wife of Culpeper,' Catherine seemed to confirm the view that, if she didn't actually commit adultery, her affections certainly lay with Sir Thomas and not Henry.

Ever since the mid-16th Century the extent to which Catherine and Sir Thomas acted on their mutual affection has been subject of much debate, but what is certain is that the pair spent plenty of time together. 

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Near Aylesford in Kent, Preston Hall was once the seat of the Culpeper family, and the flat is on the market for £550,000

Now, astonishingly, the setting where many of their meetings took place is up for sale as part of a two-bedroom flat in Preston Hall, a stately home that dates back to 1102. Near Aylesford in Kent, Preston Hall was once the seat of the Culpeper family, and the flat is on the market for £550,000.

Catherine stayed at Preston Hall on numerous occasions and, to avoid the suspicions of others in the house, she and Sir Thomas met secretly in a hidden staircase. 

This stone passageway, unlike almost all of the rest of the property, looks exactly the same now as it would have when the two met there. For besides its grand exterior, Preston Hall is almost unrecognisable from how it would have looked in the early 1540s, when Catherine visited.

In its colourful history since, it has been home to a Victorian railways baron and also a wartime hospital. In 2014 it was bought by developer Weston Homes, which has refurbished the building and divided it into flats. Though Weston specialise in restoring historic homes, making strenuous efforts to retain their historical features, there was little remaining at Preston Hall of its Tudor heritage – save the staircase, which links a two-bedroom flat on the ground floor with a further two bedroom apartment upstairs.

Dave Walker, sales director of Weston, says it's up to the buyers how they use the staircase, which is accessed through a door in the en suite bathroom of one of the bedrooms. 'It's an ideal place to store wine,' he suggests, 'though I suspect most people would rather keep it as it is and regale guests with how this space played its role in history.'

Preston Hall, and Tamzin Merchant as Catherine and Torrance Coombs as Culpeper in the BBC's The Tudors

Indeed, other than the staircase, inside the flat itself only the exceptionally high ceilings and the view over the landscaped gardens remind you that you are inside a stately home. There is brand new oak and walnut strip flooring in the hall, living area, dining room and kitchen, and a choice of carpets with underlay in the bedrooms. Both the large galley kitchen, which is fitted with top-of-the-range appliances, and the bathroom, with its low-level strip LED lighting, are ultra-modern.

The flat has a slightly unconventional layout, the two bedrooms being long and narrow – the result, Walker explains, of how the house was divided up. There are 12 flats in total in the house, with all enjoying the building's grand atrium hallway and, of course, its majestic driveway off the main road, both legacies of its days as a stately home.

Walker explains why Preston Hall was left with so little of its Tudor and earlier heritage when Weston Homes began its renovation of the building. 'The house was owned by railway entrepreneur Edward Ladd Betts in the mid-19th Century and he rebuilt it into a Jacobean-style mansion, but at the beginning of the First World War it was gifted to the Red Cross to be used as a wartime hospital and it was later requisitioned by the Government by the National Health Service.'

Walker adds: 'The NHS, like the Ministry of Defence, don't need planning permission, so a lot of the original features were lost. Weston Homes, which has a strong history on restoring houses such as this, has been very sensitive and preserved what we could, including the fountain in the gardens, and we had English Heritage monitoring closely every stage of the restoration.'

Unique: The modern kitchen contrasts with the flat's ornate, historic ceiling 

Preston Hall's more recent history as a hospital means it has had another famous resident since Sir Thomas Culpeper and Catherine Howard. Animal Farm author George Orwell was treated for tuberculosis there in the late 1930s.

Walker says that, due to the house's rich history, many people have come to view the flats out of pure curiosity. 'We have had a lot of local people coming round who know all about Preston Hall. They didn't really have any intention of buying – they just wanted to take a look.

'Then the people who do want to buy start noting more and more historical features the more they look – the other flats have more relics than this one from the days of Edward Betts. But the staircase takes some beating in terms of owning a museum piece in your own property.'

weston-homes.com, 01279 873300