The Steeple Times

Tag: Second World War

  • Written in the sun

    Written in the sun

    The sale of the former home of Dame Rebecca West

     

    Ibstone House at Ibstone in Buckinghamshire has recently come to the market at a price of offers in excess of £15 million. Now owned by Ariadne “Ari” Getty Williams, the daughter of Paul Getty and Abigail Harris, Ibstone has also been home to Sun City tycoon Sol Kerzner, who is currently divorcing his wife Heather. This Grade II listed house is situated in the Chiltern Hills and was originally built in the late 18th century.

     

    Ibstone House, Ibstone, Near High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, HP14 3YA
    A reception room at Ibstone House
    The house’s swimming pool
    An aerial view of the estate

    Arranged over three floors and including an extensive leisure and entertaining complex, the property includes 6 principal reception rooms, 7 bedrooms and an indoor pool. A 2-bedroom lodge cottage and large barn stand in the 79-acre grounds that also include gardens designed by Lady Arabella Lennox-Boyd.

     

    Dame Rebecca West, described by TIME Magazine as being “indisputably the world’s number one writer” in 1947, purchased Ibstone House in the late 1930s and lived there with her banker husband Henry Maxwell Andrews.

     

    Dame Rebecca West DBE (1892 – 1983)

    West, who had affairs with H. G. Wells, Charlie Chaplin and Lord Beaverbrook, used the grounds of the house as a small dairy farm and also housed Yugoslav refugees in the blacked out spare rooms of the manor during the Second World War. After the death of her husband, she sold up and moved to an apartment next to the Iranian Embassy in Prince’s Gate, London. During the 1980 siege there, aged 87, she had to be evacuated.

     

    Solomon “Sol” and Heather Kerzner

    Kerzner, who has been married four times to Kerzner and tragically lost his son, Butch, in a helicopter crash, has homes around the world and both he and his wife blamed the breakdown of their marriage on his workaholic lifestyle.

     

    Of divorcing her husband, Heather Kerzner commented:

     

    “He’s a hugely important person to myself and my children. I have only positive things to say about him. He’s the most influential person in my life – and that’s worth a lot. He’s one of the world’s most incredible men, he has shown me a different world and we had an incredible life together but sometimes I guess it just doesn’t work out.”

     

    Some time ago the Kerzners sold Ibstone House to Ms. Getty but now she too has decided to sell up. Though best known because of her family name, Aridane Getty has run the Fuserna Foundation since 2005 and is considered a great philanthropist in her own right.

     

    It’ll be fascinating to see what chapter opens next for this magnificent house.

     

    For more information contact Stephen Christie-Miller of Savills on +44 (0) 1491 843000. To download a brochure for Ibstone House go to: http://residentialsearch.savills.co.uk/property-detail/333522/list

     

    For more details on the Fuserna Foundation, go to: http://fusernafoundation.org

  • Virginia McKenna OBE

    Virginia McKenna OBE

    This British actress is best known for playing Joy Adamson in the true-life film Born Free alongside her real-life husband, Bill Travers (1957 – 1994).  She’s also starred in the Ring of Bright Water, The Camomile Lawn and Swallows and Amazons but it is for her work as a wildlife campaigner that McKenna is best known. She co-founded the Born Free Foundation in 1991 with her husband and along with Ace Bourke and John Rendall helped release Christian, a lion who lived at World’s End in Chelsea, into the wild in Africa. His story has since become one of YouTube’s biggest hits.

  • Singing for a Diamond

    Singing for a Diamond

    Music fit for The Queen

     

    In recent days, Gary Barlow’s albumn Sing has topped the UK album charts with sales of 40,000 copies.

     

    Two hundred and ten musicians, including the African Children’s Choir and the Royal Solomon Islands Police Force Band, helped record this special tribute to The Queen. Produced by Barlow with the assistance of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Gareth Malone, Sing also features Prince Harry on the tambourine, Hayley Westenra, Alfie Boe and the Military Wives choir. Sing will be performed this evening at a special concert at Buckingham Palace in the presence of Her Majesty.

     

    Another tribute I was alerted to came from a singer named Anton Lorien who contacted me via Twitter. He was approached in 2011 by the British Monarchist League who asked him to produce a song for a lady he describes as having: “Given her life selflessly to the people of Britain and the Commonwealth.”

    Mr Lorien’s song, Like A Diamond, is available to download on iTunes but I wholeheartedly recommend that you watch the video clip available above. It contains some wonderful footage of The Queen and the clip at 3:33 where our Monarch runs to watch her racehorse is especially worth seeing.

     

    Gary Barlow pictured with Prince Harry on the tambourine working on Sing

     

    Both Sing and Like A Diamond capture the feelings of our nation brilliantly. Be sure to sing along tonight.

     

    For more information about Anton Lorien’s Like A Diamond, go to: http://www.antonlorien.com

     

    For more information on Gary Barlow & The Commonwealth Band’s Sing, got to: http://www.jubileesing.com

  • Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, Queen of the Commonwealth Realms

    Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, Queen of the Commonwealth Realms

    Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II  governed as constitutional monarch of 16 sovereign states and headed the 54-member Commonwealth of Nations. Supported by her gaffe prone husband, “Brenda,” as Private Eye nicknamed her, served steadfast through good times and bad. She liked to drive a little quickly when given control of the wheel of a Range Rover and also found washing up relaxing. This monarch like no other will never be forgotten.

     

  • A Monopolistic mansion

    A Monopolistic mansion

    Could 100 Park Lane become the property that achieves the accolade of being Britain’s highest priced private residence?

     

    Occupied by property giants Hammerson since 1969 as their corporate headquarters, the 44,000 square foot Grade II* listed Dudley House is one of Park Lane’s finest landmark properties. It is supposedly about to come to the market as a single-family residence and a price of up to £250,000,000 could be achieved.

     

    The Park Lane façade of Dudley House, 100 Park Lane, Mayfair, London, W1Y 4AR

     

    Dudley House, the only remaining example of an early Park Lane mansion, is named after the Dudley Ward family and built on the site of an earlier house with stabling. The site was acquired by John, 6th Baron Ward, in 1742 but it wasn’t until 1759 that the 3rd Viscount Dudley and Ward began “judicious alterations” to the house. Having paid £6,510 at auction for his late half-brother’s interests in Dudley House, he added an entrance portico and stained glass windows whilst his successor, an ”eccentric intellectual and politician,” set about turning the building into “the most pleasing object in the vicinity.”

     

    Works by the architect William Atkinson, carried out between 1827 and 1829, included a screen of Ionic columns, fine ceilings and gilded plasterwork. They remain to this day but it is the 1855 alterations of Samuel Whitfield Daukes that are truly impressive. Carried out on the instructions of the 1st Earl of Dudley, these included a magnificent 80ft picture gallery designed to showcase a collection of Italian and Flemish paintings and a vast 50ft ballroom.

     

    The picture gallery at Dudley House

     

    In 1895, Dudley House, which is situated at 100 Park Lane, briefly passed out of the Dudley Ward family and into the ownership of a “hard-headed South African mining magnate” named Sir Joseph Benjamin Robinson. Sir John Hubert Ward bought the building back in 1912 for £10,000 and remained there until his death in 1938.

     

    Wartime bombing caused significant damage and this was not repaired until Hammerson took over Dudley House. Having hired Sir Robert McAlpine and Sons as contractors, designs by Sir Basil Spence and Anthony Blee were executed to restore the building.  Hammerson remained there until 2006 when they jointly sold the leasehold interest on the house with freeholders Grosvenor for £37.4 million to Bristol Isles Ltd., a private investment company controlled by Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thana, the emir of Qatar.

     

    His Highness Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani (1952 – )

     

    The ensuing renovation, directed by the designer Alberto Pinto, has been described as “tasteful” and is said to have cost some £75 million. The resulting air-conditioned home features some 17 bedrooms and 14 reception rooms.

     

    It’ll be fascinating to see who “Doesn’t pass go!” and purchases this mammoth mansion (if indeed His Highness Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani decides not to move in himself).

     

    For more details on Alberto Pinto, go to: http://www.albertopinto.com

     

    For more information about His Highness Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani: http://www.qatarembassy.net/emir.asp

  • Nancy Wake AC GM (1912 – 2011)

    Nancy Wake AC GM (1912 – 2011)

    Churchill’s most highly decorated special agent. A resistance heroine who lived at The Stafford Hotel from 2001 to 2003 and regaled visitors with tales of her time as the legendary “White Mouse.” Her tipple of choice, gin and tonics, flowed as freely as did the stories of her time interviewing Hitler in the 1930s and 500-mile missions on bicycles.