Tardis-like hidden house in Knightsbridge once home to ‘airhead’ Donna Air – who once amusingly asked The Corrs: “Where did you all meet?” – for sale for £14.5 million (or 383% more than it was ‘worth’ in 2003)
Update, Thursday 4th April 2024 – Internal images removed at insistence of Annabel Edney, associate PR, Savills.
The ‘cheap wing’ of one of Knightsbridge’s landmark churches, St Saviour’s, has gone on sale for a not-insubstantial sum of £14.5 million after the more ‘expensive wing’ was marketed for the very punchy sum of £55 million in 2019 and the still somewhat punchy sum of £44 million in 2020.
The deceptively Tardis-like Hastings House in Walton Street is a ‘blink-and-you’ll-miss-it’ home from the pavement. It is entered through a small door to the side of a church that was reduced in size to accommodate the vast 12,102 square foot St Saviour’s House and the new-build in 1999 property of 5,261 square foot now offered by agents Savills.
Actress and presenter Donna Air – who once hilariously asked the siblings that formed The Corrs: “Where did you all meet?” during an interview – numbers amongst the well-known ‘names’ to have lived in the house. This likeable lady shared the property with her wealthy conservationist then partner Damian Aspinall and even operated her even more hilariously named company (since dissolved) Airhead And Money Limited from the address.
Occupied also variously by a fast-living, Bugatti driving oil trader named Pierre Andurand and the controversial Italian sports manager Pierandrea Semeraro, the three-storey residence is centred around a “serene” private courtyard and includes 2 reception rooms, 3 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms and a rather impressive roof terrace.
Savills describe the freehold house as “opulent” and laud “one of the crowning jewels of the residence,” its underground pool, as a “hidden gem” in the basement; perhaps Sharon Corr and her siblings could hold a reunion there.
Actress and presenter Donna Air and conservationist Damian Aspinall with James Middleton – Air’s partner between 2013 and 2018 – and Victoria Fisher – whom Aspinall married in 2016. Aspinall and Air were an item between 2000 and 2007. Donna Air’s most famous moment on the telly box was summed up in an interview with Sharon Corr of the Celtic pop band The Corrs. Of the encounter, Corr stated: “We did a live television interview with Donna Air. Her opening question was: ‘So, where did you all meet?’ I looked at my brother and sisters and our hearts sank. If that was the opening question, it could only go downhill from there. It was clear that she knew absolutely nothing about us.”Oil trading tycoon Pierre Andurand and sports tycoon Pierandrea Semeraro have also both been listed at the address in Companies House records. How long each of the men lived at the property is unknown.
The Names & Numbers – Hastings House, Walton Place, Knightsbridge, London, SW3 1SA, United Kingdom
March 2024 – Offered for sale as an “ultra-cool freehold house” by William Duckworth-Chad and Alex Christian of Savills for £14.5 million ($18.3 million, €17 million or درهم67.2 million) – an asking price 123% higher than the asking price 20 years ago in March 2004 and 383% higher than the quoted worth in May 2003 – and described by Robb Report’s Abigail Montanez as a “stately London home hiding in plain sight… in the affluent Knightsbridge neighbourhood.”
April 2012 – Richard Compton Miller for The Standard bizarrely contradicts previous evidence and suggests Damian Aspinall and Donna Air “recently moved into [the] converted church.” It can only be assumed he was regurgitating somewhat outdated parish news.
April 2010 – Listed as the address of French “entrepreneur” Pierre Andurand on his appointment as a director of Andurand Events Limited company. The company ultimately was dissolved on 28th June 2011 after a compulsory strike-off.
Aixe-en-Provence born Mr Andurand is listed on Wikipedia as a “businessman and hedge fund manager” who was educated at the University of Oxford. This twice married “leader” of Andurand Capital has variously been listed as a “star trader,” an “oil trading wildcard” and someone who operates with “no set risk limits.” World Top Investors list this kickboxing enthusiast as “the comeback kid, the hotshot trader living the jock-bro dream, driving a Bugatti supercar, a Knightsbridge townhouse, and a trophy wife Russian model.”
23rd January 2007 – A planning application submitted by the Italian sports manager Pierandrea Semeraro concerning the property is approved.
Mr Semeraro is listed on Wikipedia as having been the president of the Sports Union Lecce from 2006 to 2010. He was subsequently banned and disqualified after an investigation into a football betting scandal.
November 2006 – Planning application submitted to make various alterations to Hastings House by a firm named Stanhope Gate including the addition of skylights.
April 2004 – Described by the Daily Mail’s Adam Helliker as being the “weekday… converted church” home where “daughter of a bus mechanic from Newcastle” who “has, by all accounts, rather taken to the life of luxury” Donna Air “busies herself with acting lessons, acupuncture, shiatsu and stints with her personal trainer.”
March 2004 – Featured once again by The Observer’s Ben Flanagan after going on sale for the far higher than he’d previously mentioned sum of £6.5 million ($8.2 million, €7.6 million or درهم30.1 million) through the rather ritzy realtors Aylesford.
Of it, Flanagan enthused:
“Behind a discreet doorway on an exclusive Knightsbridge street lies this 5,250 sq ft home, which the estate agent describes as ‘one of London’s hidden gems.’”
“You’d never guess the house was built in the 1990s as you wander through its elegant Italianate central courtyard to the neo-classical cloisters and drawing room. One clue, however, is the basement swimming pool and bar, which has a more modern – if a little Footballers’ Wives – look… ‘There’s an amazing ‘party pad’ feel to it,’ says a spokesman.”
May 2003 – Described by The Observer’s Ben Flanagan as worth £3 million ($3.8 million, €3.5 million or درهم13.9 million) in a feature that mentions it being the home of actress Donna Air and zoo owning tycoon Damian Aspinall.
28th July 2000 – Listed as the correspondence address of “presenter” Donna Air’s amusingly named “radio and television activities” company, Airhead And Money Limited. The company ultimately was dissolved on 1st March 2011 after a compulsory strike-off.
4th September 1998 – Full planning permission granted for the construction of Hastings House by the Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea. Of the planning history of the unlisted property then to be constructed, the council noted separately: “The subject site was formerly included within the ground of the St Saviour’s Church, which is a listed building, however following planning permission which was granted in August 1997 for the erection of the subject building, the subject site has been formally renumbered in 2001 as Hastings House and is considered as a separate planning unit to St Saviours Church.”
Former Gloucestershire home of Prince and Princess ‘Pushy’ Michael of Kent goes on the market for £11 million; it last sold to Labour peer Lord Drayson for £5.75 million in 2006
In October 2013, “as they stifled giggles,” Princess Michael of Kent FLS told ‘Queen of Gorbals Gobbledygook’ Lorraine Kelly and Aled Jones on ITV1’s Daybreak that of one her residences, the rather ritzy Kensington Palace, was “a bit like Harrods.” The daughter of a Nazi then cheerfully chirped: “There are lots of courtyards; one of the family called it the ‘aunt heap’ because all the aunts live there, it’s like living in a terrace.”
Illustrating how she wasn’t exactly au-fait with Coronation Street style living, the daughter of a one-time Nazi continued: “[William and Kate] have been living there of a while in a little in a little cottage. William and Harry grew up next door to us, so we have always seen them.”
Now, with news that former Gloucestershire home of the princess and her husband, Prince Michael of Kent, GCVO, CD, KStJ, is back on the market comes a reminder of the once lavish lifestyle of the late Queen Elizabeth II’s first cousin.
Grade I listed Nether Lypiatt Manor, near Stroud – purchased for just £300,000 by the controversial German born ‘Princess Pushy’ in 1981 after her 1978 second marriage to Prince Michael – had to be sold in 2005 after the couple’s finances came under fire. Accused of “squandering” taxpayers’ money and exploiting their royal status for profit, the pair reluctantly “downsized” and now ‘simply’ occupy a rather palatial wing of Kensington Palace.
Complete with a “grandiose William and Mary staircase” and “charming… sash windows, towering chimneys, hipped roofs and gate piers and railings,” an offer for the then 36-acre ‘mini estate’ was rejected from the artist Damien Hirst in 2005. The wacky-verging-on-very-weird Noel Edmonds, however, decided the crib wasn’t for him; of it, he remarked: “It is the last sort of house that I would find suitable – not least because it has a road running right along the front of it. And I like my privacy.”
Sold by Savills for £5.75 million in April 2006 after a price reduction from £6 million to £5.5 million to the wealthy Labour peer The Right Honourable The Lord Drayson FREng PC, Nether Lypiatt Manor – which is reportedly haunted by the ghost of a notorious ‘hanging judge’ – has now been completely renovated. Subsequently, in September and October of 2006, Lord Drayson sold off various contents that had belonged to the ‘Rent-a-Kents’ at an auction for charity in Cirencester.
Nether Lupiatt Manor now stands on an increased plot of some 96 acres and the possibility of developing a vineyard there has been investigated by selling agents Knight Frank. A somewhat punchy guide price of £11 million has been set.
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The front elevation of Nether Lypiatt Manor, Lypiatt, Brimscombe & Thrupp, Near Stroud, Gloucestershire, GL6 7LS, United Kingdom. The “perfect square of only 46-foot” house is Grade I listed and was built primarily between circa 1690 and 1717 by an unknown architect; later additions were made in the 20th century in the 1920s by the Lutyens and Elizabethan vernacular inspired architect Percy Morley-Horder for the then owner C. W. Woodall.Prince Michael of Kent featured in ‘The Steeple Times’ in December 2016 when his 1965 Jaguar E-Type Series 1 4.2-litre FHC came up for sale. Of it, the late Queen’s cousin remarked: “This was a beautiful motor car, immensely quick, and probably the most enjoyable car I have ever owned. I believe that every man has a special place in his heart for one woman above all others, and also for one car. In my case I think probably my E-Type Jaguar was the most satisfying and exciting car in my life – so far.” He is pictured here in it with the Earl of March and Kinrara, Charles Gordon-Lennox, and his 56th in line to the throne daughter, Oxford and Brown educated Lady Gabriella Kingston, is also shown standing next to it.Princess Michael of Kent sitting with her children Lord Frederick Windsor and Lady Gabriella Kingston in the grounds of the house; a Jaguar outside the residence in the 1980s. Nether Lypiatt Manor, at a time when the IRA were most active, was considered a major security risk for bombing due to its close proximity to the road.An image of Nether Lypiatt Manor prior to it having roof lights and additional wings added.A notice of an auction of items from the manor – then described as the “haunted house” – on Friday 16th November 1923 at the instruction of Corbett W. Woodall, Esq.On 19th May 1934, the house, then the residence of Mr & Mrs Gordon Woodhouse, featured in a six-page write-up in ‘Country Life’ magazine. An aerial shot of the house prior to the grounds being altered by Princess Michael of Kent. The royal added a garden of box-edged beds of yellow ‘Princess Michael of Kent’ roses to the front, western façade and a symmetrical knot patterned garden to the eastern façade that leads onto a circa 80-year-old avenue of “slender lime trees” that is known as ‘Cathedral Walk.’On occasions in times past during the tenure of ownership of Prince and Princess Michael of Kent, the public were even allowed access to tour the grounds. One can only imagine what the rather particularly waspy princess made of the arrival of the “great unwashed” at her country manor.The architectural style of Nether Lypiatt Manor – though on a lesser scale – was said to have been inspired by the now National Trust owned Ashdown House in Ashbury, Lambourn, Berkshire. Intended originally for the ‘Winter Queen’ Elizabeth of Bohemia, though she died before construction began in 1622, this hunting lodge has been leased by the singer-songwriter Pete Townsend since 2010. Public access is restricted to the stairs and roof of the 8,000 square foot property is available on limited days only.
The Names & Numbers – Nether Lypiatt Manor, Lypiatt, Brimscombe & Thrupp, Near Stroud, Gloucestershire, GL6 7LS, United Kingdom
May 2023 – Placed for sale for £11 million ($13.8 million, €12.9 million or درهم50.8 million) through agents Knight Frank, a sum 91% higher than its 2006 sale price though a total of 96 acres of land – 60 acres more of land than in 2006 – are included in this asking price.
September – October 2006 – Lord Drayson auctioned off items of bric-a-brac, sporting items, antiques and pictures owned by Prince and Princess Michael of Kent at Moor, Allen & Innocent, Cirencester and donated all proceeds to charity.
April 2006 – Sold to The Right Honourable The Lord Drayson of Kensington in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea FREng PC and his wife, the former Elspeth Bellhouse, for £5.75 million ($7.23 million, €6.72 million or درهم26.54 million), a sum 516% higher than the inflation adjusted 1981 sale price.
“Controversially large donor” to the Labour Party Paul Drayson (born 5th March 1960) is listed on Wikipedia as “a British businessman, amateur racing driver and Labour politician.” He is a father of five, blind in one eye since birth, chairman of the Oxford based Drayson Technologies Ltd. and describes himself as “a car nut and government minister.” His car collection includes an Aston Martin Vanquish, an Aston Martin DB9 and a Lotus Elan.
“The artist Damien Hirst and Noel Edmonds, host of Channel 4’s Deal or No Deal, were among a string of potential buyers who came to view the house, but mystery surrounds the eventual buyer, who is understood to have exchanged contracts last week.”
“A property expert who has viewed the eight-bedroomed mansion, said it needed sprucing up. He said: ‘It’s full of drapes, scent and all that. The pictures and portraits are a distraction. It’s a seriously pretty house on the outside, but it needs all the clutter taking out – it’s got dog-eared.’”
February 2006 – Asking price reduced to £5.5 million ($6.9 million, €6.4 million or درهم25.4 million).
April 2005 – Offered for sale on behalf of Prince and Princess Michael of Kent for £6 million ($7.5 million, €7 million or درهم27.7 million) by agents Savills with 36 acres of land.
February 1981 – Sold to Prince and Princess Michael of Kent for £259,745 ($326,465, €303,441 or درهم1.2 million) or the equivalent of £934,180 ($1.2 million, €1.1 million or درهم4.3 million) today.
Of the ghosts said to haunt the house, Princess Michael remarked:
I have no doubt that many old houses have some kind of spirit presence or ghost and, if Nether Lypiatt Manor has such, he, she or it, must be benign and well disposed. We as a family, our guests and our pets have always felt a welcome from the house from the day we arrived, and have been extremely happy living here.
1923 to 1931 – The house is restored and expanded by the architect Percy Richard Morley-Horder.
1923 – Sold to Marsala fortune heir Gordon Woodhouse and his wife, a harpsichordist named Violet Gordon Woodhouse. They were said to have lived there in a “menage a cinq” and “left their own imprint by extending the house with the addition of the north-west pavilion, as well as improving the interior.”
Of Violet Gordon-Woodhouse, the Mystical Times blog declared:
She lived a very bohemian and hedonistic lifestyle at Nether Lypiatt. She was the first harpsichordist to have her playing recorded and broadcast, she had prodigious abilities in her playing the harpsichord and clavichord. She was married but in name only and took on several lovers, both male and females, some of whom resided with her and her husband at Nether Lypiatt.
The ghosts were widely spoken about during Violet’s life in the house and when her nephew took up residence there, after Violet’s death, the blacksmith’s curse was blamed for any bad luck such as divorcees. Accidents. deaths of pets etc.
Her own family background was also notable in the sense of how she inherited her father’s immense wealth. It is said that her two unmarried sisters, to whom her father left all his wealth and possessions to, were murdered by their butler so the money went to Violet.
1914 – Sold to Corbett Woodall, who “modernised and improved the house.”
1717 – Finished for Judge John Coxes’s son, Judge Charles Coxe, after the former’s death. The building was said to be “modeled on Ashdown House, the National Trust property in Berkshire.”
1690 – 1703 – Built by a very pro “hanging judge” named Judge John Coxe (alternatively spelt ‘Coe’). One of his sons is said to have hanged himself in the house.
Of him, the Mystical Times blog declared:
The house has a beautiful set of wrought iron gates and the folklore here is that Judge Coxe had a case before him and the accused was a talented blacksmith. It is said that Judge Coxe offered the blacksmith a deal; make me the most perfect iron gates or you will be hanged for your crime. It is never stated what crime this blacksmith was accused of, only that the blacksmith agreed to undertake this task. The judge added that if the blacksmith were to fail, he would be hanged.
So, the blacksmith, under the threat of being executed, started making these perfect wrought iron gates. He spent weeks making the gates until he felt they were, in fact, perfect. When the gates went up, Judge Coxe went to look at them and found a small imperfection. It was then that the blacksmith was hanged but before he was, the blacksmith cursed the judge. His house and lands. Any bad luck that the occupants of Nether Lypiatt was blamed on this curse.
It’s also said that the son of the judge hanged himself in the house but there are no records which show this to be true. There was one living thing that Judge Coxe seemed to very much love and that was a horse called Wag. It is said that this horse lived to a ripe old age and that he was a very clever animal indeed.
The occupants at Nether Lypiatt, would attach panniers to the horses saddle with shopping lists inside and Wag would make his way over to Stroud and the shopkeepers would greet the horse and look into the panniers for the lists then put those items into the panniers. Wag would then return back to Nether Lypiatt and the shopping would be done!
There is a bronze obelisk amongst the trees by the house and there is an inscription to the horse and it read:
My name was Wag that rolled the green,
The oldest horse that ever was seen,
My years they numbered 42,
I served my master just and true.
The judge was considered hateful to blacksmiths but fond of animals by the townsfolk of Stroud and you can see why.”
“The house and its lands are haunted by the hanged blacksmith and Wag the horse and it is said that on every January 25th, that the ghost of the blacksmith sits on top of a ghostly horse (said to be Wag) and crashed open those iron gates, with the blacksmith wailing out loud. This is said to have been the date the blacksmith lost his life.
Nether Lypiatt Manor – More Imagery…
The eastern elevation of this residence was described as “perfect in every way” by the architectural historian James Lee-Milne; the National Trust employee had wanted to purchase Nether Lypiatt Manor in the 1950s, but supposedly couldn’t afford it. Going further, in his work ‘English Manor Houses,’ the chief editor of ‘Burke’s Perrage’ and ‘Burke’s Landed Gentry’ Hugh Montgomery-Massingberd added of the Grade I listed manor house: “It’s comfortable, relaxing; nothing too flashy or clever.”The southern elevation of the home of Prince Michael of Kent and his wife Princess Michael of Kent between 1981 and 2006.A view of the building from a woodland walkway.This paneled drawing room is situated on the first floor of Nether Lypiatt Manor.There are several studies and a library in the house also.The main dining room currently features a formal table arrangement to sit ten.Another view of the room.The primary staircase of Nether Lypiatt Manor today and in an undated older photograph.The current owner, Lord Dyson, has spent significant sums completely renovating the house. Amongst improvements have been new kitchens and bathrooms.The primary bedroom suite now has two adjoining en-suite bathrooms.Another of the eight bedrooms in the main house.Accommodation is spread over four floors.The bedrooms as previously presented.There are now six modernised bath and shower rooms across the four levels.The front garden and the adjoining land across the lane. Of it, Knight Frank remarks: “Extending in all to about 96 acres including the gardens, the land surrounding Nether Lypiatt Manor not only provides protection and privacy, but also great character with a mix of flat grassland and undulating country with mature woodland. For the equestrian enthusiast, there is a manège and a number of post and rail fenced pasture paddocks to the north of the house and outbuildings. Forming part of the view to the west of the house are about 60 acres of relatively flat pasture land divided by a number of stone walls. Within this ringfenced block of land is the stable yard and stone barn, currently in use as garaging. The current owner has invested time and research to establish the potential for a vineyard on part of the land to the west. With very positive recommendations from viticulturalist and the relevant approvals, this area of the land presents an interesting opportunity for the production of vines. Together, the paddocks, woodland and farmland combine with the magnificent gardens and grounds around the house to present an exciting and impressive compact country estate.” In a courtyard area to one side of Nether Lypiatt Manor is an informal outdoor dining and sitting space.Commenting of the gardens, Knight Frank add: “The gardens at Nether Lypiatt Manor are truly exceptional. The classic symmetry of the house is complimented by its perfect position within the well thought out formal gardens which extend beyond to the beautifully presented woodland and pasture surrounding the gardens. Designed and created by eminent garden designers over the years, including inspiration from the socialite gardener Norah Lindsay, John Sales (the National Trust’s Head of Gardens) and Rosemary Verey, not to mention the extensive input from the current owners and their passionate gardeners, the almost magical feel of the structure, texture and colour created by the planting is present throughout the gardens. The focus was to create outside spaces incorporating further living areas to what is an architecturally special property. A number of garden rooms have been created with each one having its own special merits and distinct character and atmosphere.Nether Lypiatt Manor also has an outdoor swimming pool and a tennis court.The estate agents wax lyrical of a woodland walkway: “A wonderful vista leads from the house to a fabulous lime avenue – a majestic ‘cathedral’ of limes culminating at an ancient sycamore tree, impressive in stature and an intriguing focal point.”Nether Lypiatt Manor’s coach house provides a housekeeper’s cottage, a gym, garaging and a 3-bedroom flat.Additional outbuildings are used for stabling and no doubt to house Lord Drayson’s no doubt extensive car collection.
The Somewhat Strange Words Of The Former Baroness Marie-Christine Riebnitz… ‘Princess Pushy’ Tells It As She Sees It…
Of herself and her approach to life:
“Don’t forget I’m not English. English people maybe don’t behave like we Europeans do.”
“I am not a qualified historian, but rather a teller of stories from history.”
“I have great lineage… The Duke of Burgundy started the Order of the Fleece in 1430. And, of the first 20 members, 17 are my ancestors. Even Catherine de Medici and Diane de Poitiers [the first a French queen and mother of three kings, the second the mistress of Henry II of France] – I descend from them both. I realised afterwards that Mountbatten thought I’d be good for my husband. He was our Cyrano de Bergerac.”
“Kissing babies and cutting ribbons, I tell you, it bores me rigid.”
“When I came back from my honeymoon, I was informed that it was not appropriate for a princess to be involved in trade. This came from the court. ‘What about my income?’ That was my problem, I was told.”
“I have different ways of sayings and doing things.”
“I’ve got a better background than anyone else who married into the royal family since the war, excepting Prince Philip.”
“I even pretended years ago to be an African, a half-caste African, but because of my light eyes, I did not get away with it, but I dyed my hair black.”
“I’m a workaholic. I’m a Capricorn. It’s my nature and I’m convent educated. I sew better than any nanny we’ve ever had.”
“Look, I was taught, and I taught my children, if they ever came back from school saying: ‘Oh, so and so’s father got a helicopter, it’s not fair,’ I’d say: ‘Fair? Whoever said life had to be fair? Is it fair that you live in Kensington Palace? That you’ve each got a pony? There an awful lot of kids without a pony, you know.’”
Of the old and the young and the rules of life:
“The people love to see happy, young people and I think the older generation are a bit boring for most people.”
“Back in the days of the colonies, there were rules that were very good.”
“There is a law against discrimination in England, but there is a different law for the royal family.”
Of being told by her press secretary that she would be forced to give up Nether Lypiatt Manor and cut back:
“Of course, I miss the big gardens we had at our country house, but it became very expensive to run… We couldn’t afford it. For the first time that terrible word came into my life, when our press secretary said: ‘Ma’am, you have to downsize.’ It was the worst word I’d heard in ages.”
“We’ve cut back dramatically. I mean, we never go out to dinner unless we go to somebody’s house. We never go to restaurants. That’s too extravagant.”
“Well, I love EasyJet. It’s the only direct route to Biarritz. We always fly tourist-class anyway in Europe. For long-haul, we go club.”
‘Princess Pushy’ of her shopping habits:
“I think I have only walked down the high street once in my married life… [I’m] either catalogue or couture, but most the time I’m too mean to buy new clothes.”
“I like to look nice, but I don’t care about fashion.”
“I don’t have the figure for fashion and I’ve never heard anyone say I was a fashion icon.”
On cooking:
“I always knew I would have a cook when I married.”
“I cook. Well, if I’m giving a dinner party, I get in help.”
To a group of black people in a restaurant in New York in 2004:
“Enough already! You need to quiet [sic] down! You should remember the colonies. Back in the days of the colonies, there were rules that were very good.”
‘Princess Pushy’ on correspondence:
“Incidents happen that mean more mail. The birth of children, obviously, a sudden religious marriage, the tragic loss of a cat. I had over 2,000 letters when my cat disappeared.”
Of her beauty regime and her personal appearance:
“I am not very high-maintenance when it comes to beauty.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever let myself go in public. I don’t even know what it would mean. I mean, I let myself go on horseback by really galloping until, I think, I’m going to die.”
Of her relationship with her husband and children and her preference for sleeping alone:
“[We sleep in separate quarters so we are] fresher for each other…. You won’t see each other being cross or saying: ‘I can’t do this up. It’s too tight.’”
“My mother, when I married, said you must have separate bathrooms and separate bedrooms. That was the only sure way of keeping a marriage alive because it was an invitation as opposed to just being there and that makes it more romantic.”
“Oh, I had two nannies. God, yes.”
“I have been together with my husband for 33 years. Romance can still be there if you don’t see each other brushing your teeth. There’s something very nasty about brushing your teeth and then all that flossing.”
Of her husband and son’s thoughts about her behaviour:
“There’s a lovely character in Under Milk Wood called Mrs Ogmore-Pritchard and she’s incredibly clean and tidy. She really is unbearably tidy and clean and I terrorise my husband when he comes in sometimes from shooting and there’s awful dead birds all over the hall that he calls me Mrs Ogmore-Pritchard.”
“I have never considered myself English. Both my husband and my son say I don’t understand English humour and they don’t always understand what I think is funny or when I’m being ironic.”
Of her holding hands with all sorts of people:
“I hold hands with all my friends. I don’t think that’s being intimate at all.”
‘Princess Pushy’ on her relationship with a subsequently murdered Russian billionaire named Mikhail Kravchenko – whom she was spotted “stroking” the cheeks of in Venice in 2006:
“Of course, Mikhail finds me attractive and beguiling. Men are charmed by me, and in return I am a very tactile woman. Why can’t people show some respect? Years of breeding must be worth something.”
‘Princess Pushy’ of her son, Lord Frederick Windsor and his wife, naming her grandchild ‘Maud’:
“Freddie loves the name and so do lots of other people, but I don’t. I will get used to it, you get used to everything.
Of Spanx underwear:
“Makes [my] legs bulge out.”
Of foxes and other four-legged animals:
“[I] unashamedly hate [foxes].”
“Yes, I love cats, I love dogs, I love all animals. Anything on four legs with fur on more or less qualifies.”
“I have a pooper scooper, a long-handled thing with a little shovel.”
“What do you actually mean when you say human rights? Animals don’t have rights in that sense.”
On being Catholic:
“I’m a Catholic, you know, not very good news!”
“Our children are very much remaining Anglican and I very much wish to remain and shall remain a Catholic.”
On the late Diana, Princess of Wales:
“
“A bitter, nasty and strange woman… That silly girl next door… Jealous… [Prince Charles just] married a womb.”
On Prince Harry having turned up at a fancy dress party wearing a Nazi costume:
“Nobody would have got excited [had he worn the hammer and sickle].”
After being told that “rank among female baboons is hereditary”:
“I always knew that when people who aren’t like us claim that hereditary rank is not part of human nature, they must be wrong. Now you’ve given me evolutionary proof!”
‘Princess Pushy’ on breeding:
“The English take the breeding of their horses and dogs more seriously than they do their children. God forbid that the wrong drop of blood should get into their Labrador. But their children marry everywhere.”
“And sometimes people say: ‘Oh well, we all descend from Adam and Eve.’ Nut do you descend from Charlemagne directly? Do you descend from Saint King Louis IX? I do.”
EXCLUSIVE –As £668,000 is sliced off the price of Ghislaine Maxwell and Scott Borgerson’s former home (and an ‘open house’ is arranged at ‘Maxwell House’), here is a perfect outing for those that want to take a gander at such features as their sick ‘party shower’ this May
Ghislaine Maxwell, if truth be known, ain’t going anywhere. Confined to the clink for 20 years and likely facing action over her non-payment of around £3 million in legal bills owed to date, the mucky madam (and/or her ex-husband Scott Borgerson) has decided to cut the price of her former home in Manchester-by-the-Sea, Massachusetts.
True crime fans will no doubt flock to the couple’s creepy crib that day and for them, most definitely, the highlight will be the chance to take a gander at a ‘party shower’ installed there. Of this bizarre ‘extra,’ in July 2019, a “pal” and neighbour told The Sun on Sunday: “The house did have one unusual feature – a huge shower. It had Wi-Fi so they could control it from their phones, a steam unit, the whole nine yards. It was like a party shower. You can imagine what they got up to in there.”
Editor’s Note – Unlike as is the case in many publications, this article was NOT sponsored or supported by a third-party. Follow Matthew Steeples on Twitter at @M_Steeples.
One of the 5.3 bathrooms at 301 Summer Street features a shower the size of a studio flat. It is quite the contrast to the bathroom at Miss Maxwell’s former Kinnerton Street home where Virginia Roberts Giuffre claims she was forced into sexual relations with the Duke of York in 2001 – a room which we were able to prove she talked nonsense about when she claimed the bathtub “too small for any activity whatsoever” when we exclusively published photographs of it in January 2022. Of this bathroom, in July 2019, a “pal” and neighbour told ‘The Sun on Sunday’: “The house did have one unusual feature – a huge shower. It had Wi-Fi so they could control it from their phones, a steam unit, the whole nine yards. It was like a party shower. You can imagine what they got up to in there.” It has not been confirmed as to whether Prince Andrew ever got to try this particularly opulent shower area out.That the sitting room of Ghislaine Maxwell and Scott Borgerson’s one-time ‘together home’ has a gun above the fireplace is somewhat creepy given the former wife Rebecca Borgerson’s allegations that her former husband was “verbally and physically abusive” to her. The furnishings in the room, equally, are somewhat curious – the ‘prison orange’ sofa is especially apt given where Ghislaine Maxwell now finds herself.The Cape Ann seaside home that was bought by Scott Borgerson and Ghislaine Maxwell in June 2015 through Tidewood LLC, a limited liability company, stands above a rocky outcrop looking out to sea. It has a plaque on it that reads: “The Phippen Smith House, 1660. House originally at 9 Elm Street in Salem, deconstructed here in 1917 and reconstructed on its current site in 1930.”Incarcerated sex offender Ghislaine Maxwell with her since dead ex-lover and associate Jeffrey Epstein (left). The latter died by apparent ‘suicide’ on 10th August 2019 in prison awaiting trial whilst the latter took up with submarine pilot Scott Borgerson, supposedly married him in 2016, but curiously did not tell her very own siblings of this union until after her 2020 arrest. They are now divorced, but they most likely still have matters still to resolve.
Then & Now – How Maxwell and Borgerson changed ‘The Phippen-Smith House’ – Images from the June 2016 listing and images from the February 2022 listing
Then and now – The entrance elevation of 301 Summer Street from its driveway in 2016 (left) and in the 2022 listing imagery. The building does not look especially well kept or maintained in either image.Then and now – Supposedly vegan Ghislaine Maxwell and her beefy now ex-husband Scott Borgerson relocated the house’s kitchen into a space that the previous owners had used as a sitting and dining area and moved a window to accommodate a very large Sub Zero Wolf type oven. Their menacing choice of black and white tiling most certainly wouldn’t appear to more ‘homely’ cooks such as condescending cakebaker Dame Mary Berry DBE, cocaine crackpot The Honourable Nigella Lawson and “let’s be havin’ ya” yeller Delia Smith CH CBE.Then and now – The original kitchen may have been somewhat like that seen in the home of Hyacinth Bucket’s in the 1990s BBC series ‘Keeping Up Appearances,’ but the Borgerson-Maxwell version can only be surmised as having a “clinically cold look.”Then and now – A dining room with somewhat strange wallpaper in 2016 has been redecorated in a style that looks more like an office where Ricky Gervais might feel at home. The painting on the right-hand wall perhaps might have some kind of connection with Ghislaine Maxwell’s charity Oceana and her supposed number one passion (other than sex trafficking minors), the oceans.Then and now – Surprisingly, Maxwell and Borgerson did actually brighten up the hallway and staircase area of the home with a fresh white look. Again, however, one is left asking what strange extra-curricular activities the oars on the walls might have been used for.Then and now – Mr and Mrs Borgerson plainly liked the ‘vomit green’ colour in this room and made few changes here.Then and now – The previously traditionally styled master bedroom, however, got a full-on makeover and extension and sliding doors that’d look more suited to a residence in the oligarch hideout that is One Hyde Park.Then and now – What Americans call a ‘deck’ and what Brits might term a ‘terrace’ was subjected to a complete B&Q style makeover by Mr and Mrs Borgerson. The garden beyond now looks like a totally neglected wilderness. Mate of royals and TV gardener Alan Titchmarsh MBE most certainly would be less than impressed.Then and now – Maxwell and Borgerson tore off the traditionally appropriate colonial-style detailing at the rear of 301 Summer Street and plonked on what looks like a portacabin. Good taste and respect for architectural heritage and this couple most definitely are not in unity.
The Names, Dates & Numbers – Ghislaine Maxwell and Scott Borgerson and ‘The Phippen-Smith House’, 301 Summer Street, Manchester-by-the-Sea, Cape Ann, Essex County, Massachusetts, MA 01944, United States of America
9th May 2023 – Price of 301 Summer Street, Manchester-by-the-Sea reduced to £4.70 million ($5.85 million, €5.35 million or درهم21.48 million), Mansion Global reported.
Of this, the property publication remarked: “Mr Borgerson, a tech entrepreneur, couldn’t be reached for comment.” They also claimed: “Though the pair lived together at the home for a ‘brief time’ before Ms Maxwell’s arrest in 2020, she has no ownership stake in the home.”
The listing remains with Ryan Clunan and Tracy Campion of Campion & Company Fine Homes Real Estate and an ‘open house’ on 21st May has been arranged between 1pm and 3pm; a perfect outing for those wishing to take an eyeball at Mr Borgerson and Miss Maxwell’s ‘party shower.’
Late 2022 to early 2023 – Scott Borgerson and Ghislaine Maxwell complete their divorce. How their assets were split is unknown, but it is believed that Mr Borgerson walked away with a substantial stash of anything that remains from money made during their ‘secret’ (until Maxwell’s 2020 arrest) union.
Given that Maxwell remains a wicked woman incapable of accepting that taking at least £16.4 million ($20 million, €18.6 million or درهم73.5 million) from the since croaked paedophile Jeffrey Epstein was a totally unacceptable thing to do, goodness knows what became of the clearly vast funds likely hidden away by her possibly in the Channel Islands, Lichtenstein, Panama and elsewhere.
26th March 2022 – A beady-eyed reader supplies The Steeple Times with the current listing brochure for 301 Summer Street complete with up-to-date imagery of the house. It shows how Borgerson and Maxwell well and truly have made an utter mess of what was a previously charming residence.
March 2022 – The real estate website Realtor.com suggests the house to currently be worth a significantly lower sum and estimates its value at just £2.45 million ($3.235 million, €2.945 million or درهم11.88 million).
February 2022 – 301 Summer Street, Manchester-by-the-Sea is listed for sale for £5.368 million ($7.295 million, €6.443 million or درهم26.791 million) by Campion And Company. The firm, however, do not include a public listing of the property on its site and they do not include any current photographs of the house.
29th December 2021 – Ghislaine Maxwell – who has variously shown her decided deviancy by faking photos and using pseudonyms including ‘Jennifer Ellmax,’ ‘Jen Marshall,’ ‘Janet Marshall,’ ‘Mrs Scott Borgerson’ and just plain old ‘G’ – is found guilty on five out of six of the charges she had faced. Her husband was not present for the verdict and left his wife to face being sent down alone and with just her brothers and sisters to support the by now convicted child sex trafficker.
29th November 2021 – Ghislaine Maxwell goes on trial at the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. Her husband did not attend on a single day of that trial.
2nd July 2020 – Ghislaine Maxwell is arrested at Tuckedaway.
In the weeks after her arrest, as she unsurprisingly unsuccessfully sought bail, Maxwell claimed via her lawyers that the “majority of her assets” had been transferred into a “trust controlled by her husband and another unnamed party.”
In documents submitted to the courts, they put her their worth at £17.1 million ($22.5 million, €20.5 million or درهم82.6 million) and suggested: “For Ms Maxwell to flee, she would have to abandon her spouse. She will not isk destroying the lives and financial well-being of those she holds most dear to live as a fugitive during a worldwide pandemic.”
Going further, they added: “In fact, every action Ms Maxwell has taken from the time of Epstein’s arrest up to the time of the first bail hearing was designed to protect her spouse… from harassment, economic harm, and physical danger. If Ms. Maxwell were to violate her bail conditions, which she has no intention of doing… she would be leaving her spouse…with virtually nothing.”
In a letter to Judge Alison J. Nathan, Mr Borgerson added: “The person described in the criminal charges is not the person we know. I have never witnessed anything close to inappropriate with Ghislaine. Quite to the contrary, the Ghislaine I know is a wonderful and loving person… I believe that Ghislaine had nothing to do with Epstein’s crimes.”
13th December 2019 – Ghislaine Maxwell purchases Tuckedaway, 338 East Washington Road, Bradford, New Hampshire, NH 03221 for £787,953 ($1,070,750, €945,752 or درهم3.93 million) via Jennifer Johnson and Margaret Weathers of Four Seasons Sotheby’s International Realty. The house had been listed at a price of £879,000 ($1.195 million, €1.055 million or درهم4.389 million) in March that year and sold previously for £773,000 ($1.050 million, €927,000 million or درهم3.856 million) on 15th December 2017.
Mid-late 2019 – Maxwell is said to have “fallen foul” of locals and left Manchester-by-the-Sea. An alleged sighting of her in Los Angeles followed in August 2019 when she was snapped at an In-N-Out Burger restaurant in Los Angeles, California. The photographs were proven to be fake as advertising on hoardings in the background had never been at that location. Her associate Leah Saffian, whose dog appeared in one of the images, has never explained her role in this skulduggery.
10th August 2019 – Jeffrey Epstein dies by supposed suicide in his cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC) in New York. He had previously supposedly attempted suicide on 23rd July 2019 whilst sharing a cell with alleged quadruple killer cop Nicholas Tartaglione.
6th July 2019 – Jeffrey Epstein is arrested after his private jet lands at Teterboro Airport, New Jersey.
15th June 2019 – The Cash & Rocket Rally ends in Monte Carlo. Miss Maxwell was clearly especially keen to avoid being photographed. She was subsequently not seen again in public until her trial commenced on 29th November 2021.
13th June 2019 – The mucky madam sets off from London on the car rally in an Alfa Romeo with Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason’s wife Annette (known as ‘Nettie’ to her chums). They travel first to Paris and then go via Geneva to Monte Carlo.
12th June 2019 – Maxwell and Borgerson are named in court documents concerning a case between Tidewood LLC and John Appel, Katherine Rive and Curtis Hollingsworth regarding a property dispute concerning their shorefront access. In due course, on 11th March 2020, judgment was found in favour of the plaintiff.
During this particular London visit, Miss Maxwell met with her six living siblings Anne, Kevin, Isabel, Christine, Philip and Ian to remember her late pension pot plundering father on 10th June 2019 on what would have been his 96th birthday. She also supposedly went to Buckingham Palace for tea with the man who subsequently paid £12 million ($15.8 million, €14.4 million or درهم58.2 million) to a woman he supposedly never met (but emailed Jeffrey Epstein’s ex-lover about), Prince Andrew.
30th June 2016 – The Phippen-Smith House is sold to Tidewood LLC, a limited liability company controlled by Ghislaine Maxwell’s “secret husband,” for £1.802 million ($2.450 million, €2.164 million or درهم8.998 million). The couple are said to have spent £1.8 million ($2.5 million, €2.2 million or درهم9.2 million) on renovations in the years since that included the installation of many security cameras. During the purchase process, Maxwell is said to have used the pseudonym ‘Jennifer Ellmax.’
April 2016 – Ghislaine Maxwell sells her Upper East Side, New York townhouse for £11 million ($15 million, €13.2 million or درهم55.1 million) and “disappeared.” She had originally bought that property in 2015 for £12.4 million ($16.9 million, €14.9 million or درهم62.1 million).
Date unknown in 2016 – Scott Borgerson marries Ghislaine Maxwell. She eventually revealed she was married to her until then “secret husband” in court in December 2020 to the surprise of the world and her own brothers and sisters even.
20th June 2015 – Rebecca Borgerson files for divorce from her then husband. She cited “irreconcilable differences.” The couple had married in 2001 and had two children together.
15th June 2014 – Scott Borgerson is charged with the assault and domestic battery of his then wife Rebecca Borgerson.
2014 – Ghislaine Maxwell meets her future husband at the Arctic Circle Assembly in Reykjavik, Iceland whilst married to his then first wife.
As it is revealed that a lawyer connected to Obama and Biden is also connected with Ghislaine Maxwell’s ‘hideout lair,’ Matthew Steeples asks: “What has become of Tuckedaway?”
Granite Reality LLC – a supposed reference to New Hampshire’s ‘Granite State’ nickname – was the vehicle used by the mucky madam Ghislaine Maxwell and her then husband and fellow submarine pilot Scott Borgerson to purchase what became her hideout ‘lair’ in December 2019.
The ironically named ‘Tuckedaway,’ situated deep in the forests of Bradford, New Hampshire, returned to the news yesterday when featured in an article in National File – a “new media firm founded in 2019” that claims to have “broken major stories over its brief history including Ashley Biden’s diary, the Cal Cunningham affair, the alleged Ukrainian pay-for-play scam run by Nancy Pelosi’s son, to name a few.”
Headlined “Obama-Biden Administration Linked To Ghislaine Maxwell’s Hideout House Where She Got Arrested” and written by Patrick Howley – whom ambitiously claims to have also “exposed Ralph Northam’s racist yearbook photos, Cal Cunningham’s extramarital affair, the VA scandal, and broke other groundbreaking articles that have permanently altered the United States’ political landscape” – the article stated:
“A top Obama-Biden administration banking official employs and works with the man who set up the anonymous ‘LLC’ company that owned the house where Ghislaine Maxwell was hiding in New Hampshire when she was arrested by the FBI, according to records obtained by National File. How did Ghislaine Maxwell manage to lay low prior to her arrest in a house that was known as ‘Tuckedaway’? The paper trail leads to the doorstep of power.”
“Jeffrey Roberts was the listed manager of Granite Reality LLC, which mysteriously bought Ghislaine Maxwell’s house in Bradford, New Hampshire in cash. The LLC was formed the month before it bought the house for over $1 million. Thus, Jeffrey Roberts’ LLC owned the house where Ghislaine Maxwell got arrested, and Jeffrey Roberts has worked directly for an Obama-Biden official. Jeffrey Roberts was replaced at Granite Reality LLC after Maxwell’s arrest in 2020.”
“Jeffrey Roberts is a lawyer at the Boston law firm Nutter McLennen & Fish, which was led for many years by Thomas J. Curry, who served as a top official in the Barack Obama administration.”
“Thomas J. Curry was nominated in 2012 by Barack Obama to be Comptroller of the Currency, a Treasury Department office that manages U.S. federal banking. He was confirmed by the Senate and served in this important role until he was replaced in early 2017 in the early period of President Trump’s administration.”
“Thomas J. Curry is a retired partner at the Boston law firm Nutter McLennen & Fish. He served – or currently still serves – on the firm’s COVID-19 task force with Jeffrey Roberts, who is on the Executive Committee for the firm and who is the chairman of the firm’s Private Client Department. The firm’s website shows that both Curry and Jeffrey Roberts are listed on the Task Force.”
“Thomas J. Curry, identified as a Nutter partner, and two Nutter associates wrote an article for Banker & Tradesman in February 2021 discussing the Joe Biden administration’s new hires and how they were expected to push for financial regulation.”
“Why did Ghislaine Maxwell involve a lawyer from the Nutter firm to get her hideaway house and to keep her location secret?”
“The Maxwell family is integrally involved in geopolitics. Ghislaine Maxwell’s father Robert Maxwell was reportedly a spy for the nation of Israel.”
“As National File reported, at least two of Ghislaine Maxwell’s nephews worked for the Obama-Biden administration including a nephew at Hillary Clinton’s State Department and a nephew in the Obama-Biden White House. Ghislaine Maxwell’s associate accused human trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, broke into the globalist establishment in the 1970’s managing money at Bear Stearns for Edgar Bronfman, the father of heiresses Clare and Sara Bronfman, who oversaw the NXIVM human trafficking cult.”
“Sara Bronfman almost became the First Lady of Libya after Hillary Clinton’s overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi, while Ghislaine Maxwell’s nephew worked on the Libya issue for Hillary Clinton in her Benghazi-tainted term at the State Department. Jeffrey Epstein worked for the nation of Israel, according to former Israeli intelligence official Ari Ben-Menashe and confirmed by Rolling Stone magazine.”
“…Hunter Biden was instrumental in funding and assisting a company responsible for Ukraine biolabs. The Metabiota company, headed by a Ghislaine Maxwell partner named Nathan Wolfe, was in charge of setting up biolabs in Ukraine. The biolabs have sparked concern that dangerous materials could be used to fuel bioterrorism in Ukraine and around the world.”
“… The company Metabiota was founded by San Francisco-based virologist Nathan Wolfe, according to Wolfe’s LinkedIn page. Until recently, Nathan Wolfe served as Metabiota’s chairman and chief executive officer. The so-called ‘virus hunter’ Nathan Wolfe actually announced the TerraMar Project, a project that was reportedly Ghislaine Maxwell’s idea, and thus Nathan Wolfe was partnering with Ghislaine Maxwell on the project from the start, records reveal. The project was supposedly about saving the oceans, though the oceans were littered with over a billion Coronavirus facemasks in the year 2020 alone during the Scamdemic that the globalists pushed. The Huffington Post gave Ghislaine Maxwell a glowing profile about the project in 2014.”
In June 2022, The Steeple Times contacted Four Seasons Sotheby’s International Realty – who sold the then Mr and Mrs Borgerson ‘Tuckedaway’ in December 2019 to enquire of the then status of the 156-acre estate. Greg Gangalis of the firm responded: “Thank you for your inquiry. We have no information on this property and unfortunately have no contact information for the owner. Sorry we could not be of more help.”
Editor’s Note – Unlike as is the case in many publications, this article was NOT sponsored or supported by a third-party. Follow Matthew Steeples on Twitter at @M_Steeples.
Pictured Top – The entrance sign at the property (left); Scott Borgerson with Ghislaine Maxwell and two others (top right) and the main residence on the New Hampshire estate.
Granite Reality LLC, which ‘owns’ he house where Ghislaine Maxwell hid out, is most curiously connected to the very same woman, Leah Saffian, who allegedly helped her fake the In-N-Out burger photo which was used to distract and suggest the noxious nonce was in California whilst ‘on-the-run’ in the summer of 2020.In happier times… The now former Mr and Mrs Scott Borgerson seemed like they were destined for a life of luxury and lavishness back when they met in 2015. Little did Mr Borgerson know what he was in for, or, did he plan it all along? Did he know what was coming and did he, like his fellow submarine pilot, have deviousness on the brain? They say that the “truth is stranger than fiction” and in the case of a couple who hid their union even from Ghislaine Maxwell’s siblings until she was arrested, something most definitely stinks to high heaven.He’s definitely moved on… Scott Borgerson clearly doesn’t miss his old ‘missus’ Ghislaine. Though he clearly was never proud enough to be open with anyone (and nor was she) during their union – they married in either late 2015 or early 2016, depending on which source you might take as gospel – he’s now living it up with a sexually saucy “yoga enthusiast” with an “ass that could crack open a walnut” named Kris McGinn. On Instagram, she describes herself to her 149 followers as a “writer” and though she’s not posted since 19th October 2021, she previously bizarrely mused about ravens in October 2020. At that time, she quoted a bit of Edgar Allan Poe – “But the Raven still beguiling my sad fancy into smiling” – and stated: “Loved learning more about these marvelous creatures with Jim Benhke for this week’s Cricket.” Clearly, whilst she then got to “smile” when Ghislaine Maxwell got sent down on 29th December 2021, all the mucky madam got instead was an errant husband who, it seems, has managed to leave her with plenty of ‘wonga wonga.’Another former Maxwell-Borgerson pad, The Phippen-Smith House (AKA ‘Tidewood’), 301 Summer Street, Manchester-by-the-Sea, Cape Ann, Essex County, Massachusetts, MA 01944, United States of America remains for sale at a reduced price of £5.42 million ($6.75 million, €6.11 million or درهم24.79 million). The property was initially offered for £6.52 million ($6.95 million, €7.28 million or درهم25.52 million). The 6,113 square foot crib was purchased by a limited liability company controlled by Ghislaine Maxwell’s then “secret husband” Scott Borgerson for £2.294 million ($2.450 million, €2.564 million or درهم8.998 million) on 30th June 2016. During the transaction, decidedly deviant Ghislaine Maxwell is said to have used the pseudonym ‘Jennifer Ellmax.’
The Names & Numbers – Tuckedaway, 338 East Washington Road, Bradford, New Hampshire, NH 03221, United States of America
27th April 2022 – Realty website Redfin estimated value of £1.284 million ($1.601 million, €1.449 million or درهم5.880 million) listed for the property – which they reference as extending to 4,365 square foot and as including 4 bedrooms and 3.5 bathrooms.
Elsewhere, OpenCorporates list Granite Reality LLC (company number 831395) as being of a status of “not in good standing” and its registered address as 11420 Santa Monica Boulevard, #25424, Los Angeles, CA, 90025, United States of America. The firm’s “inactive director” is named as Leah Saffian – a close associate of Ghislaine Maxwell – and cites Jeffrey W. Roberts as having been removed as an officer on 8th February 2021.
24th June 2022 – Greg Gagalis, a regional manager at Four Seasons Sotheby’s International Realty’s Bedford, New Hampshire office, told The Steeple Times: “We have no information on this property and unfortunately have no contact information for the owner. Sorry we could not be of more help.”
2nd July 2020 – Ghislaine Maxwell is arrested at Tuckedaway.
In the weeks after her arrest, as she unsurprisingly unsuccessfully sought bail, Maxwell claimed via her lawyers that the “majority of her assets” had been transferred into a “trust controlled by her husband and another unnamed party.”
In documents submitted to the courts, they put her their worth at £17.1 million ($22.5 million, €20.5 million or درهم82.6 million) and suggested: “For Ms Maxwell to flee, she would have to abandon her spouse. She will not isk destroying the lives and financial well-being of those she holds most dear to live as a fugitive during a worldwide pandemic.”
Going further, they added: “In fact, every action Ms Maxwell has taken from the time of Epstein’s arrest up to the time of the first bail hearing was designed to protect her spouse… from harassment, economic harm, and physical danger. If Ms. Maxwell were to violate her bail conditions, which she has no intention of doing… she would be leaving her spouse…with virtually nothing.”
In a letter to Judge Alison J. Nathan, Mr Borgerson added: “The person described in the criminal charges is not the person we know. I have never witnessed anything close to inappropriate with Ghislaine. Quite to the contrary, the Ghislaine I know is a wonderful and loving person… I believe that Ghislaine had nothing to do with Epstein’s crimes.”
13th December 2019 – Purchased for £1.004 million ($1.070 million, €1.121 million or درهم3.932million) in a cash transaction on 13th December 2019 by a shell company formed on 18th November 2019 named Granite Reality LLC after being marketed by Margaret Weathers of Four Seasons Sotheby’s International Realty. Granite Realty LLC’s representative at the time was Jennifer Johnson of the same firm.
According to a report in the Concord Monitor in November 2020, “an office building in South Boston, 155 Seaport Boulevard, [was] listed as the LLC’s address. According to the documents, Granite Reality purchased the land from Massachusetts lawyer Richard Yospin for $1,070,800 on 13th December. Yospin could not be reached for comment by press time. An online listing names New London-based realtor Margaret Weathers as the agent who sold the property. Weathers declined to comment on the sale. Two different houses sit on the land, public records show – the larger, a farmhouse-style home built in 2003, the second a cabin dating to 1800. The records list the property’s assessed value at $923,787.”
19th April 2019 – Listed for sale for £959,000 ($1.195 million, €1.082 million or درهم4.389 million) according to realty website Zillow.
15th December 2017 – Sold for £843,000 ($1.050 million, €951,000 or درهم3.856 million) after having subject to a “pending sale” for £1.003 million ($1.250 million, €1.132 million or درهم4.591 million) on 18th October 2017.
2002 – Built in the “Cape” style as a “custom designed” timber framed single family residence. Subsequently described as an “outdoor lover’s dream home” and lauded for having “views of the Mount Sunapee foothills to the west” as well as a room with a “cathedral ceiling and a spectacular chandelier [and] a wall of glass [that] frames a stunning southwestern view beyond the stone patio.”
Matthew Steeples takes a look at a £36 million Kensington mansion formerly owned by disgraced business tycoons Alan Bond and Lord Black; its former chatelaine was known for stating “I have an extravagance that know no bounds”
Sir Winston Churchill’s daughter Mary Soames once described the buccaneering businessman and media tycoon Lord Black of Crossharbour as “London’s biggest bore unhung” whilst his wife, Lady Black – better known as the author and journalist Barbara Amiel – was suggested to be just a “rich bitch” by Sarah Sands in a “case for the defence” article in the Independent in October 2006.
“Poster boy for the 80s” turned fraudster and jailbird Alan Bond (1938 – 2015) was an English-Australian businessman equally Marmite-like in being liked or loathed and now a Kensington mansion owned for a time by both subsequently disgraced businessmen is once again for sale.
14 Cottesmore Gardens, formerly known as 12 – 14 Cottesmore Gardens, was purchased by Alan Bond’s Satellite Group for £7 million in the 1980s and sold by administrators of that business to Conrad Black and his wife for the knockdown sum of just £3.5 million in 1992.
Plain old Mr and Mrs Black (as they then were) lavished further millions – some of which came from the company Hollinger International, Inc., which ultimately resulted in their downfall – on the double fronted 19th century mansion and used it for entertaining on a lavish scale. Guests, including the likes of Prince and Princess Michael of Kent, Joan Collins, Margaret Thatcher, Henry Kissinger, Jimmy Goldsmith, James Hanson, Arnold Weinstock, Jacob Rothschild, Peter Mandelson and Tony Blair, were said to flock to the parties they gave there, but in 2005 these gatherings of upto 400 people at a time came to an almighty end.
Forced to sell at a bargain basement price of just £13.1 million on an ask of £17.5 million as the Canadian born billionaire faced jail time in America, Lord and Lady Black’s tenure was over and the residence saw its “arriviste torch” passed to Juan and Adriana Villalonga, a couple described as “a Mexican telecom czar and his beauty-queen wife.” Of what came next, The Globe And Mail’s Paul Waldie pointedly penned in February 2007: “[They] quickly erased many of the features that the Blacks prized.”
Once again for sale as of April 2023, the value of 14 Cottesmore Gardens has again been deemed to have substantially risen. Knight Frank offer the 12,310 square foot, five-storey residence at a punchy price of £36 million and laud it as “imposing” and “presented in good order throughout.” They add that a “pre-planning consultation” has found that further accommodation could be added that would take the internal space to more than 15,000 square feet; business barons with deep pockets only need apply.
Editor’s Note – Unlike as is the case in many publications, this article was NOT sponsored or supported by a third-party. Follow Matthew Steeples on Twitter at @M_Steeples.
Pictured Top – 54-foot wide 14 Cottesmore Gardens is described by selling agents Knight Frank as “offering lateral living so often requested but so hard to find in central London.” They neglect to mention that with its hedges cut back to the minimum, the place actually looks extremely forlorn.
Flamboyant Lord and Lady Black dressed as Cardinal Richelieu and Marie Antoinette for a party at Kensington Palace in 2000. For a time, the couple employed 17 butlers (if Tom Bower is to be believed) and had two private jets and homes – aside from the 19th Cottesmore Gardens mansion – in New York, Palm Beach and Toronto. “Guests packed into their parties at Cottesmore Gardens,” Bower remarked in his 2006 book the couple, adding: “Amiel was a big spender… Under the control of senior butler Andrew Lightwood, second butler Peter Wilson and a succession of third butlers, Amiel’s life in Kensington had become what her constantly changing staff called ‘bizarre.’ Each recruit was taken by Lightwood on an introductory tour of the house, ending on the roof. ‘Make sure the landing lights are on at all times,’ instructed Lightwood solemnly, ‘because Madame takes off from here on her broomstick looking for cats. She needs the lights to guide her return.’ His face would crack into a smile. ‘Most important, take care that she never sees you. She hates seeing any of us.’ Amiel’s eccentricity demanded that her staff hid whenever she approached, diving into cupboards if necessary, and never entered her quarters when she was present. Every day, all the bed linen was changed and subjected to ‘the penny test.’ A coin was dropped onto the sheets. If it failed to bounce they were not drawn sufficiently tight. Every cushion was arranged to a precise pre-ordained position, and each towel placed exactly as Amiel had predetermined. ‘Andrew!’ she screamed down the telephone on one memorable occasion, ‘the towels are in the wrong place!’ Lightwood, as Amiel knew, was in New York, but he was expected to telephone the staff in the house in London to rectify the error. ‘You f**king pillock!’ she yelled at another member of staff for reading her ‘Daily Mail’ before it was delivered to her.”Barbara Amiel Black (or ‘Lady Black’ as she prefers to be known) in her drawing room at Cottesmore Gardens (pictured). Of her, Sarah Sands on Lord and Lady Black in the ‘Independent’ in October 2006 opined: “Conrad and Barbara in their monstrous, glamorous way, knew how to throw parties. The talk was of geo-politics and hemlines. Nowadays, we scorn their extravagance and doubt the source of their wealth with prune-faced hindsight. Meanwhile, everyone is sucking up to Russians…. Barbara would disingenuously begin her midnight calls to me by saying in her low, breathy voice: ‘I hope I am not disturbing you.’ She would then offer little glimpses of her own home life. I remember her mentioning that Conrad Black was upstairs playing with his fleet of toy gun ships in the bath… I remember her examining an exhibition of doll’s houses at the Chelsea Flower Show and sighing how restful it would be to live in this cosy little home. How she envied people in small houses. The burden of wealth was one of her more dangerous fantasies. At one of her Gatsby-style parties in Kensington, she flinched at the elaborate canapés on offer: ‘Really, all I want is a sausage,’ she said, piteously. Then, she ran a hand down her inconceivably expensive dress and whispered: ‘I hate these parties, I am so shy.’ Later, I was invited to her boudoir, where she lay on cushion surrounded by her women friends. She was Kensington’s Cleopatra, surrounded by maidens such as the designer and Forte daughter Olga Polizzi, the political thinker Tessa Keswick and the writer Miriam Gross.”The very same drawing room at 14 Cottesmore Gardens today. The décor is now somewhat more modern and less ‘classical country house-ified.’ It’s certainly more Soho Farmhouse than Alberto Pinto in style; it is currently a space that the former Meghan Markle would feel more at home than say, perhaps, the likes of Lord and Lady Black’s chum Ghislaine Maxwell and her fellow noxious nonce Ponzi scheming paedophile boyfriend Jeffrey Epstein. Mr Pinto was responsible, it should be noted, for the designs of most of Epstein’s residences.The front elevation of 12 – 14 Cottesmore Gardens during the era it was owned by Lord and Lady Black.Multiple entries for Lord and Lady Black during the time they owned 14 Cottesmore Gardens appeared in the ‘Little Black Book’ address book often attributed as being that of the friends and associates of Jeffrey Epstein, but that featured more of the contacts of Ghislaine Maxwell in fact. In October 2020, Barbara Amiel took revenge on the pension pot plunderer’s padeophile sex trafficker daughter by featuring her in her “score-settling” memoir ‘Friends & Enemies: A Life in Vogue, Prison, & Park Avenue.” Maxwell had “dumped” Lady Black when Lord Black was being investigated for fraud. She wrote of their last meeting: “We were friends – so putting on my ‘So good to see you’ face, I headed for her. She bolted. Turned that sharp tight little turn when you really want to get away. And that was it.” Of the clear lover of plastic surgery Lady Black, in October 2020, Sarah Sands remarked in ‘The Mail on Sunday’: “She had a bohemian, almost masculine, view of opportunistic sex. She describes, for instance, accompanying an early love in his white Triumph sports car ‘in which once or twice I had performed fellatio to the fascination of passing truck drivers, all for fun.’”After getting out of the clink in 2012, Lord and Lady Black decided to go back on the ‘razzle-dazzle’ and posed for photographers before heading back to London to party with friends. In May 2019, the rambunctious peer arrogantly announced he’d be returning to the House of Lords after President Donald Trump pardoned and praised him. Commenting, of this pardon, Lord Black declared: “I’m not bitter… Officially in the United States, I’ve never been charged and I won in the end. It was a war and there are casualties in wars. I lost the time, I lost a lot of money, but as you can see my standards of living isn’t bad… The truth is, these, last 15 years, I haven’t been as interested in British politics as I was before – in the Thatcher years. It could be quite interesting again, in fact it is as of right now – it’s very interesting… It’s my good fortune that at a time when it is feasible, it happens – by happy coincidence – that it is a time of great fermentation in British public affairs.” Surprisingly, he doesn’t seem to have turned up on occasions since.The previous owner of 14 Cottesmore Gardens, Alan Bond (1938 – 2015), will forever be remembered as “Australia’s most notorious corporate criminal.” Born in Hammersmith, London, Bond’s first crime occurred when he was charged with theft aged 14 in Fremantle in Australia and whilst he is remembered for bankrolling the successful challenge for the 1983 America’s Cup, it is for causing the then biggest corporate collapse in Australian history that he will be go down in history. Former Miss Mexico Adriana Abascal López-Cisneros (at the time Adriana Villalonga) bought the house in 2005. She divorced the Spanish businessman Juan Villalonga in 2009 and married the French businessman Emmanuel Schreder in Ibiza in June 2013. In August 2014, the magazine ‘Quién’ featured the model and television presenter on its cover and at that time she described her new husband as “the love of my life.”Madrid born Juan Villalonga became the joint owner of 14 Cottesmore Gardens with his then wife Adriana Abascal – the couple were married between 2000 and 2009 – in 2005. He is listed on Companies House as being a director of the now dissolved Medikidz Foundation at the address between August 2009 and November 2013. Married since 2011 to a photographer named Vanessa Von Zitewitz, Mr Villalonga was a partner at McKinsey & Company in the 1980s, CEO for Credit Suisse First Boston and Bankers Trust in Spain in the early 1990s and CEO of Telefónica from 1996 to 2000. He was named as one of the best performing chief executive officers in the world by ‘Harvard Business Review’ in 2010 and is also linked to addresses in Monaco.
The Names & Numbers – 14 Cottesmore Gardens (formerly known as ’12 – 14 Cottesmore Gardens’), Kensington, London, W8 5PR, United Kingdom
April 2023 – Offered for sale for £36 million ($44.4 million, €40.9 million or درهم163.2 million) through Knight Frank. Valued on Homipi at an upper sum of £28.558 million ($35.250 million, €32.440 million or درهم129.456 million).
2009 – Mr and Mrs Villalonga divorce and subsequently Adriana Abascal married Emmanuel Schreder, a French businessman, in Ibiza in June 2013.
2005 – Sold by Lord and Lady Black for £13.1 million ($16.2 million, €14.9 million or درهم59.4 million) to Spanish businessman Juan Villalonga Navarro and Mexican model, Miss Mexico winner and television presenter Adriana Abascal López-Cisneros Villalonga.
October 2004 – Placed for sale for £17.5 million ($21.6 million, €19.9 million or درهم79.3 million) according to NZ Herald.
January 2004 – Valued at £14 million ($17.3 million, €15.9 million or درهم63.5 million) according to The Globe And Mail. At the time, the “mansion” in “the upscale Kensington neighbourhood” was described as having “10 bedrooms, 6 bathrooms and a swimming pool.”
Featured also in The Guardian in an article by Chris Tryhorn. Quoting Lord Black, he shared: “At a certain price, anything is for sale. [It has] been shown to people in the not-too-distant-past.”
Going further, Tryhorn added: “Artwork from the 18th and 19th centuries lines the walls, and there is plenty of storage space for the extensive wardrobe and shoe collection of Lord Black’s wife, Barbara Amiel, who famously declared once that her ‘extravagence knows no bounds.’ … It was originally two homes and one of the two original front doors is now a ‘deliveries’ entrance. He has used it in the past to host dinners with butler and maid service that was part-paid by Hollinger.”
Also in 2004, in a profile in The Spectator, Peter Oborne wrote:
“Every year the Blacks threw two parties, one at Christmas and one summer event, at their double-fronted 11-bedroom mansion in Cottesmore Gardens. Everybody who mattered at the time went: Margaret Thatcher, Henry Kissinger, Jimmy Goldsmith, James Hanson, Arnold Weinstock, Jacob Rothschild, royalty, the playwright Tom Stoppard.”
“Some of these, injudiciously as it turned out, agreed to join the main Hollinger board. The luckier ones – Peter Carrington, Robert Salisbury – got away with being made directors of TheTelegraph. As the Tories faded out, Labour ministers started to arrive, the indefatigable Peter Mandelson, David Blunkett and other ministers eager to ingratiate themselves with the Tory press. Prince and Princess Michael of Kent were assiduous in attendance. In London, the Nineties belonged to the Blacks. They were London’s most glamorous power couple.”
“There had been a time when both Blacks had kept their feet on the ground. This ceased to be the case. One evening Barbara Black rang Charles Moore panic-stricken from her Kensington home. There had been a last-minute drop-out from one of the famous Black dinner parties. ‘I’m short of a woman,’ she told Moore. Moore surveyed the newsroom. His gaze alighted on the journalist Eleanor Mills, by chance the stepdaughter of the Cabinet minister Tessa Jowell.”
“An hour later, hastily groomed, made-up and brushed, Mills was sipping pre-dinner drinks in Cottesmore Gardens. Then disaster struck. A male guest, Max Fisher, dropped out. Mills was approached by Conrad Black. ‘Finish your drink and skedaddle,’ he told her. Barbara Black then told her to go to the kitchen and out through the servants’ door, where the driver would pick her up and take her home.”
2001 – Conrad Black is elevated to a life peerage in the United Kingdom at the suggestion of Tony Blair. He sat on the Conservative benches in the House of Lords until 2007 as The Right Honourable The Lord Black of Crossharbour KCSG, but took a “leave of absence” between 2012 and 2019.
28th May 1996 – The Royal Borough of Kensington And Chelsea ordered that 12 – 14 Cottesmore Gardens “shall be known and described” simply instead as 14 Cottesmore Gardens.
Mid 1990s – The Blacks set about renovating 12 and 14 Cottesmore Gardens with the help of J. E. Evans Associates. Of the work in October 2006, The Sunday Times shared a segment of Tom Bower’s 2006 hatchet job Conrad and Lady Black that read: “Amiel vowed to create a palace that would attract celebrity worshipers of a power couple. Part of the first floor was to be removed to create a huge ground floor reception area.”
1992 – 12 and 14 Cottesmore Gardens sold by the administrators of the affairs of Alan Bond through estate agents Savills to media tycoon Conrad Black and his Watford born journalist wife Barbara Amiel Black for “well under the asking price” for a sum of £3.5 million ($4.3 million, €4 million or درهم15.9 million).
Mr Bond had been granted mortgages valued at £16.2 million ($20 million, €18.4 million or درهم73.5 million) on the property by Bell Satellite Services on the property along with two others at 4 and 16 Belgrave Mews in London, SW1 previously according to a report published by Financial Review in March 1990.
1991 – Rented to an American businessman for £6,000 per week ($7,400, €6,800 or درهم27,200 per week).
1990 – Placed in the hands of administrators of Mr Bond’s and placed for sale through Savills for a bargain basement sum of £3.8 million ($4.7 million, €4.3 million or درهم17.2 million) according to Financial Review.
1980s – Sold to Alan Bond’s Bell Satellite Group for £7 million ($8.6 million, €8 million or درهم31.7 million).
Circa 1905 – Walter Tapper is said to have “designed a library with handsome Arts and Crafts plasterwork (now removed) at the rear of the building.”
1869 – In their current marketing blurb, Knight Frank suggest: “There has been a house on the site of 12 – 14 Cottesmore Gardens since at least 1869. The current house has been altered, extended and most notably joined over the subsequent century and a half. With the local planning department strongly opposed to further amalgamation of homes, opportunities to acquire a house of this width will be rarer still in the future.”
1850s to 1860s – Built “under the direction of David Howell, of Serjeants Inn, Fleet Street.” Mr Howell was described in 1853 as an “articled clerk to a solicitor, lately carrying on business as a solicitor.” The architecture was lauded as: “Designed in a bold classical manner, with rather fleshy consoles and modillions… and bands of Vitruvian scroll between the bases of the ground-floor windows.”
More photographs of the £36 million mansion…
An entrance hall where power and privilege have most certainly mingled previously.The 54-foot wide drawing is lauded by selling realtors Knight Frank as “arguably the best room in the house” and “double aspect.” They add: “[It has] six windows overlooking the street and additional views over the private garden to the rear.”The columns where Barbara Amiel Black once posed for photographs remain, but the subsequent owners eliminated much of the 1990s ‘brash’ that had been installed by a Watford born woman whose excess clearly offended so many.This dining room, where Conrad Black hosted presidents and prime ministers, is now somewhat diminished. The table for eight looks completely out of place and a future owner would do well to install something a little grander.A double height entertaining space was installed at the insistence of the loftier-than-lofty Lady Black in the 1990s and it remains today. However, it is now currently being used for more casual affairs such as Netflix viewing rather than being the scene of something that you’d more likely find in the ‘House of Cards’ in fact.A new owner might reinstate the grandeur of the past; sadly, however, this seems unlikely and the purchaser is more likely to be a footballer or Internet tycoon than a super-connected business tycoon.This currently very dark and very depressing study would most certainly not appeal to the very clearly very, very bright yet very, very pompous The Right Honourable The Lord Black of Crossharbour KCSG – a man who is said to count Julius Caesar and Napoleon Bonaparte as “his military heroes.” Of him in July 1997, Mark Honigsbaum in the ‘Independent’ remarked: “Although Black’s grandfather had briefly been a business partner of Harold Harmsworth, the original Viscount Rothermere, it was from his father, George Montegu Black Jr, that Black learned the art of corporate warfare, the importance of historical perspective and that gambling provides a disappointing rate of return compared to the Dow Jones index… The young Conrad was precocious. At the age of eight he sank his life savings of $60 into a single share of General Motors. He also became obsessed with Napoleon, and would astound his father’s friends by reeling off details of campaigns. Another story has him washing dollar bills and hanging them out to dry on a line outside his father’s home in Toronto. The last is apocryphal – Black says he slipped in the mud and was cleaning his change – but the image of the young capitalist, wise beyond his years, is accurate. His childhood tutor, the historian Laurier LaPierre, once asked Black why he always seemed to have the air of someone waiting for something to happen… A few years ago, for instance, the rumour went round Fleet Street that Black had bought Napoleon’s preserved penis at an auction. Black denied it, but many remain convinced that Bonaparte’s body part sits in Black’s collection of military curios… Black is no philanderer and is devoted to his second wife, the former ‘Sunday Times’ columnist Barbara Amiel. They are said to be intellectual soul mates and the parties at their four-storey mansion in Kensington are famous for bringing together a cross-section of the great and good.”One could not imagine the likes of the late great Baroness Thatcher, for example, liking the idea of sitting in this extremely depressing and dark waiting area. A new owner would do well to obliterate a décor scheme that could have only been favoured by a completely colour blind banker.A room currently described as a ‘cinema room’ measures 28’6” by 21’6” and is situated at the rear of the house. One can imagine Conrad Black having sat here for hour upon hour watching historical dramas about Napoleon with the likes of chums such as the acclaimed historian Andrew Roberts, the gambling tycoon John Aspinall and the politician and diarist Alan Clark, but a new owner will be more likely next showing episodes of ‘Succession’ – based on ‘The Telegraph’ tycoon’s rival Rupert Murdoch – than viewing historical works one most definitely suspects.Dining whilst the staff cook would NEVER have been on the agenda in the era that pomposity reigned whilst Lady Black was chatelaine of 14 Cottesmore Gardens.A 2,000 square foot entire floor fit for a tycoon… The master bedroom suite of the house takes up the entirety of the second floor of the building. It incorporates not only the principal bedroom, but also a “his” dressing room and a “her” dressing room as well as a sitting area, a bathroom, a shower room and storage rooms. It has direct lift access and is bigger than the average Brit’s entire house.A dressing room in the house where Barbara Black opened up to ‘Vogue’ and displayed “closets overflowing with dazzling evening gowns, designer handbags and 100 pairs of Manolo Blahnik shoes. ‘I have an extravagance that knows no bounds,’ she famously declared. Unfortunately for Lady Black, the article was closely perused at investment company Tweedy, Browne, a Hollinger International shareholder.”This playroom certainly did not exist in the era that Lord and Lady Black owned the property. It would be more likely crammed with books or stuffed with Manolo Blahnik shoes than toys from Toys ‘R Us. A new owner may likely reinstate it as an additional bedroom or office or games room perhaps.The pool room measures 43’9” by 26’9” and is no doubt where Lady Black spent many an hour relaxing.The garden to the rear was where Lord and Lady Black hosted their annual summer party (with guests “spilling” into their drawing room also). In surprisingly Tardis-like fashion, the duo were able to supposedly squeeze in upto 400 guests at such occasions. Amongst those said to have enjoyed hospitality there were Joan Collins and of such, magazine publisher Nicholas Coleridge wrote: “If you get a kick out of milling about with present and former prime ministers, cabinet ministers, minor royals, dukes, editors, vastly rich Americans, distinguished historians, gossip columnists, playboys and lots of pretty ‘it’ girls, then this was the place to be.”The existing floor plan of the property illustrates the vast scale of the building offered. A buyer, Knight Frank observe, has additional options and “a pre-planning consultation has been carried out with RBKC by leading architects Studio Indigo.” They add: “[It] would completely reconfigure the house adding an additional basement floor and taking the internal space to more than 15,000 square foot. The resulting house would have a 40-foot by 41-foot south-facing rear garden.”A plan of the site as presented in 1996 when 12 and 14 became known just as 14 Cottesmore Gardens.
Bungling berk Boris Johnson is supposedly upsizing and has allegedly bought the £4 million Brightwell Manor in Oxfordshire; the lavish lush that is the former Carrie Symonds will need a big budget if she is to clad the colossal 10,508 square foot crib in £840 per roll Lulu Lytle wallpaper
In November 2019, Country Life’s longstanding property correspondent described a “rare part-moated manor house set in almost five acres of gardens and grounds at the heart of the picturesque Oxfordshire village of Brightwell-cum-Sotwell, on the eastern edge of the Vale of the White Horse” named Brightwell Manor as a “forever home.”
Featured in The Times in an article by Liz Rowlinson in November last year after it “had three viewings so far from Americans,” the part-Tudor, part-Georgian house and its annexe and guest cottage provides a total of 10,508 square foot of accommodation over three floors. It has a total of 9 bedrooms and 5 bathrooms and if The Guardian is to be believed, it has just been sold to the former Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his considerably younger than himself wife.
Brightwell Manor has been owned by the same family since 1971, so, if indeed the Johnsons are the purchasers, the former Carrie Symonds will need to spend a hell of a lot of money on Lulu Lytle wallpaper to bring it “upto scratch.” This is a place that needs a lot of work and no doubt, ‘Carrie On Regardless’ already has plans bring in also ‘Lady Doors-To-Manual’ Carole Bamford’s JCB diggers to help install a swimming pool in the 4.88-acre grounds.
Suitably for the Brexiteer buffoon Johnson – who got paid an £88,000 advance in 2015 for a book on Shakespeare that he’s never bothered to actually write – in their marketing blurb, the selling agents predictably claimed: “Of its many owners perhaps the most notable was the Reverend Doctor W. R. Inge, Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral and Knight Commander of the Victorian Order. He was a prolific author and used the family room as his study for writing.” Maybe now, this is a room that will become the place where the “pyramid of piffle” that will be Johnson’s memoirs might finally get written.
Described as a “village of picture postcard prettiness” and as “in estate agents’ jargon, this is a sought after village, but it is much more than a pretty face” on the local community website, Brightwell-cum-Sotwell – which flooded in 2014 and has a CAMRA award-winning pub named the Red Lion where Johnson will no doubt get smashed with his wife and the likes of Henry Newman and Josh Grimstone – has a population of around 1,500 people. It lies between the towns of Didcot and Wallingford, is 55 miles west of London is and close to Didcot Parkway train station – which has trains running to Paddington in just 37 minutes.
Offered for sale in November 2019 at a somewhat punchy price of £5 million by Hamptons International, the “magnificent Grade II listed Georgian village house” stands on the likely site of the long since vanished Brightwell Castle. It was relaunched to the market subsequently for a sum £1 million lower by Andrew Russell of agents The Country House Department in October 2022.
“[This is a] properly edge-of-village house, so that you can be involved in the village community, or you can keep to yourself, depending on what you’d prefer.”
“The property used to be moated all the way around, with about two-thirds of this moat remaining today. [It was the tallest house in the area at the time of its building and it was] not good form to build a house that was taller than the local church. To rectify this, the family who built it also added a red brick tower onto the local church, St Agatha’s, which reaches just higher than the façade.”
“I believe Brightwell Manor once owned all the land around, and it was a big apple farming estate, so some of those trees may be very old.”
Johnson also currently owns a Grade II listed property in Oxfordshire, The Old Farm House at North Weston, near Thame. He bought it with his then wife Marina Wheeler for £640,000 in 2003 and most memorably came out in an ‘Xchanging’ branded hoodie to serve journalists tea in August 2018 during the scandal about him comparing Muslim women to letterboxes.
Featuring what Country Life’s Carla Passino called “true blue tiles,” Johnson – who got to keep the £1.25 million crib as part of his February 2020 divorce settlement – placed the 2,659 square foot property for rent for a sum of £4,250 per month through Strutt & Parker in April 2021. It is not known whether he intends to keep The Old Farm House or whether he’ll still be able to continue to bed down at the Knightsbridge residence of Lord and Lady Bamford that he has most recently been calling “home.”
Editor’s Note – Unlike as is the case in many publications, this article was NOT sponsored or supported by a third-party.
During his time married to Marina Wheeler, Boris Johnson lived much more modestly. Clearly, his ambitious and avaricious current wife Carrie would never contemplate living in a somewhat shabby former farmhouse.During their time in Downing Street, the Johnsons lived-it-up during lockdowns with their mates. Aside from boozing and bopping to ABBA with Henry Newman and Josh Grimstone, this grasping pair grabbed at least £30,000 of organic loot from their mate Lady Bamford’s Daylesford Organic. It was delivered by bike and van and no doubt, once in residence at their new mansion, they’ll be getting a hell of a lot more dropped off from the Gloucestershire emporiums of Daylesford.The Very Reverend William Inge KCVO FBA lived in the house for 30 years. He was born in Yorkshire, nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature three times and was also a trustee of the National Portrait Gallery from 1921 until 1951. A “strong proponent of the spiritual type of religion,” Inge was nicknamed “The Gloomy Dean” because of his pessimistic views and of social welfare he claimed: “It penalized the successful while subsidising the weak and the feckless.” Boris Johnson will no doubt take inspirtation from this in his writing in what was once his study.
The Names & Numbers – Brightwell Manor, off Brightwell Street, Brightwell-cum-Sotwell, Wallingford, Oxfordshire, OX10 0RT, United Kingdom
February 2023 – Listed as “sold subject to contract” on Rightmove with the purchaser being Boris Johnson at a price of circa £4 million ($4.8 million, €4.5 million or درهم17.7 million), The Guardian reports.
November 2022 – Featured in The Times and touted as being an example as to “why Americans are buying up Britain’s country estates.”
November 2019 – Offered for sale for £5 million ($6 million million, €5.6 million or درهم22.1 million) through Hamptons International and featured in Country Life.
1971 – Sold for a sum unknown by William Inge’s sons to a family who continued to own it until its recent sale.
Of them, Penny Churchill observed: “They hadn’t been long installed in their new home when, one day, they saw walking up the drive the distinctive figure of a former Government Minister, who – figuratively if not literally – whipped out his cheque book and invited them to name their price.”
“However, having only just found the right house for them and their five children, they had little hesitation in declining their visitor’s generous offer. Now, 50 years on, a similar approach would perhaps be more favourably received.”
1954 – William Inge died at the house aged 93. He is buried in the graveyard St Agatha’s, the adjoining church to the property.
1950s – Extended by The Very Reverend William Inge KCVO FBA (1860 – 1954), its then owner. Of him, Penny Churchill observed: “[Inge was] an eminent theologian and writer, who was nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature on three occasions. He served as Dean of St Paul’s from 1911 until 1934, when he retired to live at Brightwell Manor, dying there 30 years later.”
9th April 1952 – Listed Grade II by Heritage England.
1933 – Offered for sale for £2,000 or the equivalent of £11,300 today ($13,600, €12,700 or درهم50,000 today)
1910s and 1920s – Penny Churchill stated: “Brightwell Manor remained part of a thriving estate until the outbreak of the First World War, after which it was sold a number of times as casualties mounted. A report in Country Life on March 27, 1920, announced the sale of Brightwell with six acres of land, describing it as ‘an historical and commodious Georgian Residence of very attractive appearance, having extensive views over the famous Berkshire Downs. The pasture land here is of considerable value, letting readily at £4 an acre.’”
1600s – The earliest Tudor part of the house is constructed as a “modest farmhouse modest farmhouse on the surrounding farming estate, being gradually gentrified until, towards the end of the 18th century, the symmetrical Georgian front was added. A red-brick coach house, latterly converted to a two-bedroom cottage, was added in the 1840s,” Penny Churchill suggested.
Pictures of ‘Bungling Boris’s’ new country crib…
This ain’t Chequers, but it ain’t too shabby either.The drawing room, in its current condition, resembles something like that of the home of Polly Urquhart in the 1980s BBC bonkbusting classic ‘Howards’ Way.’ No doubt, Lulu Lytle will be drafted in to deck this room out in a somewhat more gaudy shade of gold.The dining room has tones of Liberal Democrat to it that the Johnsons will no doubt want to erase.This is presumably the room where ‘The Gloomy Dean’ wrote many of his works. Will it be the place where ‘Bosie The Clown’ is actually inspired to finally finish any of his?Perhaps the calamity formerly known as Carrie Symonds will take to the piano in this sitting room and bash out some of ABBA’s tunes when visited by the pugnacious pair she allegedly nicknamed “the gays” that are Henry Newman and Josh Grimstone.Another sitting room clearly has sofas that are more of the colour of Sir Keir Starmer currently. It also features a fireplace with a tiny painting above it that would be more at home in Phillip Schofield’s broom cupboard.The kitchen is decidedly basic and still present is a 1930s AGA stove; that presumably won’t be that off-putting to the Johnsons given that this pair of grifters can rely on Lady Bamford to supply them with freebies and ready-made organic meals from Daylesford whenever they want.This staircase hallway has been wallpapered with a print that will remind the former Prime Minister of that that adorns the Pugin-esque Palace of Westminster.If Mrs Johnson wants to inspire her husband to finally put pen to paper, she could cram these shelves with relevant literature.A bedroom for Boris? This wood-panelled sleeping chamber will likely become the ‘Baby Dada’ of children unknown’s place where he and his wife rest their wicked heads.Another of the many bedrooms features a sofa that was clearly bought at Ikea. Lulu Lytle will have that straight in the skip.The house adjoins St Agatha’s church. Will the former Prime Minister become a regular there and will he attend with a view to seek redemption for his many, many, many crimes whilst in office?The gardens are flat and vast and are noted for the apple trees planted generations ago. ‘Carrie On Regardless’ might be able to develop a sideline in making cider using them or perhaps she’ll start making apple pies.The moat of Brightwell Manor could prove useful if Boris Johnson is forced to face visits from the anti-Brexiteer Steve Bray or climate change campaigners such as Greta Thunberg.Aside from the main residence, the building comes with an annexe and cottage also. Perfect for when good old Dominic Cummings wants to come round for a weekend outing; it’d save him the drive to Durham, after all.The house, seen from the side, is all front and no trousers. The Georgian element that gives it grandeur is actually not the prime part of the property; a bit like Boris Johnson himself, in fact.Viewed from a drone, the nigh on 5-acre ‘estate’ backs onto open countryside and has a vast area of gravel to the front; perfect for visits from the convoys of limousines of oligarchs like Lord Lebedev.Set back from the village but near enough to the pub for ‘BoJo’ to escape his wine chucking wife when required, Brightwell Manor has the privacy from the press a former premier will require yet gives him the ability to walk down the drive to ‘pull a John Gummer’ with a BSE burger at the garden gate if ever that might be required.Tennis anyone? The former Prime Minister can perhaps woe his next love or lover on the property’s court.A floor plan of the new home of the most loathsome leader of the Conservative Party.Seen on GoogleMaps… This will no doubt soon get blurred for the sake of privacy.Heritage England’s map will no doubt be vamoosed also.
EXCLUSIVE – As bungling berk Boris Johnson lives it up for free in a £20 million Knightsbridge mansion courtesy of Lord and Lady Bamford, a neighbour demands that he and his wife are told to “disembark”
Boris Johnson is one of those people who likes to live beyond his means, but now this bungling berk has well and truly hit the jackpot and is living courtesy of Lord and Lady Bamford in not only a Cotswold cottage but also in a Knightbridge mansion owned by the “incredibly richer than yow” digger manufacturing duo.
A step up from the by comparison somewhat crappy pad in Camberwell where him and his now wife ‘Princess Nut Nut’ Carrie notoriously had a police incident after a bit of wine chucking, the Egerton Terrace house that the Mirror has been touting as being worth £20 million ($24.5 million, €22.6 million or درهم89.8 million) is a far ritzier residence. Mr Johnson now counts one of Hugh Grant’s favourite dining spots, Giovanni, amongst his near neighbours and if he fancies a truly divine martini, the Egerton House Hotel is just a hop, skip and a jump away.
An adjoining neighbour to the Bamford owned property contacted The Steeple Times to comment on her thoughts on the former Prime Minister taking up residence. She understandably raged:
“I am disgusted that Carole and Anthony [Bamford] have allowed Boris Johnson to take up occupancy as the disruption is immense. I’ve seen his security detail and they are not the kind of people we want in our neighbourhood. They are obnoxious, pushy and rude. They are just like him, in fact, also.”
“The garden of the house where I live adjoins where Boris Johnson is now living in and I’ve heard him pacing around outside in the early hours ranting into his mobile phone. He sounds like a very angry man and I am worried that there could be a domestic incident between him and his wife also. She sounds like a very ‘noisy bird,’ I must say. She is a bit of a ‘fish wife,’ I do suspect.”
“I now very much hope that once they read this, ‘Lady Doors-to-Manual’ [ex-airline hostess] Bamford will be telling the Johnsons to disembark. The presence of this pillock will cause property prices to plummet. Get him gone!”
Editor’s Note – Unlike as is the case in many publications, this article was NOT sponsored or supported by a third-party.
Pictured Top – Lord and Lady Bamford (left) are a couple who like to live ‘large’ at their Daylesford estate in the Cotswolds and elsewhere also; Boris Johnson (right), pictured outside their Knightsbridge pad, is a grifter who likes to live at their expense.
The disheveled not dishy ex-Prime Minister has been spotted wandering around the Knightsbridge neighbourhood. According to ‘The Guardian’ this morning, he is building up a “war chest but he isn’t building bridges.” His new company has managed to garner around £3.5 million in the 9 months since he left office and it is being suggested that this father of children total unknown is planning a “political comeback.”If you’d paid £10 million for a Knightsbridge crib, would you want a feckless father of multiple kids by multiple women and a wine chucking ex-employee of a charity associated with the sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell as neighbours? Hell no!One wonders who’ll the Johnsons will be inviting round to dinner… They could bag a piece of artwork if they invited round the cancer ridden paedophile Rolf Harris.The ex-MP and ‘Naughty Tory’ Charlie Elphicke – whose immigrant hater wife Natalie now sits in his former seat in Dover – could be another possible dining companion in tony Knightsbridge. He’s supposedly down on his uppers and in need of a bit of sustenance; Carrie could perhaps cheer him up with a bit of ABBA dancing with Josh Grimstone and Henry Newman if nothing else.The Bamfords might have something to fear if any of the antics of the Bullingdon Club ensue during the occupancy of their current guests. Broken windows might be the beginning of their problems, but with the former Carrie Symonds in tow, God only knows what further damage will be done to the JCB tycoons’ London home.A greetings card that the owners of properties on Egerton Terrace, London, SW3 might like to utilise.
Current neighbours of Boris and Carrie Johnson in the tony district of Knightsbridge have declared that they’d like a rendition of Sir Cliff Richard’s “Carrie (doesn’t live here anymore)” played and the departure of the wine chucking wench and her puppet husband Boris Johnson.
Bizarre Detroit house built of ‘Cotswold stone’ marketed for sale as a “19th century United Kingdom castle;” its price is 48% lower than when last sold in 2021 and its interior is beyond curious
Nicknamed ‘Motor City,’ Detroit is best known as the place where Henry Ford pioneered the use of production lines to mass manufacture automobiles. It had a population of 639,000 as of the 2020 census and is often cited for its connections with gangsters and violent crime.
Bizarrely, however, now a realtor is somewhat laughably trying to sell a dilapidated house built in 1925 in one of the ‘toniest’ districts in this place of plenty of no-go areas as a “19th century United Kingdom castle” of “elegance and grandeur.” It actually resembles something only maybe Morticia Addams might, as it is currently presented, love.
The residence does indeed feature a ‘Great Hall’ that is certainly not what one would expect to find in the midst of a housing estate. It certainly has character, but is more akin to being in a village hall than a residential dwelling. Of it, in a Facebook group discussing this and other properties, one comment reads: “That tiny fireplace in the giant, drafty room wouldn’t put a dent in a Michigan winter. That room needs four or six fireplaces. It looks so cold.”Many of the rooms are decorated in a very odd fashion and throughout the building someone once busied themselves randomly painting vines and creepers. They’re not exactly masterpieces.This particular room wouldn’t look out of place in a brothel or the home of the dastardly decorator and champagne swiller Dawn Ward.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7GN_F9ykjxE
The marketing video shared by estate agent Matt O’Laughlin is accompanied by Pachebel’s Canon in D Major. Clearly, O’Laughlin sees the house as potentially usable as a wedding venue given that the accompanied canon has been one of the most used pieces of music at weddings since the 1980s throughout the western world.The rear yard of the house, with lots of exposed earth, most definitely gives off serial killer film set vibes. Goodness knows what’s buried here.Throughout the house are lots of odd-looking cupboards. One commentator on Facebook describes them as being “suitable for use perhaps by a child catcher.” Chilling, at the very least.Yet more examples of “child catcher cupboards.”Whilst the bathrooms are perhaps original in terms of their tiling and fitting, somebody oddly has decided to write text just beneath the ceiling. Whilst the full narrative here cannot be read, it includes: “Think but this and all is mended. That you have but slumber’d here…” Okay. Corridor areas do look especially creepy and dungeon-esque.The ‘Detroit Free Press’ advertisement from 19th September 1943 offering the house – then described at 19551 Burlington Road – for sale at an undisclosed price by an “owner anxious to sell.”
Priced currently at just £412,200 after having previously sold in October 2021 for the far punchier sum of £748,300, the 8,019 square foot property at 19551 Burlington Drive is situated in a district known as Palmer Woods. It includes 7 bedrooms, 6.5 bathrooms, a 4-car garage and stands on a plot that extends to 0.57 acres.
Described as being of “Cotswold stone” construction and “a one-of-a-kind estate” in spite of its small plot, the 3-storey building offered includes what the selling agent Matt O’Laughlin of Max Broock Realtors references as “soaring wood-beamed ceilings, long arched hallways, intricate custom millwork, and a great hall fit for a modern-day king and queen.”
The Palmer Woods sub-division itself extends to around 188 acres and has been home to everyone from presidents of motor corporations including Chevrolet, Chrysler and Dodge to politicians such as the 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney. For a time in the 1920s, a leading member of Detroit’s Purple Gang – a gang so feared that even Al Capone kowtowed to it – lived in a house there and more recently the former Detroit Pistons player John Salley was master of a 35,000 crib that was originally built by the Archdiocese of Detroit.
In March 2011, The Atlantic featured Palmer Woods in an article by Ta-Nehisi Coates titled ‘The Other Detroit.’ Whilst lauding it as a “really beautiful neighbourhood in the north-west portion of the city,” she pointedly referenced how when it was founded it was decreed that lots should “not be sold or leased or to be occupied by any person or persons other than that of the Caucasian race.” A clause, however, allowed: “This shall not be interpreted to exclude occupancy by persons other than of the Caucasian race when such occupancy is incidental to their employment on the premises.”
When 19551 Burlington Drive – also known as ‘The Souther Residence’ – was offered for sale in September 1943 by an “owner anxious to sell,” it was listed as having “servant’s quarters.” Thankfully, those bigoted restrictive covenants relating to servants were subsequently ruled unconstitutional in 1948 and subsequent black American residents of the area have included the popular Motown songwriter Lamont Dozier and Keith Ellison, the first Muslim congressman.
Editor’s Note – Unlike as is the case in many publications, this article was NOT sponsored or supported by a third-party.
Many more pictures of the wacky interior of ‘The Souther Residence’ follow at the end of this article.
The Names & Numbers – ‘The Souther Residence,’ 19551 Burlington Drive, Palmer Woods Plats, Detroit, Michigan, MI 48203, United States of America
1st January 2023 – Marked on Zillow.com as “listed by bank” with the lender “now selling it.”
12th December 2022 – Listed for sale for at a price -48.1% lower than sold for one year earlier for £412,200 ($495,900, €465,900 or درهم1.8 million) or the equivalent of £52 ($62, €58 or درهم228) per square foot. The selling agent is Matt O’Laughin of Max Broock Realtors and the taxes payable amount to £9,740 ($11,717, €11,013 or درهم43,031) per annum.
October 2022 – Valued by Zestimate at £998,000 ($1.2 million, €1.1 million or درهم4.4 million).
26th October 2021 – Sold for a sum +142.4% higher than its 1994 sale price for £794,800 ($956,152, €898,400 or درهم3.5 million) or the equivalent of £99 ($119, €112 or درهم437) per square foot.
28th August 2014 – Listed to be sold by auction after being subject to a foreclosure by the Bank of America, N.A. The sum of the 1st mortgage amount was £748,300 ($900,008, €846,100 or درهم3.3 million). The name of the then “owner” was given as Evan Burkholder and a “trustee,” Trott & Trott, P.C. was also mentioned.
18th July 1994 – Sold for £327,900 ($394,500, €370,700 or درهم1.4 million) or the equivalent of £41 ($49, €46 or درهم180) per square foot.
19th September 1943 – Featured in the Detroit Free Press in an advert by Walsh, James & Wasey Co. They claimed the “owner anxious to sell” and listed the property as an “attractive English type Kentucky limestone residence” complete with 5 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms and servant’s quarters. They lauded the offering also as having “many other superior features.” No asking price was mentioned.
1925 – Built, according to Instagrammer, tour guide and architectural history enthusiast Jonathan Peters, for a Mr Chester Souther and his wife, Keturah.
In a post dedicated to the property on 12th December 2021, Peters shared:
“Mr Souther was vice president of the Norton Land Corporation as well as manager in the tax department for General Motors. Leonard B. Willeke was one of the Detroit area’s more talented and prolific residential architects of the first half of the 20th century, most known for his Arts & Crafts designs.”
“The Souther residence is Palmer Woods’ lone home to be completely faced with stone. Detroit and environs are no stranger to Cotswold, with several iterations of the style to be found in neighborhoods throughout the city and suburbs. The most notable example being the Cotswold Cottage in Greenfield Village, which was modified, disassembled, transported from the Cotswold countryside and rebuilt in 1929 – 1930.”
Notable Residents of Palmer Woods
Left to right – Residents of Palmer Woods have included variously included many considered amongst the ‘great and the good’ – amongst them Walter O. Briggs Sr., George Romney, Mitt Romney and John Salley.
Whilst other areas of Detroit, such as the Russell Woods district, counted The Supremes’ Diana Ross amongst the prominent names to have lived there, those ‘famous faces’ who’ve variously called Palmer Woods home have included:
John Ballantyne (1868 – 1937), financial advisor to the Dodge Brothers Motor Corporation and president of Merchant’s National Bank., resided for a time at 15750 Balmoral. He was born in Paisley, Scotland
Walter O. Briggs Sr. (1877 – 1952), automobile body manufacturer, philanthropist and owner of the Detroit Tigers baseball team from 1919 until his death in 1952. He built his 8,136 square foot residence in a ‘Tudor style’ in the area in 1925 along with a “rare carriage house.”
Joseph Burnstein has been described as “one of the smartest and toughest leaders of the Purple Gang.” He lived at 1920 Lincolnshire Drive for a time and for 49 years more recently, somewhat ironically, the building was home to a commanding officer of the Detroit Police Department’s Organised Crime Division. The Jewish led gang, also known as ‘The Sugar Gang’ and ‘The Purples,’ operated as bootleggers and hijackers in the 1920s and “even Chicago’s notorious Al Capone made peace with them and bought Canadian whisky from them rather than fight them for territory.” His surname is often misspelt as “Bernstein” and by the time of the gang’s fall in 1935, he and his cohorts no longer reigned over Detroit’s underworld, at least 18 gang members were dead and many others in prison.
Marvin E. Coyle (1887 – 1961), general manager and president of the Chevrolet Motor Company in the 1930s and 1940s, resided for a time at 19391 Suffolk. He was known around the world as ‘Mr Facts & Figures’ and referenced as “having decimal points in his blood.”
Lamont Dozier (1941 – 2022), part of the popular Motown songwriting team Holland-Dozier-Holland, is said to have lived in the district for a time. This thrice married, father of six co-wrote and produced 14 US Billboard number-one hits and 4 number ones in the UK.
Mike Duggan (born 1958), the 75th Mayor of Detroit (elected in 2013), is said to live in the district. He received national attention for becoming the first white mayor of the majority black populated city since the 1970s.
Charles Van Dusen, lauded as a “department store king,” is said to have lived in the district for a time.
Keith Ellison (born 1963) the first Muslim congressman, is said to have lived in the district for a time. He currently serves as the 30th Attorney General of Minnesota and is a member of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party (DFL).
Brothers Alfred Fisher (1892 – 1963) and William Fisher (1886 – 1969), who ran the Fisher Body automotive company which was eventually absorbed into General Motors, both had homes in the district in the 1920s and 1930s at 1771 Balmoral Drive and 1791 Wellesley Drive respectively. The later was demolished after a fire in 1994.
K. T. Keller (1885 – 1966) president of the Chrysler Corporation between 1935 and 1949 and the company’s chairman from 1950 to 1956, resided for a time at 19366 Cumberland. He was also appointed by President Truman to serve as chairman of the President’s Advisory Committee on the Merchant Marine and the director of the Office of Guided Missiles after the Second World War.
William S. Knudsen (1879 – 1948), president of General Motors between 1937 and 1940 and an appointee of Franklin D. Roosevelt to head the War Mobilization Board during the Second World War, resided for a time at 1501 Balmoral. He featured on the cover of Time magazine in 1940 and was commissioned by Franklin D. Roosevelt to help lead the United States’ war material production efforts during the Second World War.
George W. Romney (1907 – 1995), who was president of the American Motor Corporation and the 43rd governor of Michigan, owned a house in the district until circa 1952. He was father to 4 children including the 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney (born 1947) and the latter politician is described as having lived in Palmer Woods until he turned five.
In 1915, the family of the late senator Thomas W. Palmer (1830 – 1913) sold the 188 acres of land that now forms the district to one Charles Burton. He founded the Palmer Woods Company and hired a landscape architect, Ossian Simmonds, to design what has been noted as an “oasis of winding streets and irregular sized lots.” A summerhouse designed by the architects Mason & Rice for the Palmer family in 1885 is still to be found in Palmer Park.
One house in particular, ‘The Bishop Gallagher Residence’ at 19366 Lucerne Drive is considered the most notable residence in the area. It was built between 1920 and 1925, stands on a plot of 2.06 acres and consists of 20,030 square foot of “livable area.” The 62-room residence’s ‘notable names’ have included:
Bishop Wayne T. Jackson of Great Faith Ministries International and founder of the Impact Network, the largest African-American Christian television network in the USA, subsequently lived there from 1995. He sold it to a real estate developer for a sum said to be “more than” £2.1 million ($2.5 million, €2.3 million or درهم2 million) in 2017. Bishop Jackson was amongst those who gave benedictions at the inauguration of President Donald Trump on 20th January 2017 at the United States Capitol in Washington. He has 9 children and 26 grandchildren.
John Salley (born 1964), former Detroit Pistons, Miami Heat, Toronto Raptors, Chicago Bulls and Los Angeles Lakers basketball player, owned ‘The Bishop Gallagher Residence’ from 1989 to 1995. He subsequently appeared in the Luther Vandross music video Take You Out and in programmes ranging from the Weakest Link to I’m A Celebrity… Get Me out of Here! and is now known as a vegan activist and cannabis brand owner.
Various bishops and archbishops of Detroit including Bishop Gallagher, Cardinal Edward Mooney and Cardinal John Dewden lived in the property in the years after its construction.
More pictures of ‘The Souther Residence’ from its current realtor listing
As Evelyn Waugh’s former home sells at auction for £3.16 million against asking price of £2.5 million, we ask: “Will the new owners be able to get the £250 per year pesky tenants to do some moving on and vacate this Georgian gem?”
Whilst a Grade II* listed cottage featured recently in The Steeple Times that had been offered for the extraordinarily low sum of £1 hammered down for £257,000 at auction this week, the home of Brideshead Revisited and Scoop author Evelyn Waugh between 1937 and 1956 achieved 26% more than its estimate and went for £3.16 million on Thursday.
Having been offered at a sum of £2.5 million plus in spite of having tenants in-situ who refused entry for viewings even, Piers Court at Stinchcombe in Gloucestershire attracted significant interest and after our article made it into the pages of The Guardian and the Daily Mail even.
In the days after our feature and the days before the Allsop conducted auction, current occupants Cheshire born alleged “Evelyn Waugh super fan” Helen Lawton and her Lebanese “businessman” partner Bechara Madi were deemed “Hyacinth Bucket” type figures and “neighbours from hell.” The extraordinarily odd pair have been paying rent of just £5 per week or £250 per year to live in the 8-bedroomed Georgian manor house and were briefly directors of a company named Winston’s House Limited, which was the ultimate owner of the property.
Speaking to MailOnline prior to the auction, “former London financier” Madi – who lives in the house supposedly on a “rolling six month tenancy” and whose partner is a “friend” of the ultimate “person of significant control” of Winston’s House Limited, controversial ex-BBC executive Jason Blain – raged:
“It’s our home, for the short term and for the long term. We will be putting our Christmas tree and decorations up in the next few days. We are going nowhere.”
“You have to ask why they are selling the house for £1 million less than its market value in a low-end auction just before Christmas.”
“We are not tenants, we have a major share in the house and have put in hundreds of thousands of pounds of our own money. If you look at Companies House accounts you will see we have put money into the company that owns the property.”
“We love it here and have put a lot into the house since we came here. I’m a city boy so I have gardeners come in but I’m learning as I go along.”
“We have spent a lot of our own money on the upkeep of the house, it’s our home and we have no plans to move.”
“I don’t want to get into details but the conduct of the bank and receivers has been very aggressive. There’s something more than just simply the bank wanting to be paid but I don’t know what it is.”
“The house is owned by the company in which we are shareholders. The company isn’t selling it, the receivers are but it’s a little more complicated than that.”
Of the couple, an unnamed “villager” added: “I’ve never seen him once, but she does a bit of shopping in Dursley. I wouldn’t want their heating bills, that’s for sure.” Clearly, the pair are anything but equivalents of BBC Radio 4’s The Archers’ Linda Snell in terms of their participation in local antics.
Bizarrely, in a most curious twist, we can today reveal that “investment manager” Bechara Madi became a director of a company named Piers Court Capital Limited – based at 65 Cadogan Square, London, SW1X 0DY – on 29th November 2010 – nine years before Jason Blain purchased Evelyn Waugh’s onetime home. Even earlier, on 5th March 1996, he became a director of Piers Court Holdings.
Separately, in a move clearly designed to distract from the truth of their clear involvement with this property dating back to their formation of a company named after it in 2010, Lawton told The Guardian that she “claims to be friends with Waugh’s family” and that “she was planning a party to bring together many of his relatives at the house.”
Going further, the paper reported:
“Duncan McLaren, of the Evelyn Waugh Society, writing of a chance meeting with Lawton in 2019 while walking along a public footpath through the grounds of the house, said: ‘In recent weeks she has been very excited to learn about the Evelyn Waugh associations of her new home.’”
“He said they had a conversation in which Lawton said she knew Septimus Waugh, the author’s seventh child, and there was a plan to bring Septimus’s former nanny, who was then in her 90s, from Northumberland to the house for a day. It is not known if the visit happened.”
“McLaren wrote: ‘Helen also knows Alexander Waugh, Evelyn’s grandson, and has other plans to bring Evelyn Waugh activities to the house.’”
Ms Lawton and Mr Madi, it seems, are not averse to a bit of legal action. In the summer of 2016, they were involved in a court case concerning another six flats at 65 Cadogan Square in the tony district of Knightsbridge, London. It was disclosed in evidence that Madi had supposedly sent nearly 5,000 emails over 2,009 days to a property management firm as well as “somewhat vitriolic letters” also.
In spite of the duo producing over 600 pages of documents and claiming “instances of intimidation” as well as criminality, “harassment and incitement,” the tribunal’s decided that “it is not in our finding just and convenient to make that order.”
Now, given Piers Court has clearly and most definitely been sold and has a new owner, it remains to be seen whether another bout of legal rumblings will follow involving both Lawton and Madi.
Editor’s Note – Unlike as is the case in many publications, this article was NOT sponsored or supported by a third-party.
Piers Court hammered down at Allsop’s 15th December 2022 auction for £3,160,000 after a series of last minute bidding online. The property’s new owner has yet to reveal themselves.Meanwhile, High Heath Cottage, also known as ‘Mutton Castle,’ went for £257,000 in spite of its £1 “plus fees” guide price.On 27th January 1989, after it was sold for £1.25 million, the house featured in the ‘Daily Mail’ and was described as “gold bricks and mortar.”The prime problem with Evelyn Waugh’s former home is supposedly that it is blighted by noise from the M5 motorway. A leading property commentator told ‘The Steeple Times’: “On a grey winter’s day, the noise is excruciating. It’s not so bad in the summer, but the reason that it took so long to sell Piers Court in 2019 was because of the constant roar of traffic. Who’d want to pay £3 million to have to go to bed with ear plugs?” Clearly, on Thursday, someone did.Creepy… Bizarre busy bee Bechara Madi pictured lurking at the gates and in the grounds of the place he currently is still calling ‘home’ this week. Will he and his partner be there for Christmas? Quite likely. Will they be there after New Year? Likely not.Controller of Winston’s Court Limited, which counted Piers Court as its primary asset, Jason Blain with producer Deborah Schindler in Toronto in 2009. Mr Blain is best known for having racked up a colossal £1.2 million bill at the ritzy Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Knightsbridge that he got taken to court over recently. The ex-BBC executive has yet to offer comment with regard to the legal wranglings concerning the Georgian Gloucestershire gem once home to Evelyn Waugh and as to whether he’ll accept his chums Bechara Madi and Helen Lawton will willingly be moving on.Evelyn Waugh will be unlikely turning in his grave over this week’s developments. He came to loathe and detest living in the Grade II* listed manor house after being pestered there by a ‘Daily Express’ journalist.
The Names & Numbers – Piers Court, Wooton Road, Stinchcombe, Near Dusley, Gloucestershire, GL6 6QE, United Kingdom
15th December 2022 – Sold for £3.16 million ($3.84 million, €3.62 million or درهم14.09 million), a sum 26% higher than estimate and a sum 9% higher than it sold for in April 2019.
15th December 2022 – Auctioned with a price guide of offers in excess of £2.5 million ($3.1 million, €2.9 million or درهم11.2 million) by Allsop and Knight Frank, a sum 30% lower than The Move Market valuation and 14% lower than the 2019 sale price.
4th December 2022 – Featured in The Mail on Sunday in the gossip column penned by Emily Prescott. She mused:
“After being forced to pay a £704,000 [which eventually amounted to £1.2 million with interest] five-star hotel bill he ran up during an eight-month stay, former BBC executive Jason Blain is maybe keen to free some cash – and is selling his £2.5 million Gloucestershire home.”
“But those who fancy the six-bedroom property once owned by Evelyn Waugh are going to have to trust their instincts – and pictures of it taken back in 2018 – as no one is allowed to view the house in person before they buy it. Not even agents Knight Frank have seen the property since Mr Blain, who worked in business development at the Beeb, bought it in 2019.”
“Earlier this year he was ordered to pay the huge bill at the Mandarin Oriental hotel in Hyde Park after a planned six-night penthouse stay lasted months.”
December 2022 – Valued on the The Move Market website at a high price of £3.59 million ($4.40 million, €4.17 million or درهم16.15 million).
19th August 2022 – A Notice to Quit was served on Helen Lawton and Bechara Madi and “such notice was affixed to the property gate on the 22nd August 2022.”
15th June 2022 – Tammy Wilkins and Victoria Liddell appointed as receivers and managers of insolvency of Winston’s House Limited.
31st March 2021 – Filed accounts for Winston’s House Limited valued “investment property” Piers Court at £3.5 million ($4.3 million, €4 million or درهم15.6 million) and stated that £1.4 million ($1.7 million, €1.6 million or درهم6.2 million) was owed by the company to creditors at that time.
13th to 26th March 2021 – Charges against Winston’s House Limited are listed and remain “outstanding” still today from bankers C. Hoare & Co. and B.I.G. Finance Limited.
June 2020 – The then “owners” of Piers Court submitted text to Stinchcombe Parish Council for publication on their website. In it, they complained of members of the public causing “damage” and committing “blatant trespass” on the property. They moaned about “unpicked dog fouling” and announced they’d installed signs across the property telling walkers where they could and could not go.
They added: “The owners are close friends with Evelyn Waugh’s family, in particular with Septimus (Evelyn’s youngest son) who vividly remembers his early childhood at Piers Court and who is currently assisting the new owners. Given that it is the 75th anniversary of the publication of Brideshead Revisited (which was written at Piers Court), the owners will be inviting some of the Waugh family to Piers Court to mark the occasion.”
15th April 2019 – Sold for £2.9 million ($3.6 million, €3.4 million or درهم13 million). Jason Hector Blain, a former BBC executive, took a loan of £2.1 million ($2.6 million, €2.4 million or درهم9.4 million) to fund the purchase. He formed a company named Winston’s House Limited on 27th March 2019 in which he had “significant control” to control this. It counted Lee Bushell, Philip Bushell, Helen Lawton and Bechara Habib Madi as directors. The Bushells subsequently resigned as directors on 16th October 2019 whilst Ms Lawton and Mr Madi were directors only between 27th March and 15th April 2019.
“Ms Lawton had wanted the house for 25 years and eventually acquired it with the help of millionaire Jason Blain, a former BBC boss. She pays just £250 a year rent to live at the eight-bedroom property and considers herself its custodian. She and her partner, Lebanese businessman Bechara Madi, 60, claim to have paid a £300,000 deposit.”
“But the house, which sits in 23 acres, was auctioned off on Thursday after creditors called in a £2.1million loan they made to Mr Blain. Ms Lawton claims she and Mr Madi are victims of ‘legalised theft.’ They insist there is no formal sale until contracts are exchanged and are now planning their next move.”
May 2018 – The property is again placed for sale for £3 million ($3.7 million, €3.5 million or درهم13.5 million) with Knight Frank. Lauded by realtor Rupert Sturgis as “one of the most beautiful houses in Gloucestershire.”
2004 – Piers Court is again offered for sale at a price unknown. At that time House & Heritage revealed: “Under a previous owner, the library where Waugh wrote was shipped, piece by piece, to Texas, where it was supposed to be reconstructed as a museum but is still in packing cases.”
January 1989 – Sold for £1.25 million ($1.52 million, €1.43 million or درهم5.57 million).
1983 – Sold for £300,000 ($364,000, €344,000 or درهم1.3 million) by the Gadsden family to a Mr Lee via an investment company named Halcyon Holdings.
October 1956 – The Waughs moved out of Piers Court. Of the property, “breeder of Guernsey cattle and ponies” Mrs Gadsden later remarked:
“When I bought the place, it was in a virtually derelict state.”
“The beautiful stables were overgrown and battered, and the gardens were a jungle.”
“I don’t think Evelyn Waugh had much a green thumb. He put lots of statues about, but didn’t like flowers and shrubs.”
“It’s a marvellous house and we were extremely happy there. But, when I sold, I was in my early eighties and it was just too big.”
“The Waughs entertained Mrs Gadsden for lunch. The future owner of Piers Court was most accommodating, agreeing to take over cows and peasants, if required. However, she baulked at inheriting the statue of Rafael that was in the front garden at Piers Court.”
Mrs G: “I don’t want it.”
EW: “I’m not selling it to you, I’m giving it away.”
Mrs G: “It’s a monstrosity.”
EW: “Even the most cursory knowledge of western civilisation would suggest otherwise, Madame.”
“In early July, Waugh made the observation in his diary that as he moved about Piers Court, inside and out, nothing annoyed him as it had before. In his mind, it was Mrs Gadsden’s house, not his any more, so he didn’t care if the stone crumbled and the taps dripped and the weeds smothered the flower beds. He would soon be away. Evelyn thought there was a meditation on death to be constructed along these lines.”
June 1956 – Sold by Evelyn Waugh and his wife to a lady named Mrs Gadsden for £9,500 or the equivalent of £188,000 ($231,000, €219,000 or درهم847,000) today.
June 1955 – Piers Court was placed for sale with Knight Frank & Rutley by Evelyn Waugh and his wife for £10,000 or the equivalent of £198,000 ($243,000, €230,000 or درهم892,000) today.
June 1955 – A Daily Express reporter visited the house uninvited. Feeling his privacy had been irreversibly invade, Waugh decided to sell. Of why, he penned: “I felt as if the house had been polluted.”
2nd June 1952 – Given a Grade II* listing by English Heritage and described by German-British architectural historian Sir Nikolaus Pevsner CBE FBA (1902 – 1983) as a “dignified and elegant house.”
September 1945 – The Waughs return to live at Piers Court. Of it, in his diaries, he later wrote: “‘It’s the kind of house which takes a lot of living up to.”
“On Monday, September 10, 1945, a great thing happened. The nuns left Piers Court, where they’d been settled for the duration of the war, and the Waughs moved back into the house. Laura thought everything was perfect while Evelyn – bless his cynicism – detected losses and damage everywhere he looked.”
“In the cellar, Evelyn flushed out four dozen bottles of Dows 1922 and six dozen assorted claret, so things started to look up. Within a week his library was in order. That’s to say he could be sitting at his desk – cigar in hand, glass within reach – and look up from his papers to see a one-time King of England, George the Third, looking down on him from the wall, approving of his subject’s set-up. All was well with Waugh’s world after all.”
“How had the world changed for Evelyn since he had last been in residence in 1939? Mainly in the following ways: Britain and its allies had won the war, but at what cost? A post-war Labour government was in power which meant high taxes on his earnings which were used – much to Waugh’s dismay – to provide Welfare for the masses.”
“He was the author of ‘Brideshead Revisited.’ This had been chosen as Book of the Month in the United States, which meant a £10,000 windfall and an additional £10,000 in royalties to be looked forward to. Moreover, it gave Evelyn an exalted sense of his own importance. ‘If you have laurels, rest on them,’ might have been Waugh’s philosophy at the time. Besides, if he wrote more books in the next few years the income from them would be taxed at 80%.”
“He was the father of four children by now and, for the first time, would have to get used to them being around. Not in the library, of course, that would remain a child-free zone. But he could hardly keep them out of the house as a whole. Not those (Meg and Hattie) that were under school age, and not even those (Bron and Teresa) who were of school age, at least when their schools were closed for the holidays. More kids on the way? That’s how the Roman Catholic Church would have it, so yes. The Haynes’ four-poster had been erected in Evelyn’s bedroom.”
May 1945 – Waugh’s best-known work, Brideshead Revisited, is published.
October 1939 – Rented to a convent school for a year for £600 or the equivalent of £31,000 ($38,000, €36,000 or درهم140,000) today.
May 1938 – Evelyn Waugh’s Scoop is published and gains “universal acclaim.”
January 1937 – Bought for Evelyn Waugh and his second wife, Laura Herbert, by the bride’s grandmother for £3,600 or the equivalent of £194,000 ($238,000, €226,000 or درهم874,000) today.
18th century – The present building was constructed on the site of an earlier 16th century house and incorporates parts of that.
Which would you prefer? One room in Knightsbridge for a punchy payment of £3 million or a detached 16th century cottage for the paltry price of £1 in the West Midlands?
In April 2017, an apartment at 199 Knightsbridge – a ritzy residence formed of 205 flats, penthouses and mews house opposite the Hyde Park Barracks that houses the Household Cavalry – sold for an astonishing sum of £90 million ($109 million, €104 million or درهم400 million).
Now, whilst Harrods Estates currently offer a 4-bedroom, 4-bathroom lateral unit that extends to 3,145 square foot in the building for £13.95 million ($16.9 million, €16.2 million or درهم61.9 million), someone on a lower budget could get just one room there for £3 million ($3.6 million, €3.5 million or درهم13.3 million). A veritable bargain or yet another indication of ‘Bonkers Britain’?
Marketed for a somewhat punchy £4,769 per square foot ($5,766, €5,537 or درهم21,177 per square foot) at asking price, a first-floor space offered by agents The Cloister is formed of a 25-foot by 22-foot living room that forms the only bedroom also. There is also a kitchen and bathroom – the former being just 5-foot wide and just 10-foot long – and frankly one is left realising this is actually a ‘home’ where only the multi-millionaire capable of buying it will clearly have “barely enough room to swing a cat.”
Situated opposite Hyde Park Barracks – more commonly known as Knightsbridge Barracks – this 629 square foot space has just two small windows and is rather awkwardly shaped. In its current configuration there’s a slimline double bed crammed into a nook with just one beside table but there’s not even a dining table. In spite of its £3 million price tag, this is a pad for those who simply want sofa suppers rather than to entertain on a grand scale.The floor plan of the space on offer illustrates just how little a multi-millionaire can actually get for their money in this neck of SW7. This is a property that is smaller than most hotel rooms and agents The Cloister make no mention of the no doubt very hefty accompanying service charges.Paltry priced High Heath Cottage – also known as ‘Mutton Castle’ due to a local tradition that a man who had stolen a sheep barricaded himself in the structure to avoid the hanging offence of being caught stealing sheep – is situated on Withy Hill Road, Sutton Coldfield, B75 6JR. It was constructed as one of around fifty servant’s cottages by The Right Reverend John Vessey (born John Harman, 1519 – 1551), who became Bishop of Exeter, and of it auctioneer Gupreet Bassi of Bond Wolfe told ITV: “This property has a fascinating history and the appearance of a mini watchtower, looking out across the valley to a lonely stretch of the old coach road from Coleshill to Lichfield, now the A446, where highwaymen could lurk. By the 19th century, the cottage was part of the Moor Hall Estate, and there was once a row of three cottages adjoining it, occupied by farm labourers in 1851. But the adjoining cottages fell into disrepair, and the present-day High Heath Cottage stands alone in the landscape much as it did nearly 500 years ago. This three-storey property is suitable for development but requires refurbishment and modernisation within the Grade II* building and green belt regulations, as well as the usual planning permission.”The cottage has two rooms on the ground floor, one room on the first floor and one room on the second floor. It has gardens to all sides and the agents add: “We understand the cottage incorporates a fireplace in each floor and is connected via a stone spiral staircase.” Sutton Coldfield town centre is approximately two miles distant.
Providing a stark contrast at the opposite end of the market, yet apparently something far more idyllic in its setting, Birmingham based auctioneers Bond Wolfe will be hoping to hammer down what they describe as “a vacant freehold Grade II* listed cottage in disrepair constructed in the 1530s by Bishop Vesey” in the “rural part of Sutton Coldfield” in the West Midlands next month.
They offer the three-storey stone-built structure with a paltry guide price of just £1 ($1.21, €1.16 or درهم4.44) and will sell the detached building on 14th December by public auction.
Editor’s Note – Unlike as is the case in many publications, this article was NOT sponsored or supported by a third-party.
‘The Punchy’ and ‘The Paltry’ – Five properties at both ends of the price spectrum…
This detached, 2,061 square foot Edwardian house featured in Syracuse, New York featured in ‘The Steeple Times’ in September 2020 when it was offered for just £827 ($1,000, €960 or درهم3,673). It eventually sold in March 2021 for that sum though the buyer would have had to have shown proof of funds available to guarantee the £63,200 ($76,416, €73,375 or درهم280,639) costs of renovation required. The property’s most famous resident prior had been a German police dog named Jack that latched onto the building’s owner, Dr. Scott R. Fisher, on the Hindenburg line in France in October 1918. Supposedly, “when Jack spotted Dr. Fisher, he stuck to him and refused to leave his side – ensuring he found a way to be with Fisher his entire way back to base. Dr. Fisher told the paper that, ‘such devotion deserves reward,’ and decided to take Jack back home with him… Jack was stowed away in an overcrowded ship which was bringing American soldiers home and where each man was allowed only a certain poundage of baggage. Dr. Fisher shared his own rations with Jack because dog food was not available in the ship’s stores. When they arrived back in America, the pair settled here on Syracuse’s Southside.”In August 2017, ‘The Steeple Times’ shared news of a castle in Aberdeenshire for sale for just £130,000 ($157,000, €151,000 or درهم577,000). In “stablised” condition, but roofless the structure was lauded by Savills as “a blank canvas for someone to develop the building’s full potential as a spectacular family home or business.” Knockhall Castle had still not sold by January 2020 and was described in April this year as still being a “tumbled down romantic ruin.”In a state of collapse when sold to former ‘Country Life’ editor Marcus Binney for £1 ($1.21, €1.16 or درهم4.44) in 1981, 16,409 square foot, Grade I listed Barlaston Hall in Staffordshire – complete with a Chinese Chippendale staircase – was made safe and sold on for £300,000 ($363,000, €348,000 or درهم1.2 million) in 1992 and then offered for sale again in June 2014 for £2.3 million ($2.8 million, €2.7 million or درهم10.2 million). It was purchased for £2 million ($2.4 million, €2.3 million or درهم8.9 million) by Cameron and Claire Gilchrist-Dick since November 2020 and in a “separate sale,” the pair also snapped up the neighbouring 12th century church to use as a wedding venue.In July this year, a derelict Second World War fort in the Humber Estuary, once planned to be an ‘Island of Hope’ for detoxing drug addicts was offered for sale for £50,000 ($60,100, €58,700 or درهم220,600) at auction by Savills. Bull Sand Fort, near Hull hammered down for a punchy sum 880% higher at £490,000 ($588,500, €575,000 or درهم2.2 million) to a mystery bidder.At the top end of the market, in May 2019, we featured the possible sale of The Old Rectory in Old Church Street, Chelsea, London, SW3 for at least £200 million ($242 million, €232 million or درهم888 million). Its current owner, shipping magnate John Fredriksen, merging two adjoining properties paid a combined £70 million ($85 million, €81 million or درهم311 million) to create a two-acre compound between 2001 and 2006. It is believed that the house remains in the ownership of the Fredriksen family currently.
The Punchy – More images of the first-floor studio apartment in The Knightsbridge, 199 Knightsbridge, London, SW7 1RH offered for the outrageous sum of £3 million…
Described on the official website of what they somewhat lavishly laud as ‘The Residence,’ one room boxes in this building are somewhat laughably shouted instead as “executive studios” that are “perfect pied-à-terres.”
The exterior of ‘The Knightsbridge’ was never going to go down in history as an example of fantastic architectural design. It has a closer resemblance to a budget hotel or an office block that might appeal to David Brent.Facilities for residents number a 24-hour concierge, security, valet parking and use of ‘leisure facilities’ such as a swimming pool and business facilities including a 12-seat boardroom (which has “complimentary refreshments available”). The annual charges for such are not listed for the £3 million studio offered, but for the £13.95 million apartment also on sale currently the charges are £78,900 per annum plus £5,700 per annum per car parking space included.There’s so little space in the “executive studio” that the current resident has put a wardrobe in the hall and keeps their suitcases there also.The minute, windowless kitchen is most definitely not a space for an aspiring Nigella Lawson or Delia Smith.The current decoration scheme wouldn’t look out of place in student digs. It’s hardly what anyone would expect in a £3 million pad.The bathroom, equally, is hardly opulent.
The Paltry – More images of the £1 cottage, High Heath Cottage (AKA ‘Mutton’s Castle’), Withy Hill Road, Sutton Coldfield, West Midlands, B75 6JR…
Whilst this stone-built cottage might be cheap and off-the-beaten-track, it certainly will require a lot of work. Undoubtedly, however, the £1 price tag will encourage many to dig deeper – so do anticipate a bidding war on 14th December that will actually take the ultimate sale price of this property far, far higher.
An image of High Heath Cottage from the Sutton Reference Library taken circa 1908. Of it, in 2008 the Sutton Coldfield Local History Research Group observed: “Sutton Coldfield has a number of stone houses dating from the sixteenth century of a kind not found anywhere else in England. According to the great historian Sir William Dugdale, Bishop Vesey built fifty-one of these stone houses here, where previously almost all the houses had been timber-framed. High Heath Cottage is the smallest of the surviving stone houses, built in an isolated spot. In the 1530s it was surrounded by the open commons of High Heath, and today it stands alone in the middle of bleak hedgeless farmland. It is a tall house, with three storeys connected by a stone spiral staircase, but narrow, with only one room on each floor, and a massive chimney. Writing in 1544, John Leland said that Vesey built the houses for his poor kinsmen, but other sources suggest that they were built to house servants of the Bishop who would keep order in outlying parts of Sutton. The house at High Heath has the appearance of a watchtower, and it looks across the valley to a lonely stretch of the old coach road from Coleshill to Lichfield (now the A446) where highwaymen could lurk. The cottage was easy to defend from attack, having, originally, only one ground-floor window. There is a local tradition that a man who had stolen a sheep barricaded himself in the cottage – this at a time when sheep-stealing was a hanging offence. He is supposed to have held out for a considerable time, and so the cottage used to be known locally as ‘Mutton Castle.’ In the nineteenth century the cottage was part of the Moor Hall Estate belonging to the Hacketts of Moxhull, and by 1824 a row of three cottages had been built adjoining it. All four of the cottages were occupied by farm labourers in 1851; one of them, William Lunt, had seven children. The adjoining cottages fell into disrepair, and eventually the end one was converted to form an extension to the stone house to make a single dwelling – the present-day High Heath Cottage stands alone in the landscape much as it did 460 years ago.”The building is clearly in a perilous state, but any of those who enthuse about Channel 4’s ‘Grand Designs’ could find far worse projects than this.If wandering like Heathcliff is your desire, ‘Mutton Castle’ could be the perfect spot for someone with £1 going spare.
