After buying a cocker spaniel, are the Beckham family about to embrace country life by moving to Gloucestershire?
David and Victoria Beckham count Guy Ritchie amongst their close friends and having attended his wedding to Jacqui Ainsley at his 1,134-acre Ashcombe Estate in July and bought a cocker spaniel from a renowned country PR shortly afterwards, the duo are allegedly hankering after a country pad in the Cotswolds.
In recent days, according to reports in the Mail Online, the former footballer and his wife have viewed homes in Gloucestershire priced between £5 million and £30 million. The first they were said to be interested in came in the form of a £5.4 million, 15,041 square foot manor house named Amberley Court at Amberley, near Stroud. It is described as “immaculately refurbished” and “located in a secluded position on the top of a Cotswold escarpment”. It comes with an infinity pool complete with a zip wire but perhaps is lacking in the ability to provide the privacy such people as the Beckhams likely crave given the house is surrounded by just 4.3-acres (with a further 17 acres of equestrian land located ¼ mile away)
Gloucestershire, GL5 5AE
On Sunday, the newspaper made a bolder declaration and suggested the former owners of a pad dubbed “Beckingham Palace” have set their hearts on a much more expensive offering. Featured in The Steeple Times in July 2014 and on the market for £27 million, Abbotswood House is better described as a barrack than a house but to the Mail what is important is that it has “enough land for 380 football pitches” (774.23 acres). It is 22,293 square foot in size, was designed primarily by Sir Edwin Lutyens and comes with two entrance lodges and eleven cottages.
Though we cannot quite imagine Victoria Beckham taking up horse riding, there is plenty for her husband – who recently took up fishing and shooting after being introduced to the sports by Guy Ritchie – to enjoy. The estate includes fishing on the River Dilker, lakes and woodland with the “potential for a pheasant and partridge shoot”.
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What this country is so good at doing is encouraging the ‘have nots’ who suddenly become ‘have’s’ to join what they perceive to be the landed gentry. Nothing wrong at all with this:it encourages social stability.
In no time at all they send their children to Eton and even try to obtain a coat of arms.
It’s happened throughout the ages…the Vesteys; the Tennants etc .
The funny thing is that, more like as not, those who made their loot in Victorian times are more likely to be the most deprecating about the Beckham’s. The first thing that families such as Glasgow linen bleachers like the Tennants did was to marry into the old families. No harm in it all….simple human vanity.
I can see for miles…….The Who 1967
Or the Beckhams will be able to see for bloody miles and miles from the late great John Entwhistle’s Lutyens house outside Stow-on-the- Wold……an amazing house for behemoth entertaining
But the Amberley house is gorgeous, manageable and jolly convenient for Beaudesert Park School, which is a top local Prep School, and as such, a feeder school for the very top English Public Schools
I think the only offending item that might slightly mar the view is a lone wind propeller thing on the horizon in the direction of Nymphsfield and Owlpen
‘ It is the schoolmaster that I pay, but ’tis the schoolboys that teach my son ‘…….Ralph Waldo Emerson
I hadn’t read Peter Wayde’s prescient post when I posted mine, but I wish to proffer the above apposite quote
‘ Come on the Beaus ‘ was the cheer that issued from the mouths of the little future leader lining the touch line, but it was at this point one got the message of them and us, and we weren’t us; we were oiks – so get over it !
Another school we played took homing pigeons to away matches to send back half time and full time scores – bring it on !