[4] In 1815 the Ashcombe Estate was purchased from Lady Arundell by Thomas Grove the younger of Ferne House for £8,700.

[7] The current Ashcombe House was originally part of the much larger mid-eighteenth century structure, and is an L-shaped three-bay survival of the eastern wing.

[2][8] The photographer and designer Cecil Beaton first visited the house in 1930, taken there by the sculptor Stephen Tomlin together with the writer Edith Olivier.

The artist Rex Whistler designed the Palladian front door surround, with its pineapple made from Bath stone.

Little remains of the Beaton-era interior design, although in the "circus room", which once contained a Whister-designed bed shaped like a carousel, one mural (by Elsa 'Jack' von Reppert-Bismarck) of a lady on a circus horse remains, painted during a hectic weekend party when all guests wielded paintbrushes.

[7] Beaton detailed his life at the house in his book Ashcombe: The Story of a Fifteen-Year Lease, first published in 1949 by B. T.

He grew increasingly eccentric and resented the fame which Beaton's book had brought to the house, refusing all offers to sell it and chasing off sightseers with dogs or threatening them with guns.

They were friends of the director of the Dovecote Press, which republished Beaton's book on Ashcombe on its fiftieth anniversary in 1999, and so a launch party was held at the house.

[15] Madonna and Guy Ritchie were the successful purchasers, after they were told by Hugo Vickers, Beaton's biographer, of its being up for sale.

[19] On 3 March 2009, planning permission was granted to Ritchie by Salisbury District Council for the creation of a sporting lake on the estate, to be situated on land to the northwest of Lower Ashgrove Farm.