Tim Burton is selling his bucolic Oxfordshire home, complete with 17 acres of land and three private islands. It’s on the market with Savills for £4.5 million.
The Hollywood film director bought his Georgian country home, called Mill House, in 2006 with his then-partner Helena Bonham Carter.
It had previously belonged to Bonham Carter’s great-grandfather, the former Prime Minister Herbert Henry Asquith, who had lived in the house next door and bought Mill House in 1917 as accommodation for guests. Asquith was also buried in Sutton Courtenay’s churchyard.
Mill House was built in 1741 on the site of a water-powered mill called Sutton Mill, which manufactured hard-to-forge paper for bank notes. The house was constructed for the foreman at the time, and is the only remaining part of the site.
Today, the Grade II-listed property still carries its Georgian charm, with decorative plaster cornicing, panelled doors, sash windows, original wooden shutters and carved fireplaces.
Downstairs, the 5,909 square foot house’s kitchen, utility room, drawing room, study, sitting room and library all branch off a central entrance hall, with eight bedrooms on the two floors above.
Known for his gothic-tinged films including Edward Scissorhands, Beetlejuice and Sleepy Hollow, Burton appears to have stuck with clean, traditional décor which enhances the house’s period features – but there are also clues as to its ownership.
The sitting room, for example, is decorated with vintage cinema posters, including the 1966 Japanese sci-fi film, The War of the Gargantuas, which he once said his children were “obsessed with, as I was”.
There’s also a framed picture of the “Four Kings of Horror”: Christopher Lee, Vincent Price, John Carradine and Peter Cushing. To the left, there’s a green devil mask, used as a set piece in one of his films, which Burton had restored.
Outside, Mill House’s gardens and waterways are what Savills describes as a “utopian idyll”. The house is surrounded by formal gardens —including a rose terrace with brick paths, courtyard garden and croquet lawn— and landscaped grounds.
Given the site’s history as a water mill, there are still lots of water features: the mill pond itself, with a pergola-covered walk, the mill streams, and the Thames, to which the property has direct access. There are three small islands on the property, which, says Savills, make for an “enchanted paradise”.
Burton met actor Helena Bonham Carter on the set of his 2001 film Planet of the Apes and they were together for 13 years, famously living in two separate adjoining houses in north London with their two children. The couple announced their separation at the end of 2014, but Burton kept hold of Mill House.
Burton’s striking glass-bricked modern property, Eglon House, was listed for rent (£65,000pcm) and for sale (£20 million) in 2021, and eventually sold for £17.5 million in 2023 to a British media entrepreneur. The 13,000 square foot property consisted of two interlinked buildings facing each other across a courtyard garden, and featured a swimming pool that doubled as a cinema room, with a mechanical floor and waterproof screen.
“Mill House is a quintessential example of an English country house, blending timeless charm with modern comfort,” says Hugh Maconochie, director in Savills’ country house department and private office.
“Of particular note are its wonderful grounds and gardens, which promise the future owner a truly enchanting lifestyle — one that is reminiscent of a Swallows and Amazons adventure.”
