ONE of Dorset's most important historic houses has been put up for sale with a price guide of at least £1.2 million.

Compton House, two miles west of Sherborne, was the site where the silk for Lady Diana Spencer's wedding dress was produced and woven.

The freehold sale, which is being handled by Jackson-Stops, Yeovil, comprises Compton House itself, five coach-houses, stables and grooms' quarters, a tythe barn and up to 18 acres - available in three lots.

The impressive property lies in a parkland setting on the edge of Over Compton, a village of predominantly period houses largely built of local honey-coloured stone.

The house, which was the former home of Worldwide Butter-flies, which has moved to nearby premises, is in need of some attention to bring it back to its former glory.

There has been a house on the site since at least 1086 when the Manor at Compton Hawey - as Over Compton was then - was mentioned in the Domesday Book

The house originally took its name from the Hawey family, who were Lords of the Manor in the 12th and 13th centuries.

Since then the lands and property have changed ownership only a handful of times, the last time being in 1736, so the current sale is the first for more than 260 years.

Compton House is mentioned by both Pevsner in his definitive work The Buildings of England and by the Royal Commission on Historical Monuments.

It has been the ancestral seat of the Goodden family since the early 18th century and has an interesting history. The mock-Tudor faade was added to the Georgian house in the early 19th century to echo the superb Elizabethan house at Montacute as a result of a marriage between the two families, the Gooddens and the Phelips.

The gardens and grounds were extensively replanted in the mid-1970s and have peacocks roaming freely.

There are also a number of rare tree specimens headed by the impressive trunk of one of the first monkey puzzle trees ever imported to this country.

Other attractions include several Mulberry trees, three species of cedar - with the Cedar of Lebanon next to the church dating back to the early 19th century - and also a genuine Glastonbury Thorn.