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The pick of the Homes of the Week


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  • The other Hampton Court

    Hampton Court was built by Henry Bolingbroke, who became Henry IV

    Hampton Court in Surrey, a 16th-century royal palace, and Hampton Court in Herefordshire, a 15th-century grade I listed manor house, have more than a name in common. For example, both have links to a monarch called Henry: Henry VIII acquired Hampton Court Palace in 1528 and the Hampton Court estate was the domain of Henry Bolingbroke, Earl of Hereford, who became Henry IV in 1399.

    Both properties are open to the public and used as wedding venues; both also have a maze. The Herefordshire Hampton Court has, however, changed hands many times since the recently-crowned Henry IV ordered the laying of the foundations of the house, which stands in 935 acres.

    The varied list of occupants over the centuries provides an example of 18th-century social mobility. In 1810, the house was bought by Richard Arkwright, a son of Sir Richard Arkwright, who rose from poverty to invent the spinning frame, the power loom that helped drive the Industrial Revolution. His riches enabled his heirs to ascend to the landed gentry and embark on building work at Hampton Court.

    As a result of these and subsequent refurbishments, the manor house has 26 bedrooms and 25 bathrooms. The biggest spenders were Robert and Judy Van Kampen, the American millionaires who were owners in the late 199os. They were responsible for the heavily heraldic theme in the decor, highlights of which include a chandelier set with stags heads. You will find similar items and an abundance of armoury in the state rooms, which include a 19th-century banqueting hall and a ballroom; the stone cantilevered staircase was installed for a visit by William of Orange.

    If all this sounds more like one of the outlandish sets from Game of Thrones than a place where your average latterday millionaire could found a dynasty, you would not be entirely right. Will Matthews of Knight Frank, the estate agency selling Hampton Court, concedes that while “not everyone needs 25 bedrooms”, he could still see the house working once more as a private home. The train journey from Hereford (eight miles away) to London takes two hours and 40 minutes, which would make commuting tricky, but at the weekend you could party, shoot or stalk, or fish in the River Lugg.

    The buyer would not need to carry on the wedding business or open the gardens to visitors (they currently attract 60,000 people a year). More promotion would boost this activity but the current chatelains, Hampton Court Property Holdings, an Isle of Man-registered business, are not interested. The price for the whole estate, with its farm, cottages, pasture and woodland, is £12 million, but — as it is divided into five lots — you could buy the house and about 74 acres of grounds for much less (a value has yet to be put on this lot). A large family or lots of friends to fill all those bedrooms would be handy.

    First published in Bricks & Mortar 16 May 2014

  • The home of the late Martin Miller

    Great Brampton House has a long heritage as an “antiques mansion” | Times Newspapers Ltd

    Great Brampton House is an extremely grand 12-bedroom Regency house in Herefordshire with a pair of gorilla statues sitting either side of the gate to greet you as you enter. The property is packed with antiques, which gives a clue as to the late owner. He was Martin Miller, the author and publisher of an antiques guide that bears his name, who died of cancer last December.

    Miller bought the property with his wife, Iona, in 2010. “The reason we bought the house was because it was near Hay-on-Wye, we loved the literary festival, it was well-priced and there was the Lady Pidgeon connection,” says Iona.

    Lady Pidgeon, who hoarded and sold antiques, lived at Great Brampton House for nearly 40 years from 1969, turning it into an “antiques mansion”. She would ferry her famous pals, who included Luciano Pavarotti and Ava Gardner, to the house in a fleet of Rolls-Royces before plying them with champagne.

    Antiques were not Miller’s only interest — he was also a gin maker (Miller’s Gin); a hotelier (Kate Moss was a regular at Miller’s Residence in Notting Hill, one of five small Victorian-style hotels he owned); a lecture host (his Academy of Arts and Science, also in Notting Hill, featured speakers who included Boris Berezovsky, Simon Callow, Sir Andrew Motion and Germaine Greer); and erotic film festival curator.

    The interior style of all Miller’s properties could be described as the Sir John Soane School of “more is more” with every nook and cranny filled. Great Brampton was initially run by the Millers as a luxury B&B with a “dishonesty bar” (guests included Peter Tatchell, Mike Figgis and Diane Abbott). In recent years, however, they rented out the house for exclusive use — most recently Stephen Hawking stayed with some big-thinking colleagues.

    The property is on the market for £2.1 million and measures 20,614 sq ft with 11 acres of grounds, in which there are three cottages. The selling agent, Helen Lowery of Strutt & Parker, says that homes of this size usually come up for sale through her office once or twice a year and that demand for this type of property is limited. “I don’t know if the interior is going to be a help or a hindrance to selling,” she says. “It will depend on the taste of the person doing the viewing. Everywhere you turn there is something weird and wonderful to look at.”

    First published in Bricks & Mortar 20 June 2014

  • Downton Abbey meets Elle Decoration

    The property comes with a swimming pool and 24 acres | Jonathan Stone

    Grove Farm is a seven-bedroom detached house made of creamy stone with windows that get smaller with every storey. There is a portico over the front door and cornicing in the living room.

    By the pictures, you might assume it is a textbook Georgian house, yet the property was built just three years ago. It is, to use the current term, a “new old” home: Downton Abbey on the outside, Elle Decoration on the inside.

    So convincing are some of these “new old” properties that they are luring diehard period property lovers to buy them. This being reflected in pricing: while an original Grade-I Georgian home would still cost more to buy, the gap is narrowing. Ed Sugden, director of the country house department at Savills, reports that while ten years ago the difference might have been as much as 15 to 20 per cent, it is now more like 10 per cent.

    “The Georgian gem play to the heartstrings but new-builds are far more practical,” he says. “There is still the snobbery value of buying a period property — but as the calibre of new-build has got better, the people living in old Georgian homes are looking enviously at thosesitting in warm, cosy new homes. British buyers are much more open to new homes than they used to be — the benefits are beginning to outweigh the sense of history.”

    Energy efficiency and running costs are the main reasons we’re considering new homes in greater numbers. Heating a Grade-I listed sizeable country home can cost as much as £1,000 a month. Then there is the layout and compatibility with modern living. “My clients don’t want to live in a glass box but equally they want an open-plan kitchen and dressing room,” says Simon Morray-Jones, the architect behind Grove Farm. “With a listed home you have to adapt yourself to the building but with a new-build you can dictate. In historic homes often you have a small kitchen in the basement and a grand dining room. We live a different way now.”

    At the very top end of this market is Consero London, the go-to developer for oligarchs looking for a new home in the style of Robert Adams or John Nash (starting at £8 million and going up to £50 million). These can be seen in some of the priciest Surrey housing estates and the capital. The company spends a lot of time sourcing stone — Portland is the ideal, but they are increasingly heading to France and Portugal as the competition for Portland stone increases.

    The worst result for anyone building a “new old” home is that they are described as pastiche. Consero London avoids this by scrutinising original buildings’ architecture to ensure their replicas are as sympathetic as possible. Special paint is applied to the exterior of their homes to age them, so their very newness isn’t a contrast to the architecture.

    Lisa Dennis, who used to own a brand consultancy in London, owns Grove Farm, which is located in Donhead St Mary on the Wiltshire/Dorset border . “Originally, the plan was to buy an original Georgian home but I soon realised how rare they are — I spent a year looking,” she says. In the end she bought a small, run-down farm, which she removed and built a new home in its place, using the old bricks.

    First published in Bricks & Mortar 14 March 2014

    She is now selling the property – which comes with a swimming pool and 24 acres — for £4 million with Savills. For Dennis, who grew up in a Victorian home so draughty there was ice inside her bedroom window, living in a fully insulated new home has been a welcome change. “I am boiling here — I often leave the house not wearing enough layers,” she says. “And I still love the novelty of turning on the tap and masses of hot water coming out.

    “I am selling because I have spotted my next potential project, which is an old house. However, having been used to sitting in a toasty-warm room with crystal-clear music floating through the house from invisible speakers, gazing out of the super-glazed windows, it’s very easy to say ‘oh, an old, romantic one next’ — but I’ve clearly forgotten what it’s like.”

  • A property where even the stables are listed

    Chapter Manor is grade II listed and built in the early Georgian period

    The Chapter Manor at South Cerney is a Georgian house in 27 acres on the edge of an idyllic Cotswold village. It has handsome façades in the local stone, original interior features, a tree-lined drive and historic stables. However, it’s the riverside setting that makes the property simply “heavenly”, according to the vendors.

    The Churn, the first tributary of the Thames, runs through the front garden and Lucinda de Mauley, who grew up at the house, remembers her father fishing for trout from the lawn, wearing his dinner jacket, with a drink in hand. In case you’re wondering, she says the house has never, to her knowledge, been hit by flooding.

    The family bought the estate in 1965 and she and her sister are selling “with great sadness” after the deaths of their parents. She says it’s telling that the previous owners were there for 35 years, and the property has rarely changed hands. It takes its name from the Chapter and Dean of Bristol Cathedral, which held the manor for centuries. It is believed that there was a settlement of Augustinian friars on the site in medieval times.

    Nevertheless, the house, which is grade II listed, was built by gentleman-tenants, not mendicants. The core was built in the early Georgian period by Thomas Bush, a magistrate, who was, his epitaph says: “a pleasing companion and a useful friend; [who] was serviceable to his country by a steady and uniform attention to the duties of his office, in the execution of which he was neither awed by fear, nor deterred by power”.

    The house was extended in the 19th and 20th centuries. The interiors are light, airy and well-proportioned, with surviving Georgian features including fireplaces, sash windows and plasterwork by Italian craftsmen. The accommodation is centred around a small central courtyard and includes a kitchen and four reception rooms on the ground floor, six bedrooms on the first, and a seventh among the attic rooms of the second.

    The property also has a self-contained two-bedroom staff or guest flat, which could be incorporated into the main house and there’s a two-bedroom cottage in the large, grade II listed mid-19th century stable block. You also get an outdoor swimming pool, screened behind trees; tennis courts in need of renovation; and further outbuildings with the potential for conversion. The extensive grounds include formal gardens and lawn, parkland, woodland walks and a traditional walled vegetable garden “that’s like Mr McGregor’s”.

    In terms of recreation, the manor has easy access to leading equestrian events and is in prime hunting country. There’s also excellent sailing near by on the 150 lakes in 40 square miles of the Cotswold Water Park. The house is three and half miles from Cirencester and has good road and rail links to the capital and elsewhere; Kemble station is four miles away and 80 minutes from London Paddington.

    First published in Bricks & Mortar 12 September 2014

  • A house with a moat and a title

    The grade II listed Cudworth Manor was on the market with Hamptons International for £2.55 million

    Cudworth Manor at Newdigate in Surrey is a picture-book moated manor house that comes with nine acres and a title held by medieval knights. The buyer gets the manorial lordship, so becomes lord or lady of the manor; a fun extra even if experts on these matters say that actually using manorial titles is vulgar.

    The manor is a grade II listed red-brick house with big gables and chimney stacks. The oldest, timber-framed parts of the property date from the 16th century, but the footing incoporates stones from the earlier, medieval building and there are hefty additions from the 17th, 19th and early 20th centuries, all fitting together naturally.

    The house is romantically sited on the east side of the square island created by the medieval moat, which is fed by a brook that runs into the River Mole and houses a gaggle of geese. The rest of the island comprises a terrace that’s ideal for eating out, and formal gardens, including a large lawn. It’s accessed by two bridges. Across the moat, in the wider grounds, there are paddocks, outbuildings and a big pond stocked with fish.

    The accommodation comprises a kitchen-breakfast room and four reception rooms on the ground floor, with smaller rooms including a pantry, snug and study. The first floor has five bedrooms, and a games room; the second has five more and a kitchenette. It’s packed with original features and has been renovated to a high standard throughout. The master bedroom and principal guest room are double aspect and en suite.

    In the later 1200s, the manor belonged to Sir Walter de la Poyle, a retainer of Edmund, Earl of the Cornwall, who was a cousin of Edward I, “Longshanks”. The Poyles were part of the medieval chivalric elite; serving their liege lords on bloody campaigns in Wales and France. They also lived at Cudworth at least part of the time. Sir Walter’s grandson, Henry, received a licence to have Mass celebrated in the oratory of his house there.

    The current house was built by later lords, of the Newdigate or Bowett family, and added to by the Bowett’s heirs, the Thorpes. All these families were prominent gentry; in 1611 John Thorpe of Cudworth married Elizabeth Culpeper, a cousin of the Earls of Arundel and Cumberland. The Ede family bought the manor from the Thorpes in the 1630s, but clearly weren’t as prosperous as they were frequently styled as mere yeomen. Nevertheless, James was a quarter waiter to George I: a low-ranking courtier for three months a year.

    In 1775, the manor was purchased by Lee Steere Esq, of Jayes Park , gentleman of the privy chamber to George III, and it was held by the Steere family into the last century. Unlike their predecessors, the family didn’t live at the house but let it to tenant farmers. By the 20th century, older houses with character were back in fashion; residents included Lieutenant-Colonel Herbert French, who was physician to the royal household in the Twenties.

    Cudworth Manor is in the hamlet of Cudworth, which is half a mile from Newdigate, down an unmade lane. It’s seven miles from Dorking, nine miles from Redhill and Horsham and 28 from central London. Fast trains from Redhill to London Victoria take 28 minutes. The house is located in excellent walking and riding country and there are good schools, shops, restaurants and country pubs within the vicinity. It’s also convenient for Gatwick airport, seven miles away, although that has the flip side that there’s flight noise.

    It’s on the market with Hamptons International for £2.55 million. The agent cautions that some outbuildings were built without planning permission or listed building consent, so the buyer would have the responsibility of applying retrospectively or having the structures removed.

    First published in Bricks & Mortar 7 November 2014

  • The anti-white box house

    The downstairs bathroom has exposed brick walls and fake animal heads mounted on the walls

    The homes of artists are rarely humdrum and the house of the portrait artist Conrad Frankel, in London Fields in east London, is no exception to the rule. Here, the sitting room walls and ceiling are painted a dark chalky green, offset by pink armchairs. All four walls of the downstairs bathroom are exposed brick with stuffed fake animal heads mounted on the walls. It is a considered eccentricity that can be viewed in some of the area’s coolest cocktail bars.

    Frankel’s professional interest with colour is obvious in the property, but there’s another influence, too. Frankel’s godfather is Bernard Nevill, one of the UK’s most respected textile designers and a former professor at the Royal College of Art and design director for Liberty’s. Nevill, who in 2011 sold his Chelsea house for £20 million — a home used for the filming of Withnail and I that he bought for £80,000 — is credited with being a forerunner of the shabby chic style in the 1980s and for modernising Liberty’s prints.

    Frankel’s five-bedroom property, which measures 2, 500 square foot and features some of Nevill’s fabrics, is on the market with the Fyfe Mcdade estate agency for £1.895 million. There is a walled garden measuring 65 foot, which comes with a Japanese-style pond and a summerhouse shaded by a plum tree. “It won’t appeal to people who want to live in a minimalist white box,” says Natalie Hall, residential director for the agency. “Someone on a viewing referred to it as whimsical.”

    Another more 21st-century selling-point is that the actor Michael Fassbender lives in the area: one landlord renting out a flat in London Fields on spareroom.co.uk has included this as a selling point in the property details. Online forums record Fassbender’s regular presence at Broadway Market, a ten minute-walk away.

    Property prices in this part of London have risen almost as rapidly as Fassbender’s career, aided by the proximity to the City and the “Silicon Roundabout” of Old Street. Houses that would have cost £450,000 in 2009 and now selling for twice as much. Comparisons with Notting Hill are being made.

    First published in Bricks & Mortar, 18 April 2014

  • A Hampstead home converted by Norman Foster

    Part of the 600 sq ft living area . The original interiors have survived — with minimal changes

    One of the best pieces of domestic design in north London is tucked away behind an archway on Pond Street in Hampstead. It isn’t listed and isn’t on the Open House circuit, but it’s architecturally significant and has the same wow factor as the better-known houses in NW3 by the likes of Wells Coates and Maxwell Fry.

    It would be wrong to say that 13A Pond Street, which was designed by Norman Foster and Patty Hopkins in 1968 with a good deal of input from the owner, journalist Ron Hall, isn’t known. The house was conceived with entertaining in mind and hundreds of people have been to Hall’s legendary new year parties over the years. These would last for days, with guests crashing wherever they could find space in the open-plan interior.

    The house is the conversion of a Victorian coach house that was sold to Hall by his friend Bennie Gray, of antique market fame. Hall, who coveted the very best contemporary design, commissioned Foster to create a low-cost shell that could be fitted out as Hall’s time and money permitted. The resulting structure utilises the cutting edge industrial design that Foster is known for, to transform the previously cramped property.

    Foster and then-employee Hopkins conceived of two long concrete-block walls parallel to the elevations of the coach house, with a flat industrial decked roof over a living area and a sloped glazed roof over a dining space. This simple-sounding intervention creates a startling 1,962 sq ft home. Its 600 sq ft living area has exposed metal beams and block-walls and is glazed at one end using aluminium-framed shop windows; these overlook and open on to a small walled garden with patio, pond and magnolia tree.

    You’re knocked out by the view through the living area as you come in the front door. This leads directly into the dining area, with sloping glass ceiling above. There are a couple of steps down into a living space ahead, and the kitchen’s on your left. All three areas are open-plan to each other. A doorway from the kitchen leads to the staircase and a downstairs bedroom with en suite. Upstairs there’s a second reception room, a bedroom and a bathroom. Foster’s sloping glass roof is pitched against the eves of the coach house and the wall below has been knocked out to create an airy gallery overlooking the dining room. The upstairs space also opens on to a large terrace above the living area with aspects over leafy gardens.

    The house predates the famous home that Patty and Michael Hopkins built for themselves on Downshire Hill near by and utilises similar technology and design principles. Foster and Patty Hopkins’ circle took inspiration from earlier models such as the 1949 Eames House, built by Charles and Ray Eames in California, and later applied their “high-tech” style to landmark buildings, including Foster’s “Gherkin” at 30 St Mary Axe.

    What’s incredible, besides the architecture, is that the original interiors have survived — with minimal changes. Hall was a talented carpenter and made many of the fittings himself, including bookshelves and extensive storage for his record collection. The furniture includes an Eames lounge chair, a swinging steel-framed chair by Rupert Oliver and sofas made by Hall with advice from Alan Turville of Hille. The carpets are soft and deep and colours are warm, providing a homely interior within the industrial hardness of the architecture.

    It’s an intensely personal house: Hall, who’s best known for his investigative journalism and his editorship of the Sunday Times magazine, was very proud to have a Foster building, but he built much of it himself, with hands-on help from his uncle Willis Reeves, a semi-retired builder from Sheffield. At one point he was living 18-hour days as a journalist-interior-designer-carpenter, as he later recalled. The style of the place is evocative of the days when Hampstead society was London’s artsiest, with residents such as Peter Sellers and Peter O’Toole.

    The property is about a minute’s walk from South End Green, which has excellent independent cafés and restaurants and a Marks & Spencer. Hampstead Heath’s a minute or two farther. The chichi shopping hubs of Hampstead Village and Belsize Park are only a few minutes away and there are good travel links, including buses from Pond Street itself; tubes from Hampstead and Belsize Park and the London overground “orange line” from Hampstead Heath station. It’s for sale with Savills at a guide price of £2.45 million.

    First published in Bricks & Mortar 28 November 2014

  • A country home in central(ish) London

    Percy Lodge, East Sheen

    Percy Lodge is a Grade II listed house dating back to 1740 in East Sheen, southwest London. It was built for Hugh Percy, Duke of Northumberland, who used it as a hunting lodge for Richmond Park.

    Percy was the first in a long line of well-known owners of the property. These include the broadcaster David Jacobs — host of Pick of the Pops, Jukebox Jury and Any Questions — as well as the Marquess of Hartington, a friend of Princess Margaret; the Queen’s sister is believed to have danced in what was then the ballroom of the property. The Art Deco architect Robert Atkinson also lived here (and is believed to have saved the property from demolition) as did the pioneering photographer Julia Margaret Cameron, great aunt to Virginia Woolf.

    The current owner — Harriett Jagger, a former fashion editor at Vogue, who lives at the property with her two sons and a daughter — bought the property from Simon Kirke, the Lambeth-born drummer in the bands Free and Bad Company. Simon’s wife Lorraine, meanwhile, owns the well-known New York vintage boutique Germinola.

    The property is now back on the market and looking for a successful creative to call it home, in return for £9.95 million. For that they have the rare privilege of effectively owning a country home in Central(ish) London. There is stabling, large enough for four horse boxes, and a tack room. Shenagh Richardson, director of the Savills branch in Barnes, says that in her 15 years as an estate agent she has never come across a property in southwest London with stables.

    Richardson also believes that Percy Lodge is the only surviving 18th-century home in East Sheen. The main house is a seven-bedroom, four-bathroom Georgian country home accessed via a driveway. Wisteria-clad and huge — it measures 8,692 sq ft — it lies hidden behind a high brick wall. There are large gardens to the front and rear of the house and two garages. One drawback might be that it is joined to its neighbour West Lodge.

    The vast drawing room, formerly a ballroom, comes with high ceilings, ornate cornicing and doors gifted by Spencer Perceval, Prime Minister from 1809 to 1812 and the only holder of that office to be assassinated. He also gave an identical pair which are used in the dining room. The reception hallway is suitably grand.

    The 955ha deer-dotted Richmond Park is a road away (a road that, when this house was built, didn’t exist). There is also accommodation above the original stables: two very respectable bedrooms, two bathrooms and a kitchen. Currently it’s being used as a guest suite but could provide a self-contained nest for a nanny or housekeeper. “It feels like a lovely historical country home in London, but only 20 minutes from the Kings Road,” says Jagger, who is selling to downsize. “My sons, when they were younger, used to go to school in Richmond Park. We would ride the bikes through the park to school, which isn’t a bad way to start the day.”

    First published in Bricks & Mortar 31 January 2014

  • Become a neighbour of the Queen

    No 2 Carlton House Terrace has a great airiness with its large windows and extensive terraces and balconies

    How would you like to be a near neighbour of the Queen, with a large private terrace right above The Mall? The Crown Estate is selling one of London’s finest and largest houses, a few minutes’ walk from Buckingham Palace.

    The property is at the palace end of Carlton House Terrace, which was built to a master design by John Nash on the site of the Prince Regent’s Carlton House during the 1820s and overlooks The Mall and St James’s Park. The southeast-facing Mall frontage is by Nash himself, while the entrance façades along Carlton House Terrace are by his collaborator Decimus Burton.

    Pevsner praised the palatial houses as among the best in England. Residents of the terrace have included the prime ministers Palmerston and Gladstone, and Lord Curzon, Viceroy of India. Since the 1930s, however, most of the houses have belonged to leading institutions.

    No 2 is 500m from Buckingham Palace and a few doors down from the Royal Society. You have the gentlemen’s clubs of Pall Mall a minute’s stroll across the road, and, a little beyond, Jermyn Street, Fortnum & Mason and The Wolseley.

    After catastrophic bomb damage during the Blitz, the house lay empty until the 1960s, when it was let to the Royal College of Pathologists which installed interiors suitable for institutional premises. The college has now outgrown the building, which is being sold on a 125-year lease with permission for conversion back to a private residence.

    The proposal by Weldon Walshe architects for the conversion of No 2 is for a six-bedroom house with a large formal dining room on the ground floor giving access on to the terrace above The Mall; perfect for parties on state occasions. You need permission from the Crown Estate but it’s a formality. The College held one in 2011 when the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge were married.

    There will be large reception rooms on the first floor and bedrooms on the second and third. The lower ground floor will provide leisure facilities including a swimming pool and staff quarters, while the roof will feature a pavilion and terrace to take advantage of sweeping views towards the Palace of Westminster.

    The interior includes exposed 1820s brickwork on the lower-ground floor and also the original main staircase and some elegant plasterwork reassembled from fragments. However, the buyer has the freedom either to reinstate period-style interiors or go for a modern look.

    The reception rooms are ideal for gallery space, and elite auction houses and private galleries are close at hand for acquisitions. In fact, it’s at the epicentre of the art scene with the ICA and Mall Galleries as neighbours and the National Gallery and The Queen’s Gallery near by.

    It has a guide price of £75 million (with a peppercorn rent); that’s £3,242 per sq ft based on the existing floor area of 23,135 sq ft, compared to the average price of £1,567 per sq ft for SW1.

    The conversion could cost about £25 million at top spec; and the remodelled house will have a larger floor area of about 26,360 sq ft.

    First published in Bricks & Mortar, 11 July 2014

  • The £25,000 Fulham house

    Walton House doll house

    A ten-bedroom five-floor property in Fulham has come on the market today. Walton Park is, quite considerably, the cheapest property in the borough — a borough where the average property now stands at £1.59 million. The asking price is made all the more surprising by its super-high spec: there is a marble-floored entrance, hand-laid parquet flooring elsewhere, a library with Nina Campbell wallpaper, gold silk curtains in the upstairs drawing room and lighting that can be controlled by remote control.

    This property is yours for just £25,000, and for that you get 6,045 sq in, which will give a clue to the catch: it’s a doll’s house. Not just any ordinary doll’s house, mind. This is, quite possibly, the highest spec doll’s house — designed for a child to play with as opposed to being made for the enjoyment of a collector — that has ever come to the market in the UK. It is a Lilliputian house with a purpose. Built to raise money for charity —10 per cent of the proceeds of the sale and any money raised over the guide price — will be donated to the St Michael’s Centre, Fulham, charity, helping local underprivileged children.

    Lucinda Croft, managing director of Dragons of Walton Street, a children’s furniture shop for the wealthiest of parents, has spent five months lovingly creating it. This required enormous attention to detail: it comes with a mini Prada handbag in the master bedroom; two miniature Nina Campbell paintings that Campbell’s textile designers helped to shrink; hand-painted nursery furniture, tiny replicas of the furniture sold at Dragons. Custom-made coats have been made for the coat stand in the hallway — a fashionable pale blue coat with fur collar — a Bentley Ghost is parked in the garage and a mini Henry the Hoover resides in the laundry. Hundreds of pieces have been made or sourced for the house.

    Croft is optimistic that they will find a buyer — she has one in mind who has been looking for a more extravagant doll’s house than is currently available. All bids will need to be in by the middle of December, so delivery can be arranged in time for Christmas day. (A special team will be on hand to move the 180kg house and it will take a morning to install.) “I will feel sad when we sell — I’m hoping it will go to a child over six or seven,” says Croft. “I would love to think that this is the beginning of an interest in bespoke, top-end doll’s houses.”

    Charlie Bubear, head of the Chelsea office of Savills, is working in collaboration with Dragons on the charitable venture. “Walton Park has been finished to an exceptional standard, on a par with many of the prime properties we sell in Chelsea,” he says. “If this was a real home on Gilston Road or The Little Boltons, I’d estimate it would total 4,198 sq ft with a capital value of £12.5 to £15 million.”

    To highlight how strong the north/south disparity is, there is a one-bedroom flat for sale by auction this Monday in Bluebell Dene, a 20-minute drive from Newcastle’s central railway station, with a guide price of £29,950 — only £5,000 more than the doll’s house. The advantage of buying the Newcastle property is that it’s a real home in which you can sleep; the downside, however, is that it contains no mini Henry the Hoover.

    First published in Bricks & Mortar 5 December 2014