Tag: house

Overheard – 8th April

Clangers overheard and snippets spotted by readers of ‘The Steeple Times’

Candy Knockers

At Scalini in Knightsbridge, two brash housebuilders from Essex sat devouring veal chops. One referenced his idols and observed: “The Candy brothers have a brilliant setup. They are like the Peter Stringfellows of property”. The other looked puzzled but the first continued: “They’ve got properties that sell as well as Katie Price’s knockers. What assets! Value for money? I don’t know. But, impressive? Hell yeah!” Try telling that to Mark Holyoake.

You’ve Got That Sinking Feeling

The same duo moved on to talking about their respective staff. The louder of the two offered his thoughts: “I’m so proud of Ray. He’s like the Titanic. He’s like the best ship in the world. Not because it sank but because it was the best ship in the world”. The other opined: “It still f**king sank and Ray will still f**king sink too”. All that was needed next was for My Heart Will Go On to play.

Housing the Godly

Two priests were spotted drinking Bloody Marys at the bar at PJ’s on Fulham Road. The first remarked: “I never quite manage to get given houses”. The second answered: “Shocking, isn’t it? I look through Country Life each week and I think: ‘All I get given each week is Communion wine’”.

Partying with a 4×4

A group of ladies gathered in the garden at Chiltern Firehouse after a hard day’s shopping in Selfridges. As they discussed an impending party an absent ‘friend’ was due to host, one Pucci clad creature shared her thoughts. She commented: “It’s not a party. They’re telling porkie pies. They’re just having it to show off that new Range Rover they’ve just bought. I bet they’ll block the bloody drive with it”. Miaow!

An Iggy Hangover

“My worst hangover was when I drank three bottles of champagne” remarked a passenger on the 14 bus. “Why?” asked her friend. “Because I had to take three days off work and because I thought I was Iggy Pop for two of them”.

Submit comments you hear to [email protected]. We publish amusing and ridiculous chatter we receive and sometimes we change names and locations to protect the identities of the vain and the vacuous.

April 8, 2017
Billionaire Battersea

Historic Battersea mansion for sale for the same sum it was marketed for in 2011; it has been mostly empty throughout the intervening period and was renovated by the late billionaire Malcolm Forbes

Billionaire publisher Malcolm Forbes was a man who liked to live large. He had a huge yacht named The Highlander, threw lavish parties across the globe and counted Gianni Agnelli, Gordon Getty, Calvin Klein, Robert Maxwell, Rupert Murdoch, Henry Kissinger, Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump as friends. This “mysterious collector” also owned numerous residences and one of these, Old Battersea House in London, is for sale for the same sum as it was marketed for in 2011.

Often seen with Elizabeth Taylor at his side and described as “living life in the fabulous”, Forbes purchased Old Battersea House in 1971. It had previously been home to and saved from demolition by Battersea Council by the eccentric author and ghost hunter Wilhemina Stirling. She took up a lifetime tenancy on the building in 1931 and used it to house artworks by her sister, Evelyn de Morgan (1855 – 1919).

Businessman and publisher Malcolm S. Forbes (1919 – 1990) with seven times married actress Dame Elizabeth Taylor DBE (1932 – 2011) at his lavish 70th birthday party at the Palais Mendoub, Tangier, Morocco in 1989

Old Battersea House, 30 Vicarage Crescent, Battersea, London, SW11 3LD, United Kingdom

A. M. D. Wilhemina Stirling (1865 – 1965) owned the house prior to Malcolm Forbes

Christopher ‘Kip’ Forbes (born 1951) assisted his father restore Old Battersea House and later oversaw the family selling its art collection in 2003 and 2009

Grade II* listed since 1954 and adapted during Forbes and subsequently his son Kip’s ownership to showcase a vast collection of Victorian art and antiques, Old Battersea House was built on Tudor foundations in 1699 and was at first known as ‘Terrace House’. It originally had gardens extending down to the River Thames and is rumoured to have been designed by Sir Christopher Wren (1632 – 1723).

Featuring “handsome classical proportions throughout” and standing within a 110-foot wide walled garden, the 10,100 square foot house includes 4 reception rooms, 10 double bedrooms and 7 bathrooms. It has off-street parking and a garden store but it is sadly overlooked by the adjoining housing estate that was built in its grounds in the 1930s.

Savills seek £12 million ($15 million, €14 million or درهم54.9 million) for Old Battersea House.

The impressive hallway of Old Battersea House

Another entertaining space

Elizabeth Taylor and her then husband Larry Fortensky at Old Battersea House in 1992

Images of the house as it was furnished during the ownership of the Forbes family

April 6, 2017
Over-Engineered

Essex “neo Georgian Palladian” residence created from an ordinary detached house marketed for £5.4 million; it is a bit of a mish-mash and described as “over-engineered”

Estate agents normally wax lyrical about properties they are marketing but in the case of £5.4 million ($6.7 million, €6.3 million or درهم24.8million) Threshers House at Threshers Bush, near Harlow in Essex, Beresfords bizarrely go as far as to describe it as “over-engineered”.

Situated on a plot of 11.5 acres and redeveloped and extended since 2010 by an “award winning builder” named Paul Pickering, the 7,409 square foot main residence offered is described as being “neo Georgian Palladian” in style. Given such an architectural period doesn’t exist as a sole entity, it is a bit of a mish-mash but given the new building is an improvement on the plain house that it has been created from, one can be forgiving of the result.

The old Threshers House, Hobbs Cross Road, Threshers Bush, Harlow, Essex, CM17 0NP

The new Threshers House, Hobbs Cross Road, Threshers Bush, Harlow, Essex, CM17 0NP

The old interior of the building and the new interior

A proposed design that was ultimately rejected by planning officials at Epping Forest District Council

Aside from a somewhat ostentatious South Fork-esque portico entrance, Threshers House is presented without kitchens and bathrooms so as to allow “incoming purchasers to design to their own requirements”. It includes 5 reception rooms, 5 bedrooms and a 2-bedroom first floor flat and comes with planning permission for a 1,400 square foot orangery and underground leisure facility. Within the grounds is a completed 1,988 square foot 3 bedroom cottage, a 886 square foot bungalow, a 768 square foot bungalow and a 1,386 square foot six car garage.

Elsewhere and benefitting from separate access, a tiled stable and thatched barn complex provides accommodation for 14 horses and was previously run as a business named Threshers Equestrian. It comes with a horse walker, floodlit manège, lunging room and hard standing as well as a number of paddocks.

Threshers House – which is situated about 40 minutes drive from Canary Wharf – is also available for £3.25 million ($4.06 million, €3.81 million or درهم14.92 million) with just 5 acres of land and minus the ancillary accommodation.

April 3, 2017
A Dutch Delight

New York’s “most impressive” Dutch colonial house for sale for £2.59 million in spite of needing updating

Built in 1735 and listed as a designated New York landmark in 1966, 126 West Drive in Douglaston, Queens is considered to be New York’s “most impressive architectural remnant of the early Dutch Culture”. It has just been listed for sale for £2.59 million ($3.25 million, €3.05 million or درهم11.94 million) through Daniel Gale Sotheby’s International Realty.

Overlooking Little Neck Bay, this “picturesque Dutch colonial house” features a salt-box roof, wooden shingles and oak beams and was built by Cornelius Van Wyck, a third generation settler on a plot of 125 acres. It was subsequently expanded in the 1770s and 1930s but despite now standing on a plot of just 0.65 acres is “one of the largest true waterfront properties in Queens”.

Extending to 3,876 square foot and including 4 bedrooms and 4 bathrooms, the Cornelius Van Wyck House has direct access to a sandy beach and is just 28 minutes from Manhattan.

April 2, 2017
Narrow in Knightsbridge

Tiny 2.5-foot deep Knightsbridge “corridor house” sells for £810,000 at auction

Yesterday, at an auction in London, a 2.5-foot deep (at its minimum) and 3-foot deep (at its maximum) mews house sold for £810,000 ($1 million, €936,000 or درهم3.7 million) despite being nothing more than a very long corridor.

Extending to 275 square foot in total and 65-foot long, 1B Ennismore Gardens Mews needs “complete refurbishment” but has potential for a first floor extension. The single-storey freehold property, which was owned from the 1950s to 2010 by a lady named Linda Wildoner, is certainly one of the smallest houses in Knightsbridge and could definitely be described as a curiosity.

Linda Wildoner (1916 – 2010) outside 1B Ennismore Gardens Mews, Knightsbridge, London, SW7 1HX with Sir Martyn Poliakoff CBE (born 1947)

Miss Wildoner, an Austrian who moved to London after the Second World War to take care of Sir Martin Poliakoff and his family, died in 2010 and yesterday’s sale was carried out at the behest of her executors.

Of this extraordinarily weird property, Chris Coleman-Smith of auctioneers Savills told the Mail Online:

“You see narrow houses, but this is something completely different… It is on a prime, crème de la crème mews on Knightsbridge. It is a superb, picturesque mews. One of the top addresses”.

“It is very basic and will need a complete refurbishment. It is brilliant. It is weird and wonderful and I’ve not come across anything like it. Someone will create something fantastic here. In a cobbled mews in Knightsbridge it is a great opportunity”.

March 30, 2017
A Treble Two

Miss Marple-esque thatched cottage for sale for a sum 129% higher than it achieved in 2014; it has 2 reception rooms, 2 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms

Sold last in October 2014 for £175,000, Fussells Cottage in the “unspoilt” Wiltshire village of Wedhampton is again for sale for £400,000 ($497,000, €460,000 or درهم1.8 million).

Named after the occupational description for a spinner and situated next to an old mill, the 1,167 square foot, Grade II listed house on offer had its roof rethatched in January 2015. It consists of 2 reception rooms, 2 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms.

Offered to market by agents Hamptons, the extended cottage retains many period features and comes with an oak framed car barn in its grounds.

March 29, 2017
Painting & Poetry

North Yorkshire mill house complete with its own valley for sale; Wordsworth waxed lyrical about its setting and Turner painted it

Described as “a delightful and delicious valley” by the Romantic poet William Wordsworth (1770 – 1850) in 1799 in a letter to his friend and fellow poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772 – 1834), Mill Gill outside Askrigg in Wensleydale, North Yorkshire has more recently been described as a “real hidden gem”.

Sketched also in 1816 by the Romanticist landscape painter J. M. W. Turner (1775 – 1851), the valley is the setting for Mill Gill House, a 6-bedroom stone-built residence that dates to 1721. For sale currently for £850,000 ($1.06 million, €987,000 or درهم3.91 million), the 2,604 square foot house stands in 18 acres of grassland, woodland and ponds. It comes with a “historic relic” 3-storey sawmill complex complete with original machinery, a 2-storey coach house, a high eaved field barn and a 2-storey dovecote.

Of their time at what they call a “mini-estate”, current owner Professor David Blake told The Yorkshire Post:

“I fell for it and so did my wife [Rita], who is a mad keen gardener. It’s such a beautiful place… I’d like to see the mill kept as a workshop and used by an artisan, maybe by a potter or a joiner. That would our ideal buyer”.

“We will miss it and we really don’t want to go. We are just about to take our daily walk. We go and feed the hens and then we feed the ducks on the pond and then we carry on to the tip of the waterfall. It’s the walk Wordsworth did and in summer when everything is blooming, it is even more beautiful. So much so it makes you want to cry”.

Grade II listed Mill Gill House is being marketed by estate agents Robin Jessop.

March 23, 2017
Large in Lowndes

Vast Knightsbridge penthouse with two terraces and a double garage for sale for a sum 478% higher than it achieved in 2000

A penthouse across three buildings in Knightsbridge that sold for £5.1 million (the equivalent of £7.9 million, $9.6 million, €9 million or درهم 35.3 million today) in November 2000 has gone on the market for the much increased sum of £29.5 million ($35.9 million, €33.6 million or درهم 131.8 million).

Exterior of 23–25 Lowndes Square, Knightsbridge, London, SW1X 9HD

Featuring 16 windows overlooking a mature communal garden and a gross internal area of 6,215 square foot, The Penthouse at 23 to 25 Lowndes Square has six bedrooms, two roof terraces and private garaging for two cars. It is offered on a 992 year lease with a share of the freehold and is subject to a whopping annual service charge of £50,576 per year ($61,525, €57,635 or درهم 225,982).

The selling agents are Savills of Sloane Street.

March 12, 2017
Barbed Manors

Grade II* listed Kent manor house for sale for £3.95 million; the purchaser will get a controversial £107.9 million EuroMillions jackpot winner as their neighbour

Sold last in 2009 for £1.9 million (the equivalent of £2.3 million, $2.8 million, €2.2 million or درهم 10.3 million today), Waystrode Manor at Cowden, near Edenbridge in Kent is a Grade II* listed manor house.

For sale currently for £3.95 million ($4.81 million, €4.56 million or درهم 17.65 million) through Savills, the main 4,435 square foot house dates back as far, perhaps, as 1208. The present Tudor residence includes 4 reception rooms, 5 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms, but aside from that there is a 3 bedroom cottage, a converted oast house providing a recreation space, a Grade II listed double vaulted timber frame barn, an orangery and a coach house.

Within the 7.8 acres of formal and informal gardens and grounds of this attractive, restored property – which has been offered as a film and photo shoot location through the JJ Media agency – there is also an outdoor swimming pool, a hard tennis court, three ponds and an orchard.

Though the eventual purchaser of Waystrode Manor will of course be a multi-millionaire, they will most likely not be nearly as rich as their controversial neighbours, Neil Trotter and his partner Nikki Ottaway. Mr Trotter won £107.9 million ($131.4million, €124.6 million or درهم 482.4 million) on the EuroMillions lottery in 2014 and subsequently bought the adjoining 423-acre estate, Leighton Manor, for £5 million ($6.1 million, €5.8 million or درهم 22.4 million). In 2016, Trotter and Ottaway were “slammed” in the national press by locals after installing what was termed an “unsightly” barbed wire fence.

Neil Trotter was a garage mechanic before he won a EuroMillions jackpot

Waystrode Manor, Spode Lane, Cowden, Edenbridge, Kent, TN8 7HW

A sitting room in the main house

A drawing room with an equally imposing fireplace

This hallway is used as a dining space

Whilst this is described as a breakfast room

The kitchen is one of the few “modern” rooms in the main building

The master bedroom has its own bathroom

This barn is Grade II listed

It features a double height, vaulted interior

An oast house stands in the grounds also

The interior of the building

A view of the gardens

This orangery is quite impressive from the outside

As is its interior

There is a tennis court

And a swimming pool

A further outbuilding

The setting

Another view of the main house

March 9, 2017
Chocolate Box Perfection

Quaint medieval thatched cottage for sale; it is one of the oldest in Wiltshire

One of the oldest building structures in Wiltshire, The Old Cottage at Ogbourne St. Andrew, dates to medieval times and is now for sale for £630,000 ($786,000, €743,000 or درهم2.9 million).

Grade II listed and built from banded sarsen and flint with a thatched roof, this quirky 1,787 square foot cottage most definitely wouldn’t look out of place on a chocolate box or in an episode of Midsomer Murders. It includes 3 reception rooms, a breakfast kitchen, 4 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms and stands with 0.34 acres of gardens.

Featuring such things as an inglenook fireplace complete with a bread oven and beamed ceilings, The Old Cottage has been in the ownership of the same family for 40 years. It is for sale through Hamptons International and though currently without allocated parking, has the potential to create space.

February 14, 2017