It was entirely fitting that Britain’s greatest wild swimming enthusiast woke up each morning surrounded by a moat.
Now the late Roger Deakin’s idyllic Suffolk retreat is on sale for £1.5 million and many fans are expected to be among the bidders hoping to buy a slice of history.
Deakin, who championed the joys of outdoors swimming, bought Walnut Tree Farm – a Grade II-listed Elizabethan farmhouse set in 12 acres of meadows five miles from Diss – for £2,000 in 1970.
It was ‘covered in mouldering thatch’, but the dedicated environmentalist completely restored it.
It includes four bedrooms, four bathrooms, a shepherd’s hut, a wood cabin and even an old railway carriage in the grounds.
Roger Deakin bought Walnut Tree Farm – a Grade II-listed Elizabethan house in 1970
Perhaps the biggest draw for admirers of Deakin, though, is the fresh water spring moat in which he regularly swam, and which is also home to communities of newts and dragonflies, as well as a resident moorhen.
Deakin died in 2006, aged 63, four months after being diagnosed with a brain tumour.
His book Waterlog, which charted his experiences swimming in the open air across the British Isles, topped the bestseller lists when it was published almost a quarter of a century ago.
He said: ‘The swimmer is a leaf on the stream, free at last from his petty little purposes in life.’
He was also a documentary-maker whose subjects included horse racing, rock music, allotments and country singer Hank Wangford.
The idyllic farmhouse is set in 12 acres of meadows five miles from Diss
It includes four bedrooms, four bathrooms, a shepherd’s hut, a wood cabin and even an old railway carriage in the grounds
