OPULENCE & SPLENDOUR

Mansion in controversial compound in The Boltons, SW10 for sale for £50 million; the setting has seen court cases and pyrotechnic parties involving a self-declared “Relentless” multi-millionaire.

Dame Patricia Routledge’s rendition of ‘I’ve Been To A Marvellous Party’ for theatrical charities will most certainly lift your spirits.

Welsh ‘mock castle’ once occupied by notorious spendaholic Lady Docker for sale for £2.85m; the Dockers were turfed out in 1956 after it was discovered they’d lavished the equivalent of £1.3m today of company money on the place without permission.

An invitation from businesswoman Heather Bird Tchenguiz to a socially distanced ‘by appointment’ exhibition of the works of William Cookson in Knightsbridge this September.

‘The Steeple Times’ selects five undesirable homes currently for sale that many would say would remain best avoided; they’ve all been in the news and they’re all connected to infamous names.

Grade I listed Baroque mansion Chicheley Hall in Buckinghamshire for sale for £7 million or 62% less than the current owners have spent on it.

Tiny French pied à terre on the Côte d’Azur once owned by the ‘Maigret’ author Georges Simenon for sale for just £107,000; he described the property as his ‘house of happiness.’

Detached Edwardian house in New York State for sale for just £744 or 8,400% less than it cost to build in 1906; home to a famous German police dog in the 1920s

Charming detached Edwardian house in Buffalo, Kansas – the birthplace of the first man to beat Mach 3 – for sale for just £15,000; it comes with 0.5 acres of land, a barn and is in reasonable condition.

Reader of ‘The Steeple Times’ shares news that ‘up north’ is “no longer “just cloth caps and clogs” and illustrates this with information about the sale of her £1.5 million home Our readers are important...

Vast Belgravia artists’ studio goes on sale for just £1.3 million, but of course, there is a catch and that is the extortionate ground rent

Grand Greek Revival mini-mansion in Illinois goes on sale for just £35 per square foot in spite of having been mostly renovated; it is situated within an area colonised by utopian Swedish Janssonists.

Colonial Revival ‘Mini White House’ on an 8-acre plot in Mississippi for sale for just £299,000 or £56 per square foot; the mini mansion is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Cheapest, smallest house on the best side of one of London’s most sought after streets, The Boltons, comes up for sale; the tardis like building was home to novelist-politician Jeffrey Archer and his scientist wife Mary in the 1970s.

‘Iceberg home’ formed in part from the former Glebe Place, Chelsea, SW3 studios of Charles Rennie Mackintosh and his wife for sale for sum 1,178% higher than in 2012.

Moving on homes owned by the newsworthy – including a country house apartment in a castle currently owned by Jasper Conran and the childhood homes of Al Capone and Jackie Kennedy.

‘Stately’ ‘Cape Cod style’ ‘mini mansion’ in North Carolina with 1.14 acres of land for sale for just £44,000; it is situated in a town that was the birthplace of the biggest ever American, a very fat and very tall man named Mills Darden.

Vast Edwardian mansion with basketball court in the roof in Watseka, Illinois for sale at half price it listed for in 2016; it’s on for just £20 per square foot.

Rolls-Royce owned by “maverick” Demon Internet dot-com millionaire Cliff Stanford to be auctioned; his au pair was tragically murdered in Spain; he was convicted of “email spying” in a scandal featuring gerrymanderer Dame Shirley Porter.

Minute apartment in Chelsea Barracks with barely enough room to swing a cat goes on sale for the same price as a massive mansion in Shropshire with 102 acres.

Double artist’s studio in Glebe Place, Chelsea that has been home to a fugitive billionaire oligarch, a Tolstoy and a man suspected of being Jack the Ripper slashed in price by 25%; it is now subject to a forced sale.

Grand Grade I listed Shropshire mansion Kinlet Hall for sale after coronavirus forced the closure of its wedding venue and summer school. HRH Prince Anne has competed at horse trials in its parkland.

Cambridgeshire mansion used by Special Operations Executives in the Second World War and as a borstal subsequently for sale; Gaynes Hall is next to the prison that housed Max Clifford and was briefly a cannabis farm in 2019.

Crumbling Northamptonshire estate Lilford Hall – where the little owl was introduced to Britain – for sale for £10 million, a sum £35 million lower than in 2014.

Moving on homes owned by the newsworthy – including properties owned by society snapper Sir Cecil Beaton, novelist Jackie Collins and film producer-director Peter Minns.

Coastal ‘estate’ with its own lighthouse perched on The Front above the White Cliffs of Dover in Kent for sale; it was used in scenes featuring Oliver Reed in ‘The Shuttered Room.’

Handbag created by Louis Vuitton to “celebrate” the marriage of Meghan Markle to Prince Harry to be auctioned for a crazy sum.

Wiltshire manor house once owned by the Duchess of Cornwall and considered as a home by the Duchess of Cambridge’s parents again for sale. Bolehyde Manor is offered for £3.75 million.

Travel writer Sarah Tucker shares news of her latest novella – it’s timely and its titled ‘The Redundant Travel Journalist’

80 Eaton Square apartment for sale for £22.5 million in spite of needing complete renovation; it is listed at a price 25% cheaper than it was five years earlier through Chestertons.

‘I Never Picked Cotton’ singer Roy Clark’s Rolls-Royce heads to auction complete with suicide doors and emblazoned with his initials in gold leaf.

Replica “homage to Jean Bugatti’s Type 57S Atlantic coupé” to be auctioned for a sum 99.9% lower than the most famous of the four originals is said to be worth. £124,000 to £165,000 for the 2016 ‘Assembled Vehicle’ 1939 Delahaye USA Pacific by Terry Cook.

Triplex apartment in Knightsbridge building once home to Marianne Faithfull for sale for the astounding sum of £25 million.

1978 Piaggio Ape ‘limousine’ used by the controversial Countess Agusta – a woman who either fell or was pushed to her death from her home above Portofino in 2001 – to be auctioned On 8th...

Private island just 75 miles from New York for sale for just £650,000; it could make an ideal downsize from Necker for Sir Richard Branson Created from pink granite bedrock that once formed hilltops prior...

Quaint Edwardian cottage with 22 acres of land in Wellington, Maine for sale for the same price as a brand new Land Rover Discovery Named for Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, the town of...

Flat in Onslow Gardens, South Kensington available to rent for the same cost as a week on the Joe Wicks diet through chi-chi estate agents Knight Frank; there is, of course, a catch In 1928,...

Eaton Square apartment in a Grade II* listed building that has been home to both Bond star Sir Roger Moore and aristocrat-who-went-missing Lord Lucan for sale for staggering sum given it is on a...

Manhattan mansion listed for 77% less than in 2014 as part of a “bankruptcy sale;” it is situated on a street featured in Billy Joel’s ‘Close to the Borderline’ that was once termed: “Bloody,...

Ruined Moroccan fortress fit for the most lavish of bashes for sale for £5.3 million; it may be “spectacular” but it most certainly doesn’t have Wi-Fi Billionaires like Morocco. The late Malcolm Forbes (1919 –...

Duplex penthouse in The Ritz-Carlton New York Central Park for sale for £39.7 million or a sum 48% lower than in 2012; it’s currently home to an Argentine tango dancer whom moonlights as a...

Unmodernised ‘set’ in “rule-ridden” Albany, Piccadilly that was the London home of eccentric antiques dealer and ‘King of Chelsea’ Christopher Gibbs for sale; tour the home of the man who got Princess Margaret high...

Vast Knightsbridge penthouse for sale for 27% less than in 2012 but extraordinarily 6,900% more than in 1999 Constructed between 1961 and 1962 by builders Gilbert Ash, Collier House is not the most attractive structure...

Famous  ‘Seven Sisters’ cottage in Montauk for sale for 30% less than in 2016; the ‘Gilded Age cottage’ was designed by Stanford White, an architect whose murder famously led to the ‘Trial of the...

Vast “fairytale” château in France’s Loire Valley for sale for ‘just’ £28 million in spite of having had £80 million spent already on its renovation; it was most famously owned by Madame de Pompadour In...

One-of-one 2008 Rolls-Royce ‘Hyperion’ Phantom drophead coupé by Pininfarina for sale for sum 51% lower than in 2009; it even has a compartment to hold rifles in front of its windscreen An “opulent” Rolls Royce...

“Hard head – healing hands” Welsh businessman looks to sell his £18 million Irish estate complete with a James Wyatt mansion and 1,120 acres; Sir David Davies became an Irish citizen after Brexit and...

1967 Mercedes ‘Dictator Car’ limousine owned until 1993 by the first President of Ivory Coast to be auctioned after being restored at vast expense Félix Houphouët-Boigny (whom claimed to be born in 1908, but was...