Mulberry founder Roger Saul is selling his Somerset Abbots Sharpham estate

Mulberry founder Roger Saul is selling his eight-bedroom mansion for £8 million.

The 268 acre Abbots Sharpham estate in Somerset is just a few miles from Glastonbury, the site of the annual blockbuster music festival.

In addition to the listed 15th century country house, the estate has an indoor swimming pool, two cottages, a tennis court, a working corn mill and a deer park.

Saul, 72, founded fashion brand Mulberry in 1971 and turned it into a global powerhouse before being ousted from the company’s board of directors in 2003.

He also grows and produces cereals, flour, pasta, risotto and milk, which is sold in Waitrose under the Mr Saul’s Sharpham Park brand.

He bought half of the mansion on his estate for £27,000 in 1977, when the other half was occupied by dairy farmers.

The businessman and his wife Monty then acquired the rest of the property and the estate itself over the following decades.

In 1985 they bought one of the farmers’ outbuildings for £2,000 and installed the swimming pool along with a kitchen, veranda and pizzeria.

In 1993, the couple purchased more land and planted 4,000 hardwood trees.

In 2003, after he left Mulberry, the farmers chose to sell the estate and the rest of the farm to Mr. Saul.

The country house has six reception rooms, an orangery, farmhouse kitchen, offices, a study and five bathrooms.

The staircase begins in the entrance hall and leads to a music room with a stone fireplace and elm floors.

The room also has a hidden closet and a secret door that leads to a study with screens linked to the CCTV security system.

The property’s drawing room has 16th century oak beams, a wine cabinet and a terrace.

The kitchen, meanwhile, has cabinets made from 19th-century pine drugstore and marble and mahogany countertops. There is also a gas hob and converted electric Aga.

A hidden door in the kitchen paneling leads to the main hall.

The garden includes a croquet lawn and a 17th century ‘six eyed carriage house’ with a pizza area and kitchen, along with the indoor swimming pool.

The magnate started growing spelled bread on his estate after his sister, who was suffering from cancer, recommended it.

“I found it to be the most amazing grain,” he said The times.

‘In the Middle Ages Saint Hildegard of Bingen had said that it is good for mind, body and soul; the Roman army had used it as marching bread.’

An archaeologist also found an ancient piece of spelled bread on Mr. Saul’s land, indicating that it had been grown there by Iron Age Britons thousands of years ago.

Mr. Saul also discovered that walnuts were once grown on the estate and so planted an organic walnut orchard that has matured enough to become a commercial venture.

He also grows and produces cereals, flour, pasta, risotto and milk, which is sold in Waitrose under the Mr Saul’s Sharpham Park brand.

Mr. Saul sells his house with estate agent Carter Jonas.

The estate is divided into four lots that can be purchased separately.

The first includes the house together with the swimming pool, gardens, tennis court, outbuildings, two cottages, stables, deer park, cider orchard and pastures, all set in over 44 acres.

The second has the mill, a warehouse, office, agricultural buildings, solar plant and yards. It also includes the walnut and mixed fruit orchard and a mirror carp pond.

The third and fourth parcels cover over 200 hectares of arable land and pasture all classified as completely organic.

His company is sold separately.

The businessman said he is selling the estate because he only “spends 30 hours a week on the garden and farm” and wants more time to address wider food supply issues.

Abbots Sharpham itself dates back to the Bronze Age. The first known reference to it is in a gift from the 10th-century King Eadwig, who ruled England from 955 until his death four years later.

Sharpham then spent the next 275 years in and out of the hands of the abbots of Glastonbury.

In 1191, the much maligned King John gave the park to the abbots.

During the reign of King Henry VIII, Abbot Bere, who had served under the King’s father, Henry VII, built a beautiful manor house on the site.

Sharpham was later awarded to Sir Edward Seymour, who became Lord Protector of Henry’s son, Edward VI.

Sir Edward Dyer, poet and courtier of Queen Elizabeth I, was born there in 1641.

Author Henry Fielding, the author of the satirical novel Tom Jones, was born on the estate in 1707.

In the early 19th century, the property was leased to the Laver family, one of the largest cattle dealers in the west of the country.

Noted geologist Thomas Hawkins also lived there around the same time.

In the 1880s the estate was regarded as one of the finest farmhouses in Somerset.