“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 has no time for Boris Johnson
Designed by Robert Adam’s rival James Wyatt in 1773 and “clothed in the Italiante manner” in 1859 to 1860, “grand and beautifully executed” Abbey Leix in County Laois is considered “one of Ireland’s most important country houses.”
Placed for sale last June for £17.8 million ($22 million, €20 million or درهم81 million), the main house on the 1,120-acre estate, Abbey Leix House – also known as ‘Abbeyleix House’ and’ Abbeyleix Castle’) – is vast and includes 26,910 square foot of accommodation. Aside from 9 bedrooms and 10 bathrooms, the classical building has amongst other things 3 major rooms on the park front, a deep hall, a music room with original Wyatt plasterwork, a library and a conservatory.
Sir David Davies (born in Wales in 1940) at Abbey Leix.
Renovated and remodeled since being sold to the Welsh born, twice divorced, father of five Sir David Davies in 1995 by its previous owners of the 250 years, the de Vesci family, Abbey Leix is described by agents Sotheby’s International Realty as a “21st century family home with an appropriate balance between comfort and informality on the one hand and grandeur for entertaining and the display of art on the other.”
As well as Ireland’s oldest oak tree being within the grounds, the property also includes some of the “last surviving remnants of Ireland’s ancient woodland” and frontage to the River Nore. There is also a stud farm with 24 loose boxes, a separate farmyard with many outbuildings and 10 lodges and cottages on the estate. The present owner’s private airstrip was created because he wanted to be able to “fly from wherever in the UK straight into the estate.”
Of why he is selling Abbey Leix, “superstar banker and businessman” Sir David – who has variously held senior posts at Chase Manhattan Bank, Hill Samuel, MEPC, Hardine Matheson, Hong Kong Land, Johnson Matthey and EFG Private Bank – told the Business Post:
“I’m organising my whole estate for the benefit of my children… Although the children all love this place very much, none of them wanted to take it on… The typical refrain is ‘Dad, this is your project,’ and I’m lucky enough to have Killoughter House, the home of my childhood, to return to.”
Though born in Wales, Sir David – whom was knighted “for his work as chairman of the Advisory Committee on Business and the Environment” in 1999 – has maintained a home in Ireland throughout his adulthood. He “proudly” became an Irish citizen after Brexit and described “inept” Theresa May as “going from one catastrophe to that leads to the next catastrophe.” Of her successor, the opera loving son of a South Wales steel mill owner went further and recently remarked: “I have no time for Boris Johnson: he doesn’t do his homework, and can’t be trusted.”
Fat cat banker and Barclays CEO Jes Staley under investigation over his links to the late paedophile Jeffrey Epstein
This morning, Barclays has been forced to reveal that its controversial CEO Jes Staley is being investigated over his links to the now (allegedly) dead paedophile and late friend of Prince Andrew, Jeffrey Epstein.
In a statement, the firm announced that the Financial Conduct Authority and the regulatory watchdog Prudential Regulation Authority are looking into “Mr. Staley’s characterisation to the company of his relationship with Mr. Epstein, and the subsequent description of that relationship, in the company’s response to the FCA.”
They claimed their board retains “full confidence” in Staley – a man once described as “like Teflon” by Neil Wilson of Markets.com – because he has been “sufficiently transparent with the company as regards the nature and extent and relationship with Mr Epstein.”
In a call with reporters about the matter, according to CityA.M., Staley himself added: “I feel very comfortable… that I have been very transparent and open with the bank about the relationship. With hindsight, I deeply regret having had any relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.”
In 2018, after Staley tried to unmask a whistleblower at the bank in 2016, the firm was slapped with a fine of £600,000 ($779,000, €716,000 or درهم2.8 million) and of this Wilson today remarked: “Coming after the whistleblowing fine, it’s looking like the cat may be running out of lives, I wonder if he can survive this.”
Elsewhere on social media, one user asked of Staley: “Is this someone you’d trust even with a bus ticket?”
Dilapidated Grade II* listed South Yorkshire Georgian mansion Hickleton Hall for sale for a sum 25% lower than it was marketed for in 2014 but 185% more than it was valued at in 2016
Empty country houses become liabilities and in the case of Hickleton Hall in South Yorkshire, the result of years of neglect will likely be either further decline or conversion into flats.
A neglected and boarded-up Hickleton Hall, Hickleton, Doncaster, South Yorkshire, DN5 7BB in 2016
Offered for sale in 2015 for £2 million (at that time complete with its since separated stable block), this Grade II* listed Georgian stately home was built between 1745 and 1748 of limestone ashlar for a banker named Godfrey Wentworth. It was subsequently home to the Whig politician and Chancellor of the Exchequer Charles Wood, 1st Viscount Halifax from 1846 to 1885 and then used by the army during the Second World War.
Converted first to a girls’ school in the 1940s, Hickleton Hall became a Sue Ryder Home in the 1960s. That closed in 2012 and in the years since fate has been anything but kind to the building. Described on a dedicated website as “eye-catching” but affected by subsidence and fissures caused by coal mining, the “asbestos riddled” structure has been targeted by vandals and thieves.
The 34,000 square foot building was valued at a sum of between £525,000 and £825,000 in 2016 but is now for sale for £1.5 million through agents Fisher German. Their marketing brochure – which uses images of the mansion in better times – lists it as now coming with just 14.72 acres of land and planning permission for conversion into 20 apartments.
Hickleton Hall – The Numbers
October 2017 – For sale for £1.5 million ($2 million, €1.7 million or درهم7.3 million) through Fisher German.
February 2016 – Valued at £525,000 to £825,000 ($693,000 to $1.1 million, €589,000 to €926,000 or درهم2.5 million to درهم4 million) by Christie & Co. Remedial work to restore the hall estimated at least £1.75 million ($2.3 million, €2 million or درهم8.5 million).
April 2014 – For sale for £2 million ($2.6 million, €2.2 million or درهم9.7 million) through Hamptons.
Prominent banker attempts to sell San Francisco mansion for a sum 205% higher than it achieved in 1993; it comes with an outdoor theatre
Built in 1904 of brick on a wood frame and subject to a seismic upgrade in 1994, 3444 Washington Street in Presidio Heights, San Francisco was sold for $15.2 million in 2006 (the equivalent of £11.8 million, $18.4 million, €13.9 million or درهم55.8 million today) and before that for $5.9 million in 1993 (the equivalent of £7.8 million, $10 million, €9.1 million or درهم36.7 million today). It is currently owned by the banker David A. Coulter and his “social entrepreneur” wife Susan Weeks Coulter and has recently been placed for sale for £14 million ($18 million, €16.5 million or درهم66.1 million).
Offered by Linda Mayne of Mayne & Company, the 9,074 square foot “Georgian-style residence” comes with not only 6 bedrooms and 6 bathrooms but also an outdoor amphitheatre complete with terraced seating and an al fresco kitchen with a barbecue. The 4-storey building was last remodeled in 2008 and also includes a media room with wet bar and views of the Golden Gate Bridge, a wine cellar with capacity for 1,600 bottles, a lift, staff quarters and a 2-car garage.
Susan Weeks Coulter and her husband David A. Coulter (left and right)
3444 Washington Street, Presidio Heights, San Francisco, California, CA 94118, United States of America
The garden features an amphitheatre complete with terraced seating
The view from the house
Property taxes on the house were a not insubstantial sum of £154,959 in 2015 ($199,685, €182,686 or درهم733,690). Mr and Mrs Coulter attempted to sell 3444 Washington Street in 2008 but subsequently withdrew it from the market after reducing their then asking price from $17.5 million to $12 million (the equivalent of £13.6 million to £10.6 million, $19.9 million to $13.6 million, €16 million to €12.4 million or درهم64.3 million to درهم50 million today). They also own reportedly bought a penthouse at 55 East 72nd Street in New York in 2012.
Pennsylvania born, Carnegie Mellon University educated Mr Coulter, currently a special limited partner at Warburg Pincus, was previously vice chairman of JP Morgan Chase & Co. from 2001 to 2005. He was chairman and CEO of Bank of America Corporation for two years from 1996, but was unceremoniously fired when that organisation was “eaten alive” by Hugh McColl’s NationsBank in October 1998.
New Jersey mansion, complete with 58 rooms, for sale for equivalent sum to what it cost to build in 1909; the £37 million house’s original owner was a man whose extravagance knew absolutely no bounds
George Crocker (1856 – 1909) makes F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Jay Gatsby seem like an amateur. Born in Sacramento and the son of a railway magnate worth some $30 million on his death (the equivalent of £634 million or $812 million today), Crocker was willed a significant $6 million (the equivalent of £127 million or $163 million today) on the condition that “after the space of five years continuously he shall abstain from the use of spirituous, vinous, and malt liquors to the extent that he shall not during this period have been intoxicated”.
Crocker decided to ignore the terms of his father’s behest and from 1888 to 1891 lived in San Francisco as “one of the most reckless young men about town when reckless young men thereabouts were common” but then admitted himself to a sanatorium, put himself on the straight and narrow and finally collected the sum of $6 million in 1898.
With wealth and a glamorous wife, Emma Rutherford, a widow from California, Crocker set himself up as the toast of New York society. Though he owned a townhouse at 1 East 64th Street and a villa in Newport, it was on paying $96,500 (the equivalent of £2.2 million or $2.8 million today) for the 1,100 acre Darling estate in Bergen County, Mahwah, New Jersey in 1901 that he truly became someone noticeable.
Choosing what he called “the finest site for a residence in the country”, Crocker commissioned an architect named James Brite (died 1942) to build him a mansion “sparing no expense”. Modeled on a Jacobean prodigy house, Bramshill House in Hampshire, England and built from Indiana limestone and Harvard brick, the “Crocker Mansion” or “Darlington” – as it is more widely known – cost $2 million to build (the equivalent of £38.2 million or $49 million today) and included 75 rooms and around 50,000 square foot of accommodation. Its features included steam heating, elevators, ice cream freezers, integrated vacuum systems and a switchboard and in its grounds a racetrack and 16 greenhouses were constructed whilst a pond was stocked with 4,000 trout.
George Crocker and Emerson McMillin
The design of Darlington was based on “one of the most haunted houses in England”, Bramshill in Hampshire; that building itself was also eventually separated from much of its estate and after being used as the European Police College was sold to developers City & Country for £25 million ($19.5 million) in 2014
Commentators wowed at the resulting creation and noted details such as a library painted after the style of the Italian Renaissance by Tiffany Studios, elaborate wood carving by Italian craftsmen and Tiffany silver chandeliers and a 1906 Aeolian player pipe organ in the building’s 30-foot high Great Hall. In 1912, Architectural Record, chose even to swoon over the basement. They remarked:
“Where Bramshill’s cellar housed for centuries lanterns, tallow dips, forest faggots, wooden vessels for the distribution of light, heat and water through personal service of human slaveys, its American reincarnation is a storehouse of miracle workers in the comfort and luxury of modern domestic life”.
Unfortunately, Mr and Mrs Crocker did not truly get to enjoy the fruits of their extravagant spending. Emma Crocker died in 1904 of cancer and George Crocker also succumbed to the disease in 1909. His estate was valued at $20 million (the equivalent of £422 million or $541 million today) and amongst items found at his mansion were 60,000 personally monogrammed, custom-made cigars valued at $30,000 (the equivalent of £635,000 or $813,000 today).
Sold subsequently to a “self-made” banker, industrialist and astronomy enthusiast named Emerson McMillin (1844 – 1922) in 1909 for $1 million (the equivalent of £21.1 million or $27.1 million), Darlington was next used to display a fine collection of Chinese and Japanese porcelain whilst a herd of Jerseys were kept in the grounds.
After McMillin’s death, his widow sold the estate in 1924 for $685,000 (the equivalent of £7.6 million or $9.8 million) to the Darlington Development Company, which in turn made it available to the Darling Golf and Country Club. They converted the building to a hotel and club that “promised to offer a new dimension to life in Mahwah” but “the development corporation and the club were soon in financial difficulties” and the McMillin estate foreclosed and regained possession.
A new buyer came forward in the form of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Newark. They paid $478,000 for the property in 1926 (the equivalent of £5.2 million or $6.6 million today) and used Darlington as a theological seminary. The surrounding land was gradually sold off and in 1986, the Immaculate Conception Seminary also departed.
Darlington today – The 30-foot high Great Hall is still dominated by a 1906 Aeolian player pipe organ
Darlington today – Ilija Pavlovic expanded the mansion by some 12,000 square foot and amongst other things added a large home cinema
Darlington today – Another addition comes in the form of a vast wine cellar; George Crocker’s father would not have approved
Subsequently restored and modernised with, according to Forbes, plumbing, heating, air conditioning and communications systems being installed, Darlington was placed on the market with just 12.1 acres in 2005 by Darlington Associates, a firm who’d built “multiple residential communities surrounding the mansion”. An ambitious figure of $25 million (the equivalent of £24.4 million or $31.3 million today) was sought for the now classified historic site but it was not until 2008 that a buyer came forth in the form of a local businessman named Ilija Pavlovic. He paid just $8.875 million (the equivalent of £8 million or $10.2 million today) and then embarked on the “challenge” of “both preserving the historic home while also restoring it to meet 21st-century standards”. The resulting creation spans four floors and includes amongst many other things a tea room, 3 libraries, 2 game rooms, 2 kitchens, a “his and her master bedroom wing”, 12 further guest bedrooms and 5 staff bedrooms.
The biggest issue with the house, it transpired, was that its 476 leaded windows needed to be replaced. This reportedly cost $2 million alone (the equivalent of £1.8 million or $2.3 million today) and in addition, Pavlovic renewed all the mechanical systems, redid all 19 bathrooms, replaced the slate roof and added amongst other things a spa with an indoor lap pool, a gym, a massage room, a beauty salon and a home cinema. There is also a gatehouse, a professional kitchen that can serve 250 meals at a time, a wine cellar, a poker room, a cigar room, a billiards room, an 8-car garage, a tennis court and an outdoor swimming pool.
Property blog 6sqft – which claimed Friday that the current owners do not live at Darlington full-time and simply use it to host events – reported that this still massive mansion minus its formerly equally gigantic estate is now for sale now for £37.4 million ($48 million, €44.7 million or درهم176.3 million) through a firm Mr Pavlovic chairs, Special Properties Real Estate Services – an affiliate of Christie’s International Real Estate. Any buyer will undoubtedly be a vastly wealthy figure, but one can guarantee one thing: They’ll never live as lavishly as the barmy boozer George Crocker.
New Jersey mansion Darlington, complete with 58 rooms, for sale for equivalent sum to what it cost to build in 1909; the £37 million house’s original owner was a man whose extravagance knew absolutely no bounds
George Crocker (1856 – 1909) makes F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Jay Gatsby seem like an amateur. Born in Sacramento and the son of a railway magnate worth some $30 million on his death (the equivalent of £634 million or $812 million today), Crocker was willed a significant $6 million (the equivalent of £127 million or $163 million today) on the condition that “after the space of five years continuously he shall abstain from the use of spirituous, vinous, and malt liquors to the extent that he shall not during this period have been intoxicated”.
Crocker decided to ignore the terms of his father’s behest and from 1888 to 1891 lived in San Francisco as “one of the most reckless young men about town when reckless young men thereabouts were common” but then admitted himself to a sanatorium, put himself on the straight and narrow and finally collected the sum of $6 million in 1898.
With wealth and a glamorous wife, Emma Rutherford, a widow from California, Crocker set himself up as the toast of New York society. Though he owned a townhouse at 1 East 64th Street and a villa in Newport, it was on paying $96,500 (the equivalent of £2.2 million or $2.8 million today) for the 1,100 acre Darling estate in Bergen County, Mahwah, New Jersey in 1901 that he truly became someone noticeable.
Choosing what he called “the finest site for a residence in the country”, Crocker commissioned an architect named James Brite (died 1942) to build him a mansion “sparing no expense”. Modeled on a Jacobean prodigy house, Bramshill House in Hampshire, England and built from Indiana limestone and Harvard brick, the “Crocker Mansion” or “Darlington” – as it is more widely known – cost $2 million to build (the equivalent of £38.2 million or $49 million today) and included 75 rooms and around 50,000 square foot of accommodation. Its features included steam heating, elevators, ice cream freezers, integrated vacuum systems and a switchboard and in its grounds a racetrack and 16 greenhouses were constructed whilst a pond was stocked with 4,000 trout.
George Crocker and Emerson McMillin
The design of Darlington was based on “one of the most haunted houses in England”, Bramshill in Hampshire; that building itself was also eventually separated from much of its estate and after being used as the European Police College was sold to developers City & Country for £25 million ($19.5 million) in 2014
Commentators wowed at the resulting creation and noted details such as a library painted after the style of the Italian Renaissance by Tiffany Studios, elaborate wood carving by Italian craftsmen and Tiffany silver chandeliers and a 1906 Aeolian player pipe organ in the building’s 30-foot high Great Hall. In 1912, Architectural Record, chose even to swoon over the basement. They remarked:
“Where Bramshill’s cellar housed for centuries lanterns, tallow dips, forest faggots, wooden vessels for the distribution of light, heat and water through personal service of human slaveys, its American reincarnation is a storehouse of miracle workers in the comfort and luxury of modern domestic life”.
Unfortunately, Mr and Mrs Crocker did not truly get to enjoy the fruits of their extravagant spending. Emma Crocker died in 1904 of cancer and George Crocker also succumbed to the disease in 1909. His estate was valued at $20 million (the equivalent of £422 million or $541 million today) and amongst items found at his mansion were 60,000 personally monogrammed, custom-made cigars valued at $30,000 (the equivalent of £635,000 or $813,000 today).
Sold subsequently to a “self-made” banker, industrialist and astronomy enthusiast named Emerson McMillin (1844 – 1922) in 1909 for $1 million (the equivalent of £21.1 million or $27.1 million), Darlington was next used to display a fine collection of Chinese and Japanese porcelain whilst a herd of Jerseys were kept in the grounds.
After McMillin’s death, his widow sold the estate in 1924 for $685,000 (the equivalent of £7.6 million or $9.8 million) to the Darlington Development Company, which in turn made it available to the Darling Golf and Country Club. They converted the building to a hotel and club that “promised to offer a new dimension to life in Mahwah” but “the development corporation and the club were soon in financial difficulties” and the McMillin estate foreclosed and regained possession.
A new buyer came forward in the form of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Newark. They paid $478,000 for the property in 1926 (the equivalent of £5.2 million or $6.6 million today) and used Darlington as a theological seminary. The surrounding land was gradually sold off and in 1986, the Immaculate Conception Seminary also departed.
Darlington today – The 30-foot high Great Hall is still dominated by a 1906 Aeolian player pipe organ
Darlington today – Ilija Pavlovic expanded the mansion by some 12,000 square foot and amongst other things added a large home cinema
Darlington today – Another addition comes in the form of a vast wine cellar; George Crocker’s father would not have approved
Subsequently restored and modernised with, according to Forbes, plumbing, heating, air conditioning and communications systems being installed, Darlington was placed on the market with just 12.1 acres in 2005 by Darlington Associates, a firm who’d built “multiple residential communities surrounding the mansion”.
An ambitious figure of $25 million (the equivalent of £24.4 million or $31.3 million today) was sought for the now classified historic site but it was not until 2008 that a buyer came forth in the form of a local businessman named Ilija Pavlovic. He paid just $8.875 million (the equivalent of £8 million or $10.2 million today) and then embarked on the “challenge” of “both preserving the historic home while also restoring it to meet 21st-century standards”. The resulting creation spans four floors and includes amongst many other things a tea room, 3 libraries, 2 game rooms, 2 kitchens, a “his and her master bedroom wing”, 12 further guest bedrooms and 5 staff bedrooms.
The biggest issue with the house, it transpired, was that its 476 leaded windows needed to be replaced. This reportedly cost $2 million alone (the equivalent of £1.8 million or $2.3 million today) and in addition, Pavlovic renewed all the mechanical systems, redid all 19 bathrooms, replaced the slate roof and added amongst other things a spa with an indoor lap pool, a gym, a massage room, a beauty salon and a home cinema. There is also a gatehouse, a professional kitchen that can serve 250 meals at a time, a wine cellar, a poker room, a cigar room, a billiards room, an 8-car garage, a tennis court and an outdoor swimming pool.
Property blog 6sqft – which claimed Friday that the current owners do not live at Darlington full-time and simply use it to host events – reported that this still massive mansion minus its formerly equally gigantic estate is now for sale now for £37.4 million ($48 million, €44.7 million or درهم176.3 million) through a firm Mr Pavlovic chairs, Special Properties Real Estate Services – an affiliate of Christie’s International Real Estate. Any buyer will undoubtedly be a vastly wealthy figure, but one can guarantee one thing: They’ll never live as lavishly as the barmy boozer George Crocker.
Matthew Steeples reviews Romulo Café in Kensington; it serves the finest Filipino cuisine and is well worth trying
Romulo Café bills itself as providing “a taste of the Philippines in the heart of Kensington” and that it certainly does. Here you’ll find not only authentic cuisine but also a truly warm and welcoming atmosphere and an experience that is genuinely unusual.
One of four restaurants – the other three being in the Philippines – owned by the same family, Romulo Café is inspired by the owner’s late grandfather, Carlos P. Romulo, a Pulitzer Prize winner, president of the United Nations General Assembly and ambassador to the United States of America. Framed portraits of “Mr United Nations”, as he was affectionately known, guide the décor of the building and a neon caricature of him stands proud at the entrance.
Carlos P. Romulo with his Lincoln in Washington
Rowena Romulo
Owned by former Citibank and J. P. Morgan banker turned restaurateur Rowena Romulo, Romulo Café seats 70, is situated close to the newly opened Design Museum and opened in March 2016. It serves food that combines the culinary traditions of Spain, America, Malaysia and China and aside from the pork and rice dishes one links Filipino cuisine to normally, there are such things as Lola Virginia’s chicken relleno (£14) – roasted chicken stuffed with ground pork, raisins, chorizo and peas; Tito Greg’s Kare-Kare – beef (£16) or seafood (£18) stewed in a peanut based sauce with steamed vegetables and artisan shrimp paste. Homemade Filipino ice cream is a must try for dessert and for those looking to sample a selection of starters, be sure to go for ‘The General’s Combo Platter’ (£17.50). It features barbecued pork, chicken inasal, tinapa rolls, camaron rebosado and patotim with atchara.
Aside from a substantial and varied wine list, it is for cocktails that Romulo Café excels. One, ‘Imelda’s High Heels’ pays homage to Imelda Marcos and thus, naturally, comes served in a vessel shaped as a shoe; another, the ‘Batangas Bad Boy’, is accompanied by a cigar. Filipino spirits including Don Papa Rum, made from cane sugar from Negros plantations; Calamancello, homemade limoncello made with Philippine lime, and San Miguel Beer Pale Pilsen, the “original Philippine beer” are also available.
Of the restaurant, Rowena Romulo concludes:
“We set up Romulo Café as a way to honour and help continue my grandfather Carlos P. Romulo’s legacy through food, as he and my family have always been so proud of Filipino cuisine and how food forms such a central part of Philippine culture, transcending class or creed. It’s true that every single Filipino loves to eat”.
“Now that we have expanded Romulo Café to London, we hope it will help to raise the profile and appreciation of the Philippines through our cuisine. And maybe it will also help to introduce my grandfather and his amazing work to a new generation”.
