Britain's most expensive country house

Britain's most expensive country house

A neglected pile has just been sold for £42m - but once renovated, it could be home to a Russian oligarch or billionaire steel magnate

 The wallpaper is peeling, the paintwork is scuffed and the spacious reception rooms are gilded, not in gold, but in dust. Earlier this month, however, Park Place, a decaying country house set in 570 acres on the river near Henley-on-Thames, was sold for £42m in a secret deal – the highest figure ever paid in Britain for a house outside London.

The Grade II-listed property in the village of Remenham, which has 30,000 sq ft of living space, has been bought by Mike Spink, a developer who specialises in upmarket projects in Ken-sington and Chelsea.

He is expected to spend up to three years and several million pounds remodelling and restoring the property, which is in a poor state after four decades as a boarding school. Agents and developers familiar with the top end of the country-house market believe that, once renovated, it could go back on for anything from £60m to £100m, and make the perfect home for a Russian oligarch or billionaire steel magnate.

The sale has been shrouded in secrecy since the joint agents, Savills and Knight Frank, began quietly marketing the estate six months ago for £45m. Both agencies declined to comment on the sale – as did Spink, who owns a more modest, Grade II-listed home of his own elsewhere in Oxfordshire.

The property was sold by a consortium of developers led by Robin Paterson, a former chief executive of Hamptons. The consortium bought Park Place with the intention of turning it into “the very best country club in the UK”, but were denied permission by Woking-ham borough council after a planning battle that lasted more than five years. It is not known how much profit they made on the sale.

So, what did Spink get for his £42m? The main house, which dates back to the early 18th century, but was substantially rebuilt in French Renaissance style between from 1871 and 1873, is approached along a winding, tree-lined drive. Visitors enter through a grand hall. Spacious reception rooms retain vestiges of their original splendour, with decorative plasterwork ceilings, some stained-glass windows and enormous stone fireplaces. There is also a four-storey tower that offers views of the Thames.

“Decayed grandeur is the phrase that comes to mind,” says one of the few people allowed to view the property. “It is not so far gone that you can’t imagine what it could be like.”

Another agrees. “It could be spectacular,” he says. “Whoever bought it has good foresight. It is in a magical setting.” It does need some imagination and substantial work, though. “It is a classic country house, but a little institutionalised,” according to a third visitor. “As soon as you walk in, you can see its potential. There is a lot of charm under all the dust.” Stand in the tiled entrance hall and, he says, “you get a sense of its grand, sweeping history”. Another, rather less enamoured of its style, describes it as Dracula’s castle.

As well as the main house, there are several outlying properties, including three substantial houses, 10 tenanted cottages and another eight in need of renovation. Park Place also has a beautiful gabled boathouse, a stable block (which still has herringbone floors and cast-iron stalls), an agricultural yard, a motley collection of dilapidated outbuildings and, more unusually, two golf courses.

The first house on the site was built in 1719 by Lord Hamilton, later Lord of the Admiralty. In 1738, he sold it to the eldest son of King George II, Prince Frederick, then Prince of Wales, and father of the future George III. Frederick divided his time between the house – where he planted several of the grand cedar trees that still line the park – and Cliveden, 10 miles east, now owned by the National Trust.

The property underwent substantial changes when General Henry Seymour Conway bought the estate in 1752, after Frederick’s death. Conway also made improvements to the gardens, planting a lavender farm, adding a shell grotto, shipping over a temple from Jersey and digging an underground passage with six vaulted tunnel entrances. Most impressive of all, he oversaw the building of a bridge that Horace Walpole, the MP and writer, described as “being composed of rocks that will appear to be tumbled together there the very week of the Deluge”.

In 1871, much of the interior of Park Place was destroyed by fire. John Noble, who had bought it the previous year, engaged Thomas Cundy, one of the most celebrated architects of the era, to rebuild the property in French Renaissance style. Balustraded terraces were added to the west side and formal gardens planted.

The house and its 670-acre estate remained in the Noble family until 1947, when it was auctioned off in 28 lots. The house was bought by Middle-sex county council and run as a boarding school for “children between the ages of 11 and 16 suffering from health or emotional problems”.

The school was closed in 1988, and the property briefly owned thereafter by the late John Latsis, a flamboyant Greek shipping billionaire and one of the richest men in the world. It is not clear when the estate was largely reassembled to bring it back up to its current 570 acres.

Almost two decades later, the trappings of boarding-school life are still apparent: the house has a muddled layout, with few bathrooms, while the classrooms, gymnasium and a woodwork studio have been left pretty much untouched.

Outside, the once magnificent Grade II*-listed park and landscaped gardens are unkempt and overgrown. Large urns, obelisks and statues are shrouded in shrubbery. The ornamental lakes, formerly part of a lovely Victorian pleasure garden, have silted up. It could be restored to the glory that led Caroline Powys to note in her diary, in 1762, that it was “one of the most capital situations in England”.

The sale of Park Place highlights the continuing boom at the top end of the market, be it in the stucco-fronted garden squares of London or the grand estates of the home counties and beyond.

It dwarfs last year’s most expensive deal, when the Culham Court estate, also near Henley-on-Thames, was sold for just under £35m. The 10-bedroom, Grade II*-listed property, set in 650 acres of parkland, was bought by Urs Schwarzenbach, one of Switzerland’s richest and most secretive financiers; it had gone on the market for £25m. Schwarzenbach exchanged contracts within a week, beating off fellow City heavyweights and other potential foreign buyers.

“There is no sign at present of any softening at the top end of the country-house market,” says Crispin Holborow, head of country estates at Savills. “There is exceptional demand.”

This time last year, Savills had sold two estates for more than £8m each; this year, it has already sold 10. Prices at the top end of the market have doubled in four years. “It says a lot about confidence in the market,” says Holborow. “There aren’t enough houses around to satisfy the £20m or £30m-plus brackets. As and when something does come up, it will go for more.”

This rarefied market in the best country houses and stately homes has led Edward Sugden, a director at the top-end buying agency Property Vision, to refer to it as “prime, prime market”. He knows of a handful of buyers who may be looking for a £50m-plus property.

“If you can pay £25m, £30m or £40m for your third, fourth or fifth house,” Sugden says, “then you can, if you think the product is good enough, afford £60m, £80m or £100m.”

However, there has yet to be a sale at such a price level outside London. Updown Court, a vast, marbled mansion with five swimming pools in Windlesham, Surrey, went on the market for £70m in 2005 and is still waiting for a buyer.

Whatever the strength of today’s market, Spink is still taking a risk: it could turn out to be one of the most sumptuous country houses in England or a very expensive white elephant.

Where will it all end?

Fuelled by record City bonuses and an influx of money from abroad, country-house prices have been surging in the last three to four years:

£15m: Easton Neston, a Grade I-listed stately home set in 550 acres in Northamptonshire, sold in July 2005

£28m: Edgcote estate, 1,700 acres near Banbury, Oxfordshire, sold in October 2005.

£30m: Clarendon Park estate, 4,000 acres near Salisbury, Wiltshire, sold in June 2006.

£35m: Culham Court estate, 650 acres near Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire, sold in August 2006 If you have a spare £70m, Updown Court, in Surrey, is on the market

£70m: Updown Court, a new-build mansion near Windlesham in Surrey, with five swimming pools, has been on the market since 2005 and is still without a buyer.

(From The Sunday Times)

June 17, 2007

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