Five of the best palaces in the trees
When one thinks of treehouses, one generally imagines pretty rudimentary creations built out of old boards and bits of rope. Now, though, treehouses are becoming more and more extravagant. As individuals such as J. K. Rowling and the Duchess of Northumberland construct vast palaces in the trees in their gardens, The Steeple Times examines five of the best:
The Steeple Times asks musician and architectural historian Oliver Gerrish: “What’s on your mantelpiece?”
The Steeple Times shares “wit and wisdom”. What’s your guiding force?
My guiding force is optimism.
“Don’t get even, get medieval” is, in our humble opinion, a great motto. What’s yours?
“Wealth and fame”! Just joking, I think that “I’ll sing for my supper” would be a good one!
Kerry Katona was considered unacceptable in 2007. Who or what is unacceptable in 2012?
Bad architecture.
Tony Blair misses being Prime Minister. What do you miss most in your life?
Singing in The London Oratory Schola, which I enjoyed so much. I also miss my grandfather, who died recently. He was a constant source of fun, support and love.
What might you swap all your wealth for?
I would swap all my wealth (maybe “paltry savings” would be a better phrase) for a chance to present a TV show exploring the history of architecture and music in Britain. It would be great if it became a great success and made me lots of money and educated people about the wonderful heritage we take so for granted.
Donald Trump was once a case of: “If you owe the bank a thousand, they close you down; but if you owe the bank a billion, you own the bank”. What’s your view on the banking crisis?
I don’t like to borrow money and I think it is utterly wrong for the banks to be supporting peoples’ misadventures with borrowing at the expense of other non-borrowing clients who can ill afford to bail out the former with their hard earned savings.
What phrase or word do you most loathe?
“Babe”.
In the UK, some people consider charity to “begin at home”. What’s your view and what causes do you personally support?
I believe that by supporting smaller charities with far reaching ideals one can make a real difference. I run a charity music series called the Chelsea Concerts with soprano Alexandra Kennedy and we have now raised over £15,000 for various charities, including The Cystic Fibrosis Trust, SSAFA, The Rhinology and Laryngology Fund, The Rifles’ Care for Casualties and others. Each time, along with raising money for the charities, I have felt enlightened about these causes and educated about the extraordinary people and causes that are helped by these charities. I am also a Trustee of The Georgian Group and started The Young Georgians. We are the UK’s major architectural preservation charity. I was also recently involved with The Lady R Foundation and it’s fundraising for Veteran’s Aid.
The judge in Law Abiding Citizen states: “I can pretty do whatever I want” before being blown up whilst answering her mobile phone. What’s your view on the appropriate use of such devices?
Never use a mobile phone or have it on at a concert. It’s always the people with the worst and loudest ring tones that leave them on.
If you could fill a carriage on The Orient Express, who would be your fellow passengers?
Wowzers! Boris Johnson, Britney Spears, Rosamund Pike, the composer James MacMillan, my Grandmother Molly Lefebure, Henry Conway and my other closest friends, a pretty new girlfriend, The Dowager Duchess of Devonshire, Jenny Agutter, Lady Lucinda Lambton and The Queen.
If I could have a few spectral guests too they would be Edith Sitwell, Winston Churchill, Georgian architect Robert Adam, Grace Kelly, Sir John Vanbrugh, M. R. James, Cecil Beaton and The Queen Mother.
If you were unfortunate enough to end up on death row, what would be your last meal and where would you eat it?
Smoked salmon and smoked mackerel pate with a very cold Diet Coke.
What time is it acceptable to consume the first drink of the day?
A glass or two at lunch if with friends and then after 6pm otherwise.
A Negroni, a martini or a cup of tea?
Negroni or a cup of tea, depending on the weather. I hate martinis.
Whose parties do you enjoy the most and why?
Older friends because they love to mix the generations and one comes back feeling full of information and also the food and drink is mostly better.
Who is the most positive person you know?
My mother.
What’s your most guilty pleasure?
Burger King XL bacon double cheeseburger.
If a tattoo were to sum you up, what would it be of?
A well-proportioned Palladian house.
If you were a car, what marque would you be?
Make? Probably an old VW Golf as mine works well, isn’t at all showy and gets me from A to B.
Cilla Black presented Surprise, Surprise. Tell us the most surprising thing about you.
I am a total country bumpkin at heart and like nothing more than being back in Derbyshire at The Barley Mow pub catching up with my friends there.
What’s currently sitting on your mantelpiece?
A punk rocker shaped scrubbing brush, a model of The Queen who waves her hand when the sun touches her bag (so not very often), my flatmate’s invitations (mine are on the shelf opposite since we are very competitive!) and some photographs of our mad garden in Derbyshire.
Oliver Gerrish is an architectural historian, countertenor and founder of the Young Georgian Society.
Read Oliver Gerrish’s blog ArchMusicMan at: http://archmusicman.blogspot.co.uk/
Watch his show reel at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=LRXboRYT3fs
For information on The Georgian Group go to: http://www.georgiangroup.org.uk
For information on the Chelsea Concerts: http://www.chelseaconcerts.com
Follow him on Twitter at: http://www.twitter.com/oligerrish
Well-known for their numberplates “2 BE” and “NOT 2B,” this power couple live on Cheyne Walk and are a little bit like Marmite. In Chelsea, Bourne has aroused controversy by attempting to gain planning permission to turn George Best’s favourite boozer, The Phene, into a house and in Soho, Greene’s makeover of Ronnie Scott’s caused apoplectic outbursts amongst traditionalists. Labour supporting Bourne is described as a “property and leisure entrepreneur” whilst his wife just happens to control the luvvies favourite theatre, The Old Vic in Waterloo. Bourne and Greene are a duo who should not be underestimated.
This mouthpiece was born in Rettendon, Essex in 1958 and vents bile on all manner of subjects. Articles such as: “Why don’t more women moan like me?” and “Liz Jones’ baby craving drove her to steal husband’s sperm in ultimate deception” are frankly illustrative of why she’s so unpopular. After she got banned from the majority of fashion shows and her husband left her, she quit London for Somerset in 2007 to feed organic muesli to the rats in the barns of a 47-acre farm she purchased as her “rural idyll.” That misadventure came to a sticky end in November 2012 after she’d alienated the whole county by calling them, amongst other things, “smelly” and “faintly Amish.” Goodness knows whom she’ll choose to offend next. Phillip Schofield sums her up best: “She is inconsistent, bitter, nasty and unhinged.” Our advice: Just steer well clear of this acid tongued poison pen.
Matthew Steeples examines the truth behind Liz Jones giving up on her “rural idyll”
The Mail’s Liz Jones is a waspish woman who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. Those who’ve paid even a moment’s attention to her bleating, will be familiar with lines such as: “Last week, my brand new £1,300 MacBook Pro broke” and “Phil Spencer wanted his £46,000 and he wanted it now!” She never stops talking about money and the size of what she both owns and owes.
In today’s Femail, Jones bores on about about how she feels “like a cross-dresser” trying out the Kardashian Kollection of clothing in a pointed attack on Kim Kardashian, but it was for her diatribe yesterday that she truly got the goat of the nation in “[bidding] a ferocious farewell” to life in the country in an article entitled “Goodbye… and good riddance!” 2,151 people have commented so far and most of them have been far from sympathetic.
When Upcott Farm at Brushford, near Dulverton in Somerset came up for sale in 2007 at a price of £1.6 million, it featured in an article by The Telegraph’s Caroline McGhie. The 5-bedroomed farmhouse came with a 2-bedroom annexe, a courtyard of barns and stables and 47 acres of land. McGhie waxed lyrical about the merits of moving to this location: “People come here for the peace and quiet, the night skies, the dramatic coastline, and they work from home,” she stated before adding: “You can find everything here, including butchers, bakers, afternoon tea and cake, fish and chips, an art gallery and a shop selling fishing tackle.” Of Upcott Farm itself, she concluded:
“This would suit a member of the new wave of buyers dubbed Droppies (Disillusioned Relatively Ordinary Professionals Preferring Independent Employment Situations).”
McGhie got it half right: Upcott Farm sold to someone who considers herself far from “relatively ordinary” and someone who is far from “professional.” The purchaser, however, was certainly someone who’d become “disillusioned” with what she’d bought and someone whose desire to be “independent” and create a “situation” just alienated all she encountered. The buyer, you’ve guessed it, was none other than Elizabeth Ann Jones.
Jones was born in Brentwood, Essex in 1958 and studied journalism at the London College of Printing. She became editor of Marie Claire in 1999 but was sacked, she herself suggests, for “listing in the magazine the freebies she had been offered in the previous month.” Here, it seems, began Jones’s obsession with all things material and here she also met an Indian BBC radio journalist named Nirpal Dhaliwal in 2000.
Jones married Dhaliwal but the union was to prove an “utter disaster” as he had affairs with women she terms “younger, dimmer [and] slimmer.” “I’m no racist” Jones was divorced in 2007 and said goodbye to her “3,000 square foot of Islington real estate” and “easy, if super-busy, London life” in favour of the green, green grass of Somerset.
Whoever’s side you see it from, five years of hell followed. Jones baited the locals and they grew to loathe her. She wrote columns and a book, The Exmoor Files, where she attacked them as “faintly Amish… feral, old and smelly” and another hack and neighbour, Jane Alexander of The Telegraph, responded: “Dulverton [was] positively fizzing with fury” after each and every publication.
Of the local restaurants, Jones stated:
“I have given up trying to eat out in restaurants here on Exmoor… It is still stuck in the Seventies, with only things in baskets and rum babas on the menu… If you tell the waiter you are vegetarian, you are stared at, incredulously, as if you are black.”
She whinged about her inability to find love:
”I will never, ever meet a man here in the middle of a moor, where even to be in possession of your own teeth is a bonus.”
And whined about fieldsports:
“I didn’t increase my popularity by being unable to pass a party of men and often children with guns, shooting rabbits and deer, without getting out of my BMW and saying: ‘Do you really have nothing better to do with your Saturday morning?’ The look of shock on their faces that I had the cheek to challenge them was priceless. I would stop, too, and shout at huntsmen on horses, galloping on tarmaced roads, one hand on the reins, the other clamping a mobile phone to their heads. ‘You will ruin your horses’ tendons!’ I would wail.”
Whilst Jones found little to like in her new community, they found nothing positive in her arrival either. Her dog was blamed for worrying lambs, and Jones’s inability to control it, locals say, was an indicator of the chasm between her life and theirs. In 2009, one neighbour went as far as to tell Danny Brierley of The Independent:
“We have got nothing in common with her, really. I think she may find it difficult to make any kind of life here now. She is not a very friendly person and we are all sick to death of talking about Liz Jones. A hatred has been building up for months. She is actually having a go at people and they are not going to tolerate that. She has feelings like all people, of course she has. But everyone wants her to leave and leave now. No one can make her, but we think she will go. I don’t see how you can live in such a small community with people who think that way about you.”
Matters came to a head when Jones’s precious black BMW convertible, “bought in 2005 for £26,000,” was pelted with eggs and teenagers fired shots at her letterbox with an air rifle. A local councilor even dressed up as her in the local carnival and yesterday Jones took revenge on those she blames for her “five-year prison sentence” and deprivation from Space NK, Cath Kidston and Illy coffee.
Instead, the article just shows the true reality of this bombastic harpy. The lines Jones penned speak for themselves. Country people don’t welcome someone who planned to “hack for miles across the open moorland in my Prada jodhpurs” anymore than the folk of Knightsbridge welcome Arabs treating their roads like racetracks. The gardener who had to endure Jones yelling “walk faster!” at him didn’t deserve such anymore than a bus driver in SW11 deserves abuse from his passengers. Jones concludes:
“I’m now a different person. I became so lonely. I would often get in my car, not just for the warmth, but for the kind voice of the satnav lady. I’ve learned that an amazing view and a pair of nesting grey herons are not enough to make me happy.”
Miss Jones bleats that she’s taken a £500,000 loss on Upcott Farm, which languished on the market at first at £1,900,000 and then £1,750,000 for three years. The “unexpected” sale of the property has given her the ability to “flee back to the city” but the locals and even the “Droopies” should be warned: there’s still 27 acres of the farm unsold and on the market at a price of £200,000. Halloween may have passed but the battleaxe in the Beemer could still call again.
Read yesterday’s “Goodbye… and good riddance!” article by Liz Jones for the Mail on Sunday at: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2231033/Goodbye–good-riddance-During-catastrophic-years-country-Liz-Jones-greeted-gun-attack-relentless-abuse-Now-flees-city-bids-ferocious-farewell.html
To purchase Liz Jones’s book, The Exmoor Diaries, go to: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Exmoor-Files-Husband-Found-Rural/dp/0297854437
For more information about the remaining 27 acres at Upcott Farm, contact Strutt & Parker on +44 (0) 1392 976005 or go to: http://www.primelocation.com/for-sale/details/18314693?search_identifier=71cbb8a2fb43a12182bfa7b79b5de0a3
Could the number 13 be the reason Halcyon Hall has failed to sell?
Several over the top Californian residences we’ve featured on The Steeple Times, namely the $40,000,000 Chateau d’Or in Bel Air and the $87,000,000 Villa del Lago on the Newport coast, were properties that have seen huge price reductions. Though $15,000,000 has been sliced off the asking price of the Bel Air pad, it remains unsold and meanwhile Villa del Lago, now renamed One Pelican Hill Road, achieved just $18.5 million in a bankruptcy auction. It sold for less than a quarter of what the developer originally sought for it.
We believed monstrous white elephants like these were confined to the US, but we are afraid we’ve come across something today that truly proves otherwise. The behemoth we refer to is a 14,000 square foot house in Radlett, Hertfordshire. Built in 2005 for a businessman named Barry Beck, “Halcyon Hall” stands on the site of a far more modest property that was simply known as 11 Newlands Avenue.
The phrase “halcyon days” refers to “the seven days of winter when storms never occur” in the Greek myth of Alycone but whether this inspired Beck in naming this place is unknown. He and his wife, Pauline, did, however, decide upon an “Elizabethan theme” for the residence and our pictures illustrate their extravagantly eccentric tastes adequately.
Undoubtedly the construction of this vast Hertfordshire crib is of a high quality but the look is nothing other than ludicrous. Here is a mix of pastiche, ostentatiousness and just plain odd. Not even a WAG could have come up with décor this curious and such things as a private cinema with 13 seats can plainly not be the choice of someone who follows the curse of the hangman’s noose.
This 7-bedroomed house, which stands in 1.17 acres, would strangely, though, be ideal for someone who is a little paranoid. As well as all the security features you’d expect of any multi-million pound mansion in the Home Counties, it also includes a bathroom that doubles as a panic room. If you close the door in a certain way, steel bars supposedly come down making sure no intruder can follow you inside.
Two knights in full suits of armour guard the entrance hallway and a life-size stuffed bear stands dominant in the games gallery of the house. Plainly this beast’s not persuaded anyone to bite yet as whilst the price of Halcyon Hall has fallen from £15,000,000 in February 2011 to just under £13,000,000 in November 2012, the house remains on the market. We suspect that the curse of “Unlucky Thirteen” may well be alive and well somewhere between numbers 11 and 15 Newlands Avenue.
Halcyon Hall, 11 Newlands Avenue, Radlett, Hertfordshire, WD7 8EH is for sale through Statons. For more information telephone: +44 (0) 20 8445 3694 or email: [email protected]
Matthew Steeples explores the story of an empty Kensington mansion
A multi-million pound 8-bedroomed house in Kensington isn’t anything unusual. In fact, rather, they’re ten a penny. In this, one of the wealthiest boroughs in the land, large, expensive homes are just the norm.
No. 1 Campden Hill, which is being marketed for an undisclosed eight-figure sum, is in a quite different league. Here is a detached Edwardian house in an acre of grounds just to the north of Kensington High Street. It’s an unrenovated property but it attracted much press attention in October 2011 because it was place on the market in October 2011 at a price of £75,000,000. Yes, you heard it right: £75 million for a fixer-upper. Last week, Radio 4 made a hell of a fuss about a derelict semi-detached house in Newcastle selling for just £14,000 so this truly must be something special.
The architect of the house Edward Prioleau Warren (1856 – 1937), a Bristol born architect and archaeologist, was best known for “Oxford colleges and minor country houses” but also designed the War Cemetery at Basra. He was a friend and adviser to the American novelist Henry James and in addition to building No. 1 Campden Hill in 1915, he also designed a house at 5 Palace Green in 1906 and another, Estcort House in Kensington Palace Gardens, in 1904. Warren’s guiding style is described as having been to recreate an “understated revival of English late 17th century” architecture and at No. 1 Campden Hill he created just that.
Colonel Edmond Grove-Hills (1864 – 1922), born Edmond Hills, and his wife, Juliet Spencer-Bell, were the architect’s clients. A plaque on the building bares their names and the following dedication:
This House I built for Me & Mine
May it be of Peace A Shrine
And no Enmity or Sin
Ever find its way therein
AD 1915
Sadly for the Grove-Hills, the following year, their son, Second Lieutenant Charles Herbert-Hills (1895 – 1916) was killed on the Somme aged just 21. His father, meanwhile, was awarded a CBE in 1918 after having served as the Assistant Chief Engineer of Eastern Command during the war.
Aside from his military exploits, Edmond Grove-Hills is best known for his role as president of the Royal Astronomical Society. He took part in observations of eclipse of the sun in Japan in 1896, India in 1898 and Russia in 1914 and contributed papers analysing both this and the causes of the irregular movements of the earth’s axis of rotation.
In 1951, No. 1 Campden Hill was purchased by the government of Uruguay and it became the residence of their ambassador to the United Kingdom. For the next fifty years the building was barely altered but when the lease from the Phillimore Kensington Estate came to an end, there were legal problems as the 1951 transfer had never been stamped. Of this, Sharon Mulroney of Forsters, the legal representatives of Phillimore, commented:
“It is highly unusual to be faced with complications of this kind when dealing with a registered London title, but this made the transaction all the more fascinating. Even the decision to allow ambassadorial staff to return to the property for security purposes after completion was fraught with potential problems about security of tenure, employment and tax.”
Eventually, without issue, the Phillimore Estate sold on the house in 2001 for a price of approximately £17,000,000. In the years since, the property was effectively mothballed as all the purchasers have done is to have obtained planning permission to redevelop the building into a mammoth mansion of epic proportions.
The approved plans show designs for something quite remarkable. Warren’s “understated” residence will be replaced with 8 vast bedroom suites, grand entertaining spaces, a lift and even bedrooms for 5 staff. In addition to a full-scale renovation of the original freehold house, there is scope to provide a total of 30,000 square feet of accommodation by adding a huge subterranean complex that will include a 25-metre swimming pool, court, squash court, gym, sauna, steam room, function room, entertainment room, home cinema, wine tasting room and even a nightclub to rival any of Kensington’s trendiest haunts.
On that basis alone, No. 1 Campden Hill is surely the ideal residence for Prince Harry: “Who needs Boujis?” we hear him cry.
No. 1 Campden Hill, London, W8 7AD is for sale through Knight Frank. For more details contact Roddy Craggs on +44 (0) 20 7938 4311 or go to: http://search.knightfrank.com/ken100161 to download a brochure.
For more information about The Phillimore Estate, go to: http://www.phillimore-kensington-estate.co.uk
The bonfire sale of a monster of a mansion that has had a $15 million price reduction
A property was first built at 10425 West Sunset Boulevard in Lower Bel Air, Los Angeles in 1936. Here, in this most exclusive of districts, the homes of the prosperous residents are hidden from view and this address, this day, is no exception.
One of the original owners of a house on this site, which has a main access from the cul-de-sac Revuelta Way, was William R. Wilkerson (1890 – 1962), a nightclub owner and founder of The Hollywood Reporter. A compulsive gambler, he is also credited with contributing to Hollywood’s “Golden Era” through the venues he opened. These included Vendome, Café Tocadero, Sunset House, Ciro’s, LaRue, L’Aiglon and most famously The Flamingo Hotel. An involvement here with the ruthless gangster Ben “Bugsy” Siegel (1906 – 1947) turned sour in 1946 and resulted in him having to flee to Paris in fear of his life. Siegel’s death allowed him to return to Los Angeles in 1947 and having “quit gambling cold turkey” following the birth of a son in 1951, he led a much quieter life. He is remembered as being a man who preferred his “beloved French poodles to any wife or friend.”
Wilkerson is first recorded as living at 10425 West Sunset Boulevard in the 1940 California Census with his fourth wife, Estelle Jackson Brown. He subsequently remained there with his fifth wife, Vivian DuBois, and sixth wife Beatrice “Tichi” Noble. After his death, Tichi Wilkerson (1926 – 2004) sold first 10425 West Sunset Boulevard and then, in 1988, The Hollywood Reporter for $26,700,000.
Another famous owner of 10425 West Sunset Boulevard was a “celebrity attorney” named Greg Bautzer (1911 – 1987). Bautzer is best known for having represented not only William R. Wilkerson but also Ginger Rogers, Ingrid Bergman, Joan Crawford, Kirk Kerkorian and Howard Hughes. He is described as having been “as dashing and popular as any successful Hollywood movie star” and was engaged to but did not marry the actresses Barbara Payton, Lana Turner and Dorothy Lamour. He did, however, make the actress Dana Wynter his second wife in 1956, then Buffy Cobb Chapman and finally Nicola Dantine. This “man-about-Beverly Hills,” it seems, was indeed plainly a magnet for anything dramatic.
The current owner of the house, which is now somewhat ludicrously named Chateau d’Or or The House of Gold, is a man named Yousuf Tar. The president of the “faux-Italian mall fixture Bernini men’s clothing [company],” bought 10425 West Sunset Boulevard in 1992 for $6,000,000 and set about creating what his realtor, Sally Forster Jones, calls a “cross between The White House and Versailles.” The resulting remodeled residence isn’t quite either but frankly combines a mixture of one of the palaces of the deceased tyrant Colonel Gadaffi and the set of Dynasty.
Decorated throughout in a white and gold, the aim of the redesign was to create the look of an 18th century palace complete with acres of marble, columns, cupolas, gold leaft and mouldings. Instead, the interpretation looks more Chigwell-esque than Parisian and has simply attracted criticism and mockery. An example, such as this from Curbed.com, gives a guide to the opinion of the majority about this ugly monstrosity:
“[The mansion] houses some of the cheapest-looking French-inspired interiors ever made, highlighted (or, rather, lowlighted) by a towering, clunky fireplace and a cartoon-worthy master suite, with gilded everything. Even San Simeon’s William Randolph Hearst would object to this level of pointless expenditure.”
Chateau d’Or, according to the listing on Forster Jones’s website, features 25,953 square foot of living space with 15 bedrooms and 16.5 bathrooms. There is a vast dining hall capable of seating upto 80 for a formal dinner which currently features a $300,000 dining table and a 1,600 square foot “oversized gourmet kitchen” complete with 800 square foot of cupboards, an “indoor sunlit gazebo” and a double Viking oven. A double height media room styled as an opera house has also been created and there’s also a cigar and wine tasting room. The Chateau d’Or is nothing other than a “home” on a lavish and ludicrous scale.
In addition to a swimming pool, spa and gym, Chateau d’Or also has a championship tennis court, guest accommodation and 1.7 acres of grounds. Accessed by a 600ft driveway and surrounded by privacy walls plainly designed to keep prying eyes out, the house featured in Lady Gaga’s 2009 video for her song Paparazzi. Mr Tar plainly isn’t that private at all.
Not shy of renting the house out for other purposes, it has also been used for a photoshoot for Versace, a television advert for Foot Locker and Addidas starring Ken Jeong and as a venue for a Dubai themed party for Donald Trump where Christina Aguilera performed.
Yousuf Tar put Chateau d’Or on the market in 2009 for just shy of $40,000,000 and though Michael Jackson supposedly wanted to buy it to create a “new Neverland,” his sad demise meant that this fell through. Relisted repeatedly since and despite the best efforts of Sally Forster Jones, Chateau d’Or’s gaudiness plainly hasn’t appealed to the market.
Reduced by nearly $15,000,000 to $25,000,000 this month, Chateau d’Or still doesn’t look like much of a bargain. Somehow, we suspect, it’ll have to be marked down a fair bit more before anyone’s even vaguely tempted.
For more information Chateau d’Or, 10425 West Sunset Boulevard, Bel Air, Los Angeles, California, CA 90077, USA contact Sally Forster Jones of the SFJ Group at +1 (310) 281 3999 or email her at: [email protected]
Visit the official website for the house at: http://www.lechateaudor.com
Watch a tour of Chateau d’Or by Sally Forster Jones at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjOAf_cfm0Q
Watch Lady Gaga’s Paparazzi video at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2smz_1L2_0
For more information about William R. Wilkerson, go to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Wilkerson
Read The Hollywood Reporter at: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com
For more details about Bernini, go to: http://www.bernini.com
Living life to the full Donald G. Abbey style
“Why pay less when you can pay more?” is a mantra that some strangely choose to live by. In my time, I have encountered a couple with a different Ferrari for each day of the week, someone who proudly declared their home had a window for each day of the year and an heiress who insists upon the local baker feeding her dog daily with a freshly baked caviar pie.
When I discovered a house in California priced at $78,000,000, I didn’t expect to subsequently find out that the same vendor is also selling another of his homes in Montana at the very same price. Having done a little research into Donald G. Abbey, the commercial real estate tycoon who owns both The Bradbury Estate and Shelter Island, I discovered that here indeed is another personality whose excess knows no bounds.
I suppose when people sell homes of this worth, the asking price they set is quite irrelevant. “What,” I’m sure they ask, “is $5 million between friends?” Equally, when it comes to developing such properties, characters of this nature do not show any reserve. Bling is most definitely the order of the day and the larger and flashier one can build, I guess, the better.
Abbey’s Bradbury Estate is a case in point. This vast property consists of a 33,000 square foot main house with 7 bedrooms and 10 bathrooms. It is almost entirely made of French limestone and includes a chef’s kitchen with a pizza oven, a 2,000 bottle wine cellar, an oak paneled elevator and a leather paneled poker room. Bedrooms include domes with hand painted frescos and in addition there is a detached 6,700 square foot guest house above a 10 car garage and a 5,700 square foot pool house with a catering kitchen, gym, massage room and a subterranean EPA certified 25 yard rifle shooting range complete with a gun storage room and 2 large safes.
Within the 8 acre grounds there is a cross shaped infinity-edged pool – perhaps Mr Abbey is religious – that is “just a few feet short of Olympic length.” It requires 350,000 gallons of water if it is to be filled to capacity. Adjoining this is something even more ludicrous: a 1,000,000 gallon, temperature-controlled rainbow trout pond that cost some $8,000,000 to construct. The pond is said to be “adorned with perennials,” is heated by a custom gravity separator with UV filters and is “chilled for the trout by a 300-tonne central cooling plant.” At Bradbury, thoughts of water crisis in Sudan and Ethiopia come way behind the needs of Abbey’s rainbows.
For those wanting to avoid California’s UV rays, Bradbury also boasts an acre of porches, decks, loggia and walkways. A 600ft blue stone driveway completes this “once in a lifetime trophy property” that “belongs in the portfolio of the most astute collector” and it has space for “60 foot truck access or multiple limousines.”
When Mr Abbey has tired of California, he is able to retreat to his own island in Montana. The 24 acre Shelter Island on Flathead Lake includes 7,000 feet of frontage to the water, a world class sporting clay course and 3 computer controlled tracks and docking systems that allow boats to be landed in the dry dock without riders ever leaving the craft or handling a line. The island is powered via an underground armoured utility cable that carry 12,000 amps to it along with CAT-5 computer cable and phonelines and the main entertaining space features a mammoth television of some 120-inches in size.
Abbey has built over 44,000 square foot of accommodation on his island. The main house has 5 bedrooms and 8 bathrooms. His “Great Room” features ceilings of some 45 foot in height and in addition to yet another indoor shooting range, there is a kitchen that woudn’t look out of place in The Savoy hotel.
In the UK, the property most similar to anything Abbey has built has to be Updown Court at Windlesham in Surrey. Developed by a former bricklayer named Leslie Allen-Vercoe, the house was described by him as being: “The most important residence to be built in England since the 19th century.” Architectural critics did not agree and some went as far as to say that it looked like: “A cross between a Tesco superstore and Center Parcs.”
Allen-Vercoe’s behemoth of a house is gargantuan in size. With 103 rooms it includes 24 bedrooms, 5 swimming pools, a 2-lane bowling alley, a squash court, a floodlit tennis court, a 50-seat cinema and a panic room. The heated driveway that led to the house is entirely made of marble and cost some £2.5 million to construct but plainly none of this appealed to the market as it languished for sale at a price of £70,000,000 from 2006 to 2011 before being repossessed by the Irish National Asset Management Agency (NAMA). Updown Court was sold for half the original asking price to a foreign buyer in October 2011 and is, I believe, due to undergo extensive remodeling.
Allen Vercoe once stated: “If Elton John were a house, he’d be Updown Court.” Equally, I imagine if Mr Abbey’s residences were to be compared to any celebrities they’d be the vulgar car crash that is Donatella Versace and the ludicrous money obsessed singer with a dollar sign in her name, Ke$ha.
Updown Court, Shelter Island and The Bradbury Estate all illustrate that money cannot buy you good taste. I suppose, though, that those who ultimately come to live in them will have plenty of space to choose how and where to enjoy their own form of misery.
For more information about Donald G. Abbey, go to: http://www.theabbeyco.com
For information on both The Bradbury Estate and Shelter Island, contact Bob Hurwitz of the Hurwitz James Company on +1 310-477-8865. Website: http://www.hurwitzjamesco.com
A website devoted to The Bradbury Estate can be viewed at: http://www.bradburyestate.com
A video of Shelter Island can be watched at: http://vimeo.com/11404637
For more details on Updown Court, go to: http://www.updowncourt.com/
The Steeple Times asks Trevor Abrahmsohn, the founder and managing director of Glentree Estates: “What’s on your mantelpiece?”
The Steeple Times shares “wit and wisdom.” What’s your guiding force?
Knowledge and charm.
“Don’t get even, get medieval” is, in our humble opinion, a great motto. What’s yours?
The ninth ‘no’ is a precursor to yes!
Kerry Katona was considered unacceptable in 2007. Who or what is unacceptable in 2012?
Vince Cable.
Tony Blair misses being Prime Minister. What do you miss most in your life?
Making money more easily.
What might you swap all your wealth for?
Good health if mine were failing.
Donald Trump was once a case of: “If you owe the bank a thousand, they close you down; but if you owe the bank a billion, you own the bank.” What’s your view on the banking crisis?
An accident that was waiting to happen. No surprise there.
What phrase or word do you most loathe?
‘Elf’ and Safety!
In the UK, some people consider charity to “begin at home.” What’s your view and what causes do you personally support?
A multiplicity of good causes with a significant percentage of our turnover donated to children’s cancer charities, Make A Wish Foundation and Jewish Care.
The judge in “Law Abiding Citizen” states: “I can pretty do whatever I want” before being blown up whilst answering her mobile phone. What’s your view on the appropriate use of such devices?
They are one of the most important building blocks in the post Thatcher liberated society and are responsible for the explosion of the service industry amongst others. It is one of the most important innovations for both business and pleasure.
If you could fill a carriage on The Orient Express, who would be your fellow passengers?
Peter Ustinov, Frank Sinatra, Stephen Hawkins, Margaret Thatcher, John Barry, Ernie Bilko and Arthur Lowe.
If you were unfortunate enough to end up on death row, what would be your last meal and where would you eat it?
A mighty New York strip steak with Idaho potato and salad in Palm Beach, Florida, looking at the sea.
What time is it acceptable to consume the first drink of the day?
7.30pm.
A Negroni, a martini or a cup of tea?
A Martini.
Whose parties do you enjoy the most and why?
The fun and informal ones with lots of laughter and cheer.
Who is the most positive person you know?
My wife and mother.
What’s your most guilty pleasure?
Too much good food.
If a tattoo were to sum you up, what would it be of?
99% good 1% bad!
If you were a car, what marque would you be?
A classic Aston Martin.
Cilla Black presented “Surprise, Surprise.” Tell us the most surprising thing about you.
My 14 handicap.
What’s currently sitting on your mantelpiece?
A father’s day card from my children.
Trevor Abrahmsohn is best known for selling “trophy” homes and has dealt with the majority of the sales on London’s “Billionaire’s Row,” The Bishop’s Avenue. His firm, Glentree Estates, is situated at 698 Finchley Road, London, NW11 7NE. Telephone: +44 (0) 20 8458 7311. Website: http://www.glentree.co.uk