Photo: Mary Jo and Richard Marsh pose in the library of the Cutcombe house by a painting of Winston Churchill. Steve Pepple | AnnArbor.com

Walk up to the Cutcombe House off a rolling country road west of Ann Arbor and there will be hints that the ghost of Winston Churchill lingers here: There are the British lions that adorn the bench in the English courtyard in the front of the house. And there’s the lion’s head doorknocker - an exact replica of the one on the front door of Number 10 Downing Street, home and offices of the British prime minister.

“You’ll see a lot of British lions throughout the house,” said owner Richard Marsh.

Open the front door, pass the British Regency chair with lions heads carved into the wooden handles and the giant King Edward VI wall tapestry (with lions and griffins) and turn left into the library and office filled only with books on British history. This is the room that drove construction of the 6,500-square-foot, five-bedroom, 4.5-bath custom-built house styled after an Edwardian country home and built by Marsh and his wife, Mary Jo.

This room, warmed by medium stained alder wood, coffered ceilings and a fireplace framed by lion’s heads carved form wood, is not only a nod to everything British but also an ode to Richard Marsh’s childhood hero, Winston Churchill. Marsh is president of the Winston Churchill Society of Michigan and a retired attorney with Clark Hill law firm in Detroit.

A portrait of Churchill, a replica of a 1942 painting by artist Frank Salisbury that captured Churchill in his siren suit, holds court over the fireplace. The artwork is accurate down to the frame, Marsh said, and shows Churchill in the zippered jumpsuit quickly donned when a siren sounded during the war years. The library clock is set to London time and is an exact replica of the one Churchill kept in his map room, an underground space where war strategy was discussed. The fender that sits on the hearth of the fireplace takes its cue from English country homes.

The library furniture is fashioned after pieces found at Althorp House, the Spencer home where Lady Diana, the late Princess of Wales, lived. “Why have Spencer furniture?” Marsh said, anticipating the question. Churchill - whose fill name was Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill - was tied by blood to the Spencer family.

While the Scio Township home and its contents reflect Great Britain, the time periods cover centuries. The regency chair replica comes from the 1800s, the tapestry from the 1500s while the style of the house comes from the early 1900s, when King Edward VII ruled. The tall, coffered ceilings (some 12-feet high) reflect an English country house. The limestone front of the house recalls the style of a Cotswold Cottage, a style near Marsh’s ancestral home.

Marsh is four or five generations removed from his ancestral home in Cutcombe Parish in Somershetshire, in the southwest of England. But he’s felt the pull of British history since he was young and has visited the British Isles 15 times.

When there was no space left in the couple’s previous home for the books Marsh has collected for four decades on Great Britain’s history, they decided to build a new house with a library that would make Churchill proud.

“I’ve always liked British history and if you like British history, Winston Churchill has to be your hero,” Marsh said. “He was the Forest Gump of British history. He was everywhere there was something going on.”