TWO country houses have exactly the same guide price of £875,000 - but the difference is that one is very old and the other is modern.

Bylands Cottage is listed and believed to have started life as a Hampshire hall house as early as the 1600s. But it is known that shortly after 1817, when the Stratfield Saye Estate was given to the Duke of Wellington by a grateful nation, the cottage was included in an estate survey.

At that time the building was made up of three cottages, each with its own well, one of which remains to this day.

Bylands Cottage is in Turgis Green, making it halfway between the commercial centres of Basingstoke and Reading, and its grounds of about an acre are described as having a "long history of care and maintenance" by the agents Lane Fox.

Rose gardens and wild flower borders blossom and the specimen trees include a Kentucky coffee bean tree, a 300-year-old oak together with ash, walnut, sycamore, birch and cherry. There is also a croquet lawn and grass tennis court.

As a single home, Bylands Cottage has a wealth of space for entertaining, with a spacious reception hall leading to two formal reception rooms that have a linking door. The ground floor also provides a smaller sitting room and study together with a kitchen-breakfast room and utility area.

The five bedrooms have views over open countryside and there are two shower rooms - one en suite - and a bathroom.

Victorian outbuildings dating from 1880 were the coachhouse and stabling, but these have now been converted to garaging.

Bylands Cottage was tenanted until 1976 when the last tenants bought the freehold from the Stratfield Saye Estate.

Varnwood was the gardener's cottage to a nearby house, but it was rebuilt in 1983 to create a modern country property at Rye Common near Odiham. Its selling agents are Knight Frank in Basingstoke.

The house is set in two acres, with a swimming pool and pool house with a kitchenette, which could be converted into extra accommodation or an office.

Some of the land is laid to paddock.

A special feature of the house, which has two formal reception rooms, is the everyday living area. A breakfast room adjoins the kitchen, which has an Aga, with doors out to a terrace and a walkway through to a family room.

A study, utility room and master bedroom suite complete the ground floor.

Upstairs features three more bedrooms as well as two bathrooms.

Varnwood, which is described by Knight Frank as "a well-presented family house in a fine rural setting", has the potential to enlarge the accommodation.