Inside Dame Agatha Christie's former home in Wallingford

The agents at Savills office in Henley are inviting offers over £2.75m for Winterbrook House on the banks of the Thames at Wallingford.

In the last century, it was the home of Dame Agatha Christie for 42 years.

The acclaimed writer and her second husband archaeologist Max Mallowan bought the house in 1934. She lived there until her death in January 1976.

The blue plaque by the front door reveals the identity of the world renowned previous owner.

Literary historians believe many of Agatha Christie’s best-selling whodunnits were written in her study at Winterbrook.

The author’s fictional heroine Miss Marple lives in a house called Danemead. It shares many similarities with her real one.

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The main difference is the location. Miss Marple’s house is in the make-believe village of St Mary Mead.

The house has three reception rooms

In her autobiography published a year after her death the author reveals how she and her husband came to buy the house in the village a few miles from Thame.

She says the period before the outbreak of the Second World War was a particularly carefree time for the couple.

They were also spending a lot of time in Syria looking for antiquities for Max to add to his collection.

In the autumn of 1934, a week before they were due to leave for a further trip to the Middle East, they decided to look for a country cottage not too far from London. The fancied a weekend bolthole.

“Max’s two favourite parts of England were near Stockbridge where he had stayed as a boy or else near Oxford. His time at Oxford had been one of the happiest times of his life,” his wife recalls in her memoirs.

The huge garden

“He knew all the country round there and he loved the Thames…We looked at Goring, Wallingford, Pangborne….in the end I saw an advertisement in The Times. ‘Look, Max,’ I said. ‘You know how much we liked Wallingford’…we rang up the agent and dashed down.

“It was a delightful, small Queen Anne house…we didn’t have much time to dilly-dally…the house had five bedrooms, three sitting rooms and a remarkably nice kitchen….we made up our minds then and there.”

She admits: “Unfortunately we were not able to see it again for about nine months. We left for Syria and spent the whole time wondering if we had been terribly foolish.

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“We had meant to buy a tiny cottage, instead we bought this Queen Anne house.”

But, sure enough, she says: “We have been very happy there for nearly thirty five years now.”

Today the main house, with its five-acre garden, is much the same as Miss Christie would remember it albeit with enviable mod cons.

There are five bedrooms over the two upper floors (three bedrooms and three bath/shower rooms including two suites on the first floor, and two more bedrooms on the top floor).

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On the ground floor are three reception rooms and a kitchen with walk-in larder plus separate breakfast room opening onto the garden. There’s also a one-bedroom annexe.

Present owners Gregor Kleinknecht and Karen Holterman have lived here for 20 years with their two sons.

They told the BFP: “There was no blue plaque when we moved in. We weren’t aware of the Agatha Christie connection when we first saw the house, we only found out later on.

“It has been a wonderful family house. It was a very happy place for Agatha Christie and so it has been for our family.”