Tag: kitchen

No Room To Swing A Cat – £250k For Overpriced 109 Square Foot Knightsbridge Flat
Tiny, overpriced studio ‘flatlet’ lacking room to even swing a cat in somewhat ‘shady’ building opposite Harrods in Knightsbridge unsurprisingly remains on sale for the not so tiny sum of £250,000 after 3 years on the market reports Matthew Steeples
- Prison cell-like 109 square foot ‘flatlet’ in Brompton Road, Knightsbridge for sale for staggering £250,000; national minimum allowable size for a flat since 2011 is 398 square foot.
- Brompton Road is one of London’s most polluted roads; the Brompton Oratory, one of the highway’s main landmarks, was used as a ‘dead letter drop box’ by Soviet spies during the Cold War.
- Nearby now defunct Brompton Road London Underground station became the control centre for the 26^th(London) Anti-Aircraft Brigade during the Second World War.
- Ritzy department store Harrods, directly opposite, stands on a 5 acre site and was sold to the Qatar Investment Authority for £1.5 billion by alleged abuser of 200 women Mohamed Al-Fayed in 2010.
Listed initially at £275,000 in December 2022 but now slashed to a still stupendous £250,000 after failing to get flogged, Grow Portfolio estate agents are hawking a minute and clearly overpriced 109 square foot studio flat in Brompton Road, Knightsbridge as a “fantastic base” and “excellent opportunity”. If the ask price were to be achieved, the vendor would earn themselves a very punchy return of £2,294 per square foot; the median average price for this part of London, SW3 has been a significantly lower £1,610 per square foot during 2025.

Offered on a lease of approximately 169 years and having a service charge of “approximately’ £1,000 per annum to include the assistance of a 24-hour concierge, a buyer will garner themselves a single room measuring 6 feet by 11’9” feet with a small adjoining shower room also. The 70 square foot room itself has tiled flooring, a window, a cupboard housing a microwave and cooking hob and a minute fold-down table also. There’s frankly nowt much else to say about it further than in November, the Evening Standard lauded its décor for being a “clinical white” achromatic scheme.

A floor plan shows the very limited scope of the accommodation offered. Tax dodging tennis legend Boris Becker produced a son after a ‘bonk’ in a broom cupboard at the Metropolitan Hotel; given his size now, he might struggle with such activity in this space today.

It’s rare that a property can be entirely shown with just a single photo; in this case, it most definitely can.

In this watercolour by Cyril Farey (1888 – 1954), which Manning Fine Art describe as “capturing Princes Court at its prime”, the golden era of a building is shown. The art dealers observe: “[This] is not merely an architectural drawing it is expressing a lifestyle that only an apartment in Princes Court can provide. As such the fashionable and modern apartment block is surrounded by a Mediterranean blue sky and Hyde Park peaks out from the sides as an Eden of lush green. The smart street is punctuated by smart, friendly, yellow awnings whilst classic, stylish cars and iconic London buses pass by.” The same cannot sadly be said of the setting today given this part of Brompton Road has become better known for housing hookers, Rolex robberies and chronic pollution.

Designed to “resemble an ocean liner” by architect George Valentine Myer (1883 – 1959) between 1934 and 1935, the building in which the studio flat is to be found, Princes Court at 88 Brompton Road, SW3 1ES, was originally named Knight’s Court. This large steel-framed block of 94 flats with 9 retail premises on the ground and first floors directly opposite Harrods began life as “a popular and exclusive place to live”, but in recent years has become more commonly used for Airbnbs and by ‘ladies (and gents) of a certain profession of the night’.

Of the apartment complex, a past resident complained to The Steeple Times: “I did not live there long as I could not even open the windows in the summer due to the pollution and traffic noise from supercars revving in the summer on the Brompton Road. The ‘bedroom banging activity’ from my clearly-a-hooker neighbour did not help me sleep at night either.”

No-longer-so-ritzy Princes Court previously hit the headlines in 2012 when an 84 square foot studio flat went on sale for £89,950, in 2021 when a 128 square foot offering sold for £325,000 and in 2022 when an 88 square foot studio – in spite of lacking even a lavatory and without any kind kitchen – was auctioned with a guide price of £175,000. A two bedroomed flat extending to 877 square feet on the ninth floor of the building is currently being touted by Harrods Estates at a guide price of £1.3 million.

Given the spoof website supporting the homeless charity Shelter that is the National Institute of Feline Orbital Studies (NIFOS) calculates that 78.54 square foot is required to swing an ‘average’ cat and that it would cost £158,180 to “buy enough space to swing a cat in SW3”, the 109 square foot flat offered by Grow Portfolio has not only not enough room to swing a cat, but would not even adhere to the government’s technical housing standards if it were a new build property. The minimum today required to meet regulations is 398 square foot, meaning that this poxy pad falls 72% short of that sum; these regulations do not apply to buildings constructed prior to 2011.

Fair warning to whoever purchases this ‘flatlet’ suitable only for someone seriously slim: In February 1988, an actual broom cupboard measuring 5’6” feet by 11 feet “with not even a cooker” in Princes Court sold for £36,500 (the equivalent of £102,500 today) during what Pete May termed an “obscene property boom” in his 2012 book Rent Boy. The self-professed “punk-turned-journalist who spent 20 years falling off the property ladder’ added: “Even I wouldn’t live in that. Yet it was recommended as a purchase for ‘those who like eating out’.”

Within months of the cupboard sale, the economy tanked and studio flats, given their limited appeal, were the very first properties to see their values plummet. In 2025, with Rachel Reeves ‘Queen of Thieves’ having her grubby mitts on the nation’s tiller, this is probably not the time to be shelling out £250,000 for what the “honest estate agent” and Brothel in Pimlico author Roy Brooks would have likely marketed as a ‘broom cupboard in a brothel building in Knightsbridge’. At this time, perhaps, ‘buyer best beware’ would better be borrowed.

Curious facts about Brompton Road
- The area of ‘Brompton’ dates to the 15^th century and originates from the name ‘Brokendon’ – meaning “a place near a brook”.
- The road itself starts at Knightsbridge Underground station and ends at the crossroad intersection known as ‘Brompton Cross’ where Fulham Road begins. It is thought to have ‘officially’ first been designated as ‘Brompton Road’ in 1863 on land originally owned by the Moreaus, a wealthy French Huguenot family.
- Brompton Road is one of London’s most polluted highways due to heavy traffic, especially from diesel vehicles. In 2013, the London Assembly claimed pedestrians were being “showered in dangerous airborne particles” on this road identified as having NO2 levels massively exceeding World Health Organization guidelines.
- Between 1906 and 1934, passengers on the Piccadilly London Underground line were able to alight at Brompton Road tube station. It was closed due to being surprisingly little used, but served as the command centre of the 26^th (London) Anti-Aircraft Brigade during the Second World War. During this period, the tunnels, subways and lift-shafts were adapted to provide bomb-proof accommodation and in 2014, the site was sold to Dmytro Firtash, a billionaire Ukrainian businessman for £53 million. His plans to convert the 28,000 square foot site into residential accommodation have still not come to fruition.
- The best-known retail landmark on Brompton Road is Harrods department store. It stands on a site that covers an astounding 5 acres in total and includes 1.1 million square feet of retailing space.
- Famous customers of the store, which first opened in its present form in 1894, have included Agatha Christie, Beatrix Potter, Oscar Wilde and Asma al-Assad, the wife of the former President of Syria. She used an alias to shop there in order to get around European Union sanctions that froze the assets of her and her husband.
- In 1898, Harrods debuted Britain’s first ‘moving staircase’ (or what we now term an ‘escalator’). At the top, “nervous” customers were offered brandy to revive them from the “ordeal” of their ride, The Drapers’ Record reported at the time.
- Harrods was bombed by the IRA in 1983 and 1993. The first attack killed 6 people and the second injured 4.
- The store was bought by the now late alleged serial sex offender Mohamed Al-Fayed in 1985. The ‘Phony Pharaoh’, as the Egyptian was nicknamed, is said to have abused at least 200 women on the premises during his ownership. He sold the business to the Qatar Investment Authority for an astounding £1.5 billion in 2010 and died in 2023 without ever having been brought to justice.
- In 2022, Apple opened a store on the road in what was once the Brompton Arcade. It is staffed by over 200 employees, or as the tech giant prefers to call them – team members.
- Another major landmark, and a building like Harrods complete with a dome, is the Church of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. This Catholic parish church is better known as the Brompton Oratory and also referenced as the London Oratory.
- Consecrated in 1884, the church was where ‘Master of Suspense’ Sir Alfred Hitchcock married Alma Reville in 1933 and it is said to have inspired Nick Cave to write the song Brompton Oratory in 1997.
- During the Cold War, this ornately decorated church was used as a ‘dead letter drop’ (or ‘DLD’ to those in the know) by Soviet agents in Britain. Spies would visit the church and place documents and microfilm behind one of the pillars for later collection by their compatriots; the location suited given the building’s proximity to the Russian embassy and as Harrods was a suitable rabbit warren for losing a tail if they thought they were being followed.
- Standing behind the Brompton Oratory and accessed from Brompton Road is Holy Trinity Church, Brompton. ‘HTB Brompton’, as it is now generally referenced, stands on a site of 3.5 acres and is now one of the primary sites for the teaching of the Alpha course programme that focuses on “the evangelization of the nations, the revitalization of the church and the transformation of society.’
Further photographs of the £250,000 Princes Court flatlet

The kitchen facilities would not exactly excite Gordon Ramsay.

The shower room is modern and clean; there’s not much further to say further than that.

Both the shower room and ‘studio’ room have windows; a ‘Brucie bonus’ for sure.

A view of the ‘studio’ towards the door; most prison cells are bigger than the space offered here.

If you bought the studio offered and needed to host a visitor, you could do so in the lobby of Princes Court. It’s got seating and space aplenty in comparison to the ‘flatlet’ itself.

Princes Court (here partly shrouded in scaffolding) is literally opposite Harrods, undoubtedly one of the most famous department stores in the world.

The rear of Princes Court with Harrods department store behind and the store’s former depository, now apartments also, to the right.
December 8, 2025
Extravagance Knows No Bounds – £36m Mansion Previously Owned By Disgraced Tycoons Alan Bond And Conrad Black Again For Sale

Matthew Steeples takes a look at a £36 million Kensington mansion formerly owned by disgraced business tycoons Alan Bond and Lord Black; its former chatelaine was known for stating “I have an extravagance that know no bounds”

Sir Winston Churchill’s daughter Mary Soames once described the buccaneering businessman and media tycoon Lord Black of Crossharbour as “London’s biggest bore unhung” whilst his wife, Lady Black – better known as the author and journalist Barbara Amiel – was suggested to be just a “rich bitch” by Sarah Sands in a “case for the defence” article in the Independent in October 2006.

“Poster boy for the 80s” turned fraudster and jailbird Alan Bond (1938 – 2015) was an English-Australian businessman equally Marmite-like in being liked or loathed and now a Kensington mansion owned for a time by both subsequently disgraced businessmen is once again for sale.

14 Cottesmore Gardens, formerly known as 12 – 14 Cottesmore Gardens, was purchased by Alan Bond’s Satellite Group for £7 million in the 1980s and sold by administrators of that business to Conrad Black and his wife for the knockdown sum of just £3.5 million in 1992.

Plain old Mr and Mrs Black (as they then were) lavished further millions – some of which came from the company Hollinger International, Inc., which ultimately resulted in their downfall – on the double fronted 19^th century mansion and used it for entertaining on a lavish scale. Guests, including the likes of Prince and Princess Michael of Kent, Joan Collins, Margaret Thatcher, Henry Kissinger, Jimmy Goldsmith, James Hanson, Arnold Weinstock, Jacob Rothschild, Peter Mandelson and Tony Blair, were said to flock to the parties they gave there, but in 2005 these gatherings of upto 400 people at a time came to an almighty end.

Forced to sell at a bargain basement price of just £13.1 million on an ask of £17.5 million as the Canadian born billionaire faced jail time in America, Lord and Lady Black’s tenure was over and the residence saw its “arriviste torch” passed to Juan and Adriana Villalonga, a couple described as “a Mexican telecom czar and his beauty-queen wife.” Of what came next, The Globe And Mail’s Paul Waldie pointedly penned in February 2007: “[They] quickly erased many of the features that the Blacks prized.”

Once again for sale as of April 2023, the value of 14 Cottesmore Gardens has again been deemed to have substantially risen. Knight Frank offer the 12,310 square foot, five-storey residence at a punchy price of £36 million and laud it as “imposing” and “presented in good order throughout.” They add that a “pre-planning consultation” has found that further accommodation could be added that would take the internal space to more than 15,000 square feet; business barons with deep pockets only need apply.

Editor’s Note – Unlike as is the case in many publications, this article was NOT sponsored or supported by a third-party. Follow Matthew Steeples on Twitter at @M_Steeples.

Pictured Top – 54-foot wide 14 Cottesmore Gardens is described by selling agents Knight Frank as “offering lateral living so often requested but so hard to find in central London.” They neglect to mention that with its hedges cut back to the minimum, the place actually looks extremely forlorn.

Flamboyant Lord and Lady Black dressed as Cardinal Richelieu and Marie Antoinette for a party at Kensington Palace in 2000. For a time, the couple employed 17 butlers (if Tom Bower is to be believed) and had two private jets and homes – aside from the 19th Cottesmore Gardens mansion – in New York, Palm Beach and Toronto. “Guests packed into their parties at Cottesmore Gardens,” Bower remarked in his 2006 book the couple, adding: “Amiel was a big spender… Under the control of senior butler Andrew Lightwood, second butler Peter Wilson and a succession of third butlers, Amiel’s life in Kensington had become what her constantly changing staff called ‘bizarre.’ Each recruit was taken by Lightwood on an introductory tour of the house, ending on the roof. ‘Make sure the landing lights are on at all times,’ instructed Lightwood solemnly, ‘because Madame takes off from here on her broomstick looking for cats. She needs the lights to guide her return.’ His face would crack into a smile. ‘Most important, take care that she never sees you. She hates seeing any of us.’ Amiel’s eccentricity demanded that her staff hid whenever she approached, diving into cupboards if necessary, and never entered her quarters when she was present. Every day, all the bed linen was changed and subjected to ‘the penny test.’ A coin was dropped onto the sheets. If it failed to bounce they were not drawn sufficiently tight. Every cushion was arranged to a precise pre-ordained position, and each towel placed exactly as Amiel had predetermined. ‘Andrew!’ she screamed down the telephone on one memorable occasion, ‘the towels are in the wrong place!’ Lightwood, as Amiel knew, was in New York, but he was expected to telephone the staff in the house in London to rectify the error. ‘You f**king pillock!’ she yelled at another member of staff for reading her ‘Daily Mail’ before it was delivered to her.”

Barbara Amiel Black (or ‘Lady Black’ as she prefers to be known) in her drawing room at Cottesmore Gardens (pictured). Of her, Sarah Sands on Lord and Lady Black in the ‘Independent’ in October 2006 opined: “Conrad and Barbara in their monstrous, glamorous way, knew how to throw parties. The talk was of geo-politics and hemlines. Nowadays, we scorn their extravagance and doubt the source of their wealth with prune-faced hindsight. Meanwhile, everyone is sucking up to Russians…. Barbara would disingenuously begin her midnight calls to me by saying in her low, breathy voice: ‘I hope I am not disturbing you.’ She would then offer little glimpses of her own home life. I remember her mentioning that Conrad Black was upstairs playing with his fleet of toy gun ships in the bath… I remember her examining an exhibition of doll’s houses at the Chelsea Flower Show and sighing how restful it would be to live in this cosy little home. How she envied people in small houses. The burden of wealth was one of her more dangerous fantasies. At one of her Gatsby-style parties in Kensington, she flinched at the elaborate canapés on offer: ‘Really, all I want is a sausage,’ she said, piteously. Then, she ran a hand down her inconceivably expensive dress and whispered: ‘I hate these parties, I am so shy.’ Later, I was invited to her boudoir, where she lay on cushion surrounded by her women friends. She was Kensington’s Cleopatra, surrounded by maidens such as the designer and Forte daughter Olga Polizzi, the political thinker Tessa Keswick and the writer Miriam Gross.”

The very same drawing room at 14 Cottesmore Gardens today. The décor is now somewhat more modern and less ‘classical country house-ified.’ It’s certainly more Soho Farmhouse than Alberto Pinto in style; it is currently a space that the former Meghan Markle would feel more at home than say, perhaps, the likes of Lord and Lady Black’s chum Ghislaine Maxwell and her fellow noxious nonce Ponzi scheming paedophile boyfriend Jeffrey Epstein. Mr Pinto was responsible, it should be noted, for the designs of most of Epstein’s residences.

The front elevation of 12 – 14 Cottesmore Gardens during the era it was owned by Lord and Lady Black.

Multiple entries for Lord and Lady Black during the time they owned 14 Cottesmore Gardens appeared in the ‘Little Black Book’ address book often attributed as being that of the friends and associates of Jeffrey Epstein, but that featured more of the contacts of Ghislaine Maxwell in fact. In October 2020, Barbara Amiel took revenge on the pension pot plunderer’s padeophile sex trafficker daughter by featuring her in her “score-settling” memoir ‘Friends & Enemies: A Life in Vogue, Prison, & Park Avenue.” Maxwell had “dumped” Lady Black when Lord Black was being investigated for fraud. She wrote of their last meeting: “We were friends – so putting on my ‘So good to see you’ face, I headed for her. She bolted. Turned that sharp tight little turn when you really want to get away. And that was it.”

Of the clear lover of plastic surgery Lady Black, in October 2020, Sarah Sands remarked in ‘The Mail on Sunday’: “She had a bohemian, almost masculine, view of opportunistic sex. She describes, for instance, accompanying an early love in his white Triumph sports car ‘in which once or twice I had performed fellatio to the fascination of passing truck drivers, all for fun.’”

After getting out of the clink in 2012, Lord and Lady Black decided to go back on the ‘razzle-dazzle’ and posed for photographers before heading back to London to party with friends. In May 2019, the rambunctious peer arrogantly announced he’d be returning to the House of Lords after President Donald Trump pardoned and praised him. Commenting, of this pardon, Lord Black declared: “I’m not bitter… Officially in the United States, I’ve never been charged and I won in the end. It was a war and there are casualties in wars. I lost the time, I lost a lot of money, but as you can see my standards of living isn’t bad… The truth is, these, last 15 years, I haven’t been as interested in British politics as I was before – in the Thatcher years. It could be quite interesting again, in fact it is as of right now – it’s very interesting… It’s my good fortune that at a time when it is feasible, it happens – by happy coincidence – that it is a time of great fermentation in British public affairs.” Surprisingly, he doesn’t seem to have turned up on occasions since.

The previous owner of 14 Cottesmore Gardens, Alan Bond (1938 – 2015), will forever be remembered as “Australia’s most notorious corporate criminal.” Born in Hammersmith, London, Bond’s first crime occurred when he was charged with theft aged 14 in Fremantle in Australia and whilst he is remembered for bankrolling the successful challenge for the 1983 America’s Cup, it is for causing the then biggest corporate collapse in Australian history that he will be go down in history.

Former Miss Mexico Adriana Abascal López-Cisneros (at the time Adriana Villalonga) bought the house in 2005. She divorced the Spanish businessman Juan Villalonga in 2009 and married the French businessman Emmanuel Schreder in Ibiza in June 2013. In August 2014, the magazine ‘Quién’ featured the model and television presenter on its cover and at that time she described her new husband as “the love of my life.”

Madrid born Juan Villalonga became the joint owner of 14 Cottesmore Gardens with his then wife Adriana Abascal – the couple were married between 2000 and 2009 – in 2005. He is listed on Companies House as being a director of the now dissolved Medikidz Foundation at the address between August 2009 and November 2013. Married since 2011 to a photographer named Vanessa Von Zitewitz, Mr Villalonga was a partner at McKinsey & Company in the 1980s, CEO for Credit Suisse First Boston and Bankers Trust in Spain in the early 1990s and CEO of Telefónica from 1996 to 2000. He was named as one of the best performing chief executive officers in the world by ‘Harvard Business Review’ in 2010 and is also linked to addresses in Monaco.

The Names & Numbers – 14 Cottesmore Gardens (formerly known as ’12 – 14 Cottesmore Gardens’), Kensington, London, W8 5PR, United Kingdom

April 2023 – Offered for sale for £36 million ($44.4 million, €40.9 million or درهم163.2 million) through Knight Frank. Valued on Homipi at an upper sum of £28.558 million ($35.250 million, €32.440 million or درهم129.456 million).

2009 – Mr and Mrs Villalonga divorce and subsequently Adriana Abascal married Emmanuel Schreder, a French businessman, in Ibiza in June 2013.

2005 – Sold by Lord and Lady Black for £13.1 million ($16.2 million, €14.9 million or درهم59.4 million) to Spanish businessman Juan Villalonga Navarro and Mexican model, Miss Mexico winner and television presenter Adriana Abascal López-Cisneros Villalonga.

October 2004 – Placed for sale for £17.5 million ($21.6 million, €19.9 million or درهم79.3 million) according to NZ Herald.

January 2004 – Valued at £14 million ($17.3 million, €15.9 million or درهم63.5 million) according to The Globe And Mail. At the time, the “mansion” in “the upscale Kensington neighbourhood” was described as having “10 bedrooms, 6 bathrooms and a swimming pool.”

Featured also in The Guardian in an article by Chris Tryhorn. Quoting Lord Black, he shared: “At a certain price, anything is for sale. [It has] been shown to people in the not-too-distant-past.”

Going further, Tryhorn added: “Artwork from the 18^th and 19^th centuries lines the walls, and there is plenty of storage space for the extensive wardrobe and shoe collection of Lord Black’s wife, Barbara Amiel, who famously declared once that her ‘extravagence knows no bounds.’ … It was originally two homes and one of the two original front doors is now a ‘deliveries’ entrance. He has used it in the past to host dinners with butler and maid service that was part-paid by Hollinger.”

Also in 2004, in a profile in The Spectator, Peter Oborne wrote:

“Every year the Blacks threw two parties, one at Christmas and one summer event, at their double-fronted 11-bedroom mansion in Cottesmore Gardens. Everybody who mattered at the time went: Margaret Thatcher, Henry Kissinger, Jimmy Goldsmith, James Hanson, Arnold Weinstock, Jacob Rothschild, royalty, the playwright Tom Stoppard.”

“Some of these, injudiciously as it turned out, agreed to join the main Hollinger board. The luckier ones – Peter Carrington, Robert Salisbury – got away with being made directors of The Telegraph. As the Tories faded out, Labour ministers started to arrive, the indefatigable Peter Mandelson, David Blunkett and other ministers eager to ingratiate themselves with the Tory press. Prince and Princess Michael of Kent were assiduous in attendance. In London, the Nineties belonged to the Blacks. They were London’s most glamorous power couple.”

“There had been a time when both Blacks had kept their feet on the ground. This ceased to be the case. One evening Barbara Black rang Charles Moore panic-stricken from her Kensington home. There had been a last-minute drop-out from one of the famous Black dinner parties. ‘I’m short of a woman,’ she told Moore. Moore surveyed the newsroom. His gaze alighted on the journalist Eleanor Mills, by chance the stepdaughter of the Cabinet minister Tessa Jowell.”

“An hour later, hastily groomed, made-up and brushed, Mills was sipping pre-dinner drinks in Cottesmore Gardens. Then disaster struck. A male guest, Max Fisher, dropped out. Mills was approached by Conrad Black. ‘Finish your drink and skedaddle,’ he told her. Barbara Black then told her to go to the kitchen and out through the servants’ door, where the driver would pick her up and take her home.”

2001 – Conrad Black is elevated to a life peerage in the United Kingdom at the suggestion of Tony Blair. He sat on the Conservative benches in the House of Lords until 2007 as The Right Honourable The Lord Black of Crossharbour KCSG, but took a “leave of absence” between 2012 and 2019.

28^th May 1996 – The Royal Borough of Kensington And Chelsea ordered that 12 – 14 Cottesmore Gardens “shall be known and described” simply instead as 14 Cottesmore Gardens.

Mid 1990s – The Blacks set about renovating 12 and 14 Cottesmore Gardens with the help of J. E. Evans Associates. Of the work in October 2006, The Sunday Times shared a segment of Tom Bower’s 2006 hatchet job Conrad and Lady Black that read: “Amiel vowed to create a palace that would attract celebrity worshipers of a power couple. Part of the first floor was to be removed to create a huge ground floor reception area.”

1992 – 12 and 14 Cottesmore Gardens sold by the administrators of the affairs of Alan Bond through estate agents Savills to media tycoon Conrad Black and his Watford born journalist wife Barbara Amiel Black for “well under the asking price” for a sum of £3.5 million ($4.3 million, €4 million or درهم15.9 million).

Mr Bond had been granted mortgages valued at £16.2 million ($20 million, €18.4 million or درهم73.5 million) on the property by Bell Satellite Services on the property along with two others at 4 and 16 Belgrave Mews in London, SW1 previously according to a report published by Financial Review in March 1990.

1991 – Rented to an American businessman for £6,000 per week ($7,400, €6,800 or درهم27,200 per week).

1990 – Placed in the hands of administrators of Mr Bond’s and placed for sale through Savills for a bargain basement sum of £3.8 million ($4.7 million, €4.3 million or درهم17.2 million) according to Financial Review.

1980s – Sold to Alan Bond’s Bell Satellite Group for £7 million ($8.6 million, €8 million or درهم31.7 million).

Circa 1905 – Walter Tapper is said to have “designed a library with handsome Arts and Crafts plasterwork (now removed) at the rear of the building.”

1903 – 14 Cottesmore Gardens registered as the home of a Mrs Benson according to the Muster Roll of Angus: South African War, 1899 – 1902.

1869 – In their current marketing blurb, Knight Frank suggest: “There has been a house on the site of 12 – 14 Cottesmore Gardens since at least 1869. The current house has been altered, extended and most notably joined over the subsequent century and a half. With the local planning department strongly opposed to further amalgamation of homes, opportunities to acquire a house of this width will be rarer still in the future.”

1850s to 1860s – Built “under the direction of David Howell, of Serjeants Inn, Fleet Street.” Mr Howell was described in 1853 as an “articled clerk to a solicitor, lately carrying on business as a solicitor.” The architecture was lauded as: “Designed in a bold classical manner, with rather fleshy consoles and modillions… and bands of Vitruvian scroll between the bases of the ground-floor windows.”

More photographs of the £36 million mansion…

An entrance hall where power and privilege have most certainly mingled previously.

The 54-foot wide drawing is lauded by selling realtors Knight Frank as “arguably the best room in the house” and “double aspect.” They add: “[It has] six windows overlooking the street and additional views over the private garden to the rear.”

The columns where Barbara Amiel Black once posed for photographs remain, but the subsequent owners eliminated much of the 1990s ‘brash’ that had been installed by a Watford born woman whose excess clearly offended so many.

This dining room, where Conrad Black hosted presidents and prime ministers, is now somewhat diminished. The table for eight looks completely out of place and a future owner would do well to install something a little grander.

A double height entertaining space was installed at the insistence of the loftier-than-lofty Lady Black in the 1990s and it remains today. However, it is now currently being used for more casual affairs such as Netflix viewing rather than being the scene of something that you’d more likely find in the ‘House of Cards’ in fact.

A new owner might reinstate the grandeur of the past; sadly, however, this seems unlikely and the purchaser is more likely to be a footballer or Internet tycoon than a super-connected business tycoon.

This currently very dark and very depressing study would most certainly not appeal to the very clearly very, very bright yet very, very pompous The Right Honourable The Lord Black of Crossharbour KCSG – a man who is said to count Julius Caesar and Napoleon Bonaparte as “his military heroes.” Of him in July 1997, Mark Honigsbaum in the ‘Independent’ remarked: “Although Black’s grandfather had briefly been a business partner of Harold Harmsworth, the original Viscount Rothermere, it was from his father, George Montegu Black Jr, that Black learned the art of corporate warfare, the importance of historical perspective and that gambling provides a disappointing rate of return compared to the Dow Jones index… The young Conrad was precocious. At the age of eight he sank his life savings of $60 into a single share of General Motors. He also became obsessed with Napoleon, and would astound his father’s friends by reeling off details of campaigns. Another story has him washing dollar bills and hanging them out to dry on a line outside his father’s home in Toronto. The last is apocryphal – Black says he slipped in the mud and was cleaning his change – but the image of the young capitalist, wise beyond his years, is accurate. His childhood tutor, the historian Laurier LaPierre, once asked Black why he always seemed to have the air of someone waiting for something to happen… A few years ago, for instance, the rumour went round Fleet Street that Black had bought Napoleon’s preserved penis at an auction. Black denied it, but many remain convinced that Bonaparte’s body part sits in Black’s collection of military curios… Black is no philanderer and is devoted to his second wife, the former ‘Sunday Times’ columnist Barbara Amiel. They are said to be intellectual soul mates and the parties at their four-storey mansion in Kensington are famous for bringing together a cross-section of the great and good.”

One could not imagine the likes of the late great Baroness Thatcher, for example, liking the idea of sitting in this extremely depressing and dark waiting area. A new owner would do well to obliterate a décor scheme that could have only been favoured by a completely colour blind banker.

A room currently described as a ‘cinema room’ measures 28’6” by 21’6” and is situated at the rear of the house. One can imagine Conrad Black having sat here for hour upon hour watching historical dramas about Napoleon with the likes of chums such as the acclaimed historian Andrew Roberts, the gambling tycoon John Aspinall and the politician and diarist Alan Clark, but a new owner will be more likely next showing episodes of ‘Succession’ – based on ‘The Telegraph’ tycoon’s rival Rupert Murdoch – than viewing historical works one most definitely suspects.

Dining whilst the staff cook would NEVER have been on the agenda in the era that pomposity reigned whilst Lady Black was chatelaine of 14 Cottesmore Gardens.

A 2,000 square foot entire floor fit for a tycoon… The master bedroom suite of the house takes up the entirety of the second floor of the building. It incorporates not only the principal bedroom, but also a “his” dressing room and a “her” dressing room as well as a sitting area, a bathroom, a shower room and storage rooms. It has direct lift access and is bigger than the average Brit’s entire house.

A dressing room in the house where Barbara Black opened up to ‘Vogue’ and displayed “closets overflowing with dazzling evening gowns, designer handbags and 100 pairs of Manolo Blahnik shoes. ‘I have an extravagance that knows no bounds,’ she famously declared. Unfortunately for Lady Black, the article was closely perused at investment company Tweedy, Browne, a Hollinger International shareholder.”

This playroom certainly did not exist in the era that Lord and Lady Black owned the property. It would be more likely crammed with books or stuffed with Manolo Blahnik shoes than toys from Toys ‘R Us. A new owner may likely reinstate it as an additional bedroom or office or games room perhaps.

The pool room measures 43’9” by 26’9” and is no doubt where Lady Black spent many an hour relaxing.

The garden to the rear was where Lord and Lady Black hosted their annual summer party (with guests “spilling” into their drawing room also). In surprisingly Tardis-like fashion, the duo were able to supposedly squeeze in upto 400 guests at such occasions. Amongst those said to have enjoyed hospitality there were Joan Collins and of such, magazine publisher Nicholas Coleridge wrote: “If you get a kick out of milling about with present and former prime ministers, cabinet ministers, minor royals, dukes, editors, vastly rich Americans, distinguished historians, gossip columnists, playboys and lots of pretty ‘it’ girls, then this was the place to be.”

The existing floor plan of the property illustrates the vast scale of the building offered. A buyer, Knight Frank observe, has additional options and “a pre-planning consultation has been carried out with RBKC by leading architects Studio Indigo.” They add: “[It] would completely reconfigure the house adding an additional basement floor and taking the internal space to more than 15,000 square foot. The resulting house would have a 40-foot by 41-foot south-facing rear garden.”

A plan of the site as presented in 1996 when 12 and 14 became known just as 14 Cottesmore Gardens.

April 2, 2023
Heroes of the Hour 2021 – Bill and Cath Mullarkey

Bill and Cath Mullarkey are using their EuroMillions winnings to to feed homeless people in the COVID-19 lockdown

Most people who win on the lottery splurge on cars and holidays. Some like the £9.7 million winner ‘Lotto Lout’ Michael Carroll blow the lot and end up bankrupt, but a Coventry couple named Bill and Cath Mullarkey have actually used their £1 million EuroMillions loot to help others.

Having hit the jackpot in 2015, professionally trained chefs Bill and Cath Mullarkey took to cooking up three course Caribbean themed Christmas meals for pensioners. Now, during the latest COVID-19 lockdown, they have gone further and helped to provide Caribbean curries, cutlery, drinks and snacks for over 100 homeless, vulnerable and isolated people.

Of helping the Langar Aid charity to feed those in genuine need, Mr Mullarkey remarked:

“I saw the Langar Aid guys on the TV dishing out meals to stranded lorry drivers on the M20 over Christmas. I was inspired and wanted to help them look after homeless people in Coventry.”

“Ordinarily Cath and I would have gone into the kitchens and cooked everything but working with Jim Eaves of Langar Aid was the best way of still making a difference while minimising contact.”

“As Cath is from St Lucia we went for a Caribbean curry. A vegetable and coconut curry with a side order of rice and peas plus drinks. We also handed over lots of chocolate bars as treats.”

Meanwhile, his wife added:

“Jim was brilliant. We chatted through meal ideas, the ingredients because everything is vegetarian, even the cutlery.”

“He and the other volunteers give up their spare time and stand out in all weathers; it’s so cold at the moment, a lot colder than St Lucia and I am in awe of the work they do.”

“That’s why Bill and I wanted to also give something to the volunteers as well to say thank you.”

Today, we join those saluting Bill and Cath Mullarkey and urge those that can to do the same. As we pointed out in December, one in three families are only one pay cheque away from losing their home; don’t think it couldn’t be you so please be kind and considerate.

Heroes of the Hour 2021 – EuroMillions winners Bill and Cath Mullarkey’s efforts for the homeless during the latest COVID-19 lockdown deserves to be lauded.

January 27, 2021
Pampered Peers Prattle About Avocados

Avocados and a “lack of British chefs in the kitchens” get the goat of out-of-touch British peers just as Norman Fowler calls for their numbers to be cut

This morning, the Mirror revealed that “pampered peers” in the House of Lords have spent 2020 complaining about the quality of avocados just as, in a year when the country teeters on bankruptcy, the taxpayer has propped up their loss-making dining rooms and bars to the tune of nearly £2 million in subsidies.

Of this news, at a time when Marcus Rashford has shamed the government over its meanness towards providing free meals for poor school children, Liberal Democrat Home Affairs spokesman Alistair Carmichael told the paper:

“Boris Johnson stuffing the House of Lords with his dodgy mates is clearly having its effect.”

“Instead of playing at Downton Abbey, these peers should be looking beyond their own dinner plate and address the real problems people across the country are facing.

Shockingly paid £305 plus travel expenses for each and every day they attend, yet charged just £3.70 for a full English breakfast, peers also “griped” about the halting of the sale of alcohol of the Parliamentary Estate due to coronavirus restrictions. One even whinged that “there were not enough British chefs in the kitchens.”

Elsewhere, last week, Lord Fowler, the lord speaker of the House of Lords, quite rightly argued in the Guardian that “there are too many lords” and remarked on Boris Johnson adding another 52 peers during 2020.

He questioned the sense of the resulting total number of 830 – “despite a cross-party agreement three years ago that numbers should over time be reduced to 600” – and questioned the fact the Lords is almost 200 larger in number than the Commons “and far in excess of what needed to transact its business.”

Going further and wading into the row over the disgraceful appointment of the “cash-for-access” tainted Tory donor Peter Cruddas by Johnson “in defiance of advice from the Lords Appointments Commission,” Fowler remarked:

“As we have just seen, its recommendations can be overridden by No 10. The result is that a prime minister has the power on his or her own to add peers to a house of parliament that can make and, within limits, unmake laws. Is this what the public expect in the third decade of the 21st century?”

“When making appointments it has become obvious that governments wish to avoid parliamentary scrutiny. Both of the initial announcements of new peerages in the last 12 months have been made when parliament has not been sitting. It simply adds to the impression that the choice of peers is the exclusive preserve of No 10 – and the less publicity the better. This may be fine for the government’s public relations team: whether it is fine for parliament is another matter.”

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Pampered Peers Prattle About Avocados –In March 2015, ‘The Steeple Times’ reported that “peers had complained about being left ‘scarred’ after having had their dinner bookings cancelled and were angered by the size of the menus, ‘chaotic’ table layouts and ‘inferior cappuccinos.’”

Pampered Peers Prattle About Avocados – Norman Fowler, Baron Fowler PC is quite right to call for reform of the House of Lords. A 2017 “analysis of voting, speaking and expenses records in the Lords, [showed a] ‘something for nothing culture among peers” by the Electoral Reform Society astonishingly revealed “115 Lords – one in seven of the total – failed to speak at all in the 2016/17 session, despite claiming an average of £11,091 each, while 18 peers failed to vote but still claimed £93,162” and that expenses claims had soared by 20% in just two years “at a time when public services have been under strain.”

Pampered Peers Prattle About Avocados – In January 2018, the ‘National Geographic Discovery Channel’ reported on a peer complaining about a pork chop that was “uneatable, tough and dry, and clearly cooked for hours before.” Of some “gone off” smoked salmon, another member added: “It really was disgrace.”

December 28, 2020
Jobsworth Jenrick Props Up Property

Jobsworth Robert Jenrick announces estate agents CAN take potential virus spreaders into peoples’ homes even in Tier 4 lockdown areas; a QUARTER of donations to the Tory party come from the property sector

Housing secretary Robert Jenrick likes to do favours for his ridiculously rich cronies. He came to attention in May when he “unlawfully approved” a planning scheme for Richard Desmond (AKA ‘Mr Badger’) and on Saturday, this murky multi-millionaire Tory MP again showed his true colours when he bizarrely tweeted celebrating the fact that estate agents could remain open in Tier 4 areas even.

Whilst the public are cruelly banned from going to a socially distanced restaurant space or from having dinner with their lonely granny in her kitchen because of the risk of spreading coronavirus, how is it acceptable for estate agents to be allowed to take members of the public into the private spaces of peoples’ homes for viewings?

For jobsworth Jenrick, it seems, allowing prospective buyers and tenants to touch doors, walls and surfaces in confined spaces is not at all risky, but one is left wondering how he came to this conclusion. In June, the Independent revealed that the Conservative Party had received £11 million (or over a quarter of their donations) from the property sector since Boris Johnson became Prime Minister.

Pictured top: Disgracefully, Robert Jenrick MP and his government have not made property viewings a “restricted zone” in Tier 4 lockdown areas.

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Stay Homes, Save Lives… But NOT if you’re an estate agent… Why have estate agents not been lumped into “non-essential” businesses forced to close by our incompetent government? The answer as to why “Stay Home, Save Lives” has not been applied to the property sector is unsurprising: A quarter of donations to the Tory Party comes from the property sector and we all know that Robert Jenrick enjoys Carlton Club suppers with rich developers like Richard Desmond.

Jenrick tweeted jubilantly about estate agents remaining open for business on Saturday. His government, meanwhile, has forced many other businesses to close and many of them will most likely tragically never reopen.

Twitter users were unsurprisingly unimpressed by Robert Jenrick’s enthusiasm for estate agents remaining open. One, Gavin Wilkins, remarked: “So thanks to the announcement my mum’s shit scared to come to my house for Xmas (she’s on her own), but I can go to value or view as many houses as I want. Sums it all up. Shitshow – government should be ashamed.”

Boris Johnson is equally happy to hang out with porn baron turned property developer. He should now be asked: “What first attracted you to the multi-millionaire Richard Desmond, Boris?”

December 21, 2020
Heroine of the Hour – Micheline Stephen

Ninety-year-old daily martini drinker Micheline Stephen of Cupar, Scotland is to be saluted for grabbing a robber and calling him “a wee sh*te”

Spotted on the brilliant Facebook group ‘Angry People in Local Newspapers,’ our heroine of the hour just had to be a “Dame Maggie Smith lookalike” named Micheline Stephen of Hill Street, Cupar, Scotland.

Featured in an article by Jamie Callaghan in Fife Today on Monday, French born daily martini drinker Mrs Stephen “was coming out of her bathroom when she noticed someone wandering around her kitchen.”

“Initially, she believed it was her grandson,” the paper reported, but, as he attempted to escape through a window, Mrs Stephen “noticed it was not my grandson, but a young man… He had a rucksack on his back.”

The sprightly pensioner “tried to pull him in” and “understandably angry… hurled abuse at the robber as he fled.” She remarked: “I told him that he was a wee sh*te.”

Though yet to be apprehended, the nasty little tyke got away with Mrs Stephen’s cigarettes and lighter. In turn, officers from Police Scotland sent her a birthday card when she turned 90 two days later.

Today, we join those on ‘Angry People in Local Newpsapers’ raising a martini to this “legend” and suggesting a “Kickstarter for Micheline Stephen’s fags.”

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On the Facebook group, the journalist Jamie Callaghan’s girlfriend Catriona Wilkie, joined the 50 people leaving comments about the article. One user told her: “It’s a CV moment” of his having made Angry People in Local Newspapers,” though another stated: “I have knocked off points for no mention of grankids [SIC] names, ages or other irrelevant health conditions.”

Fans declared Micheline Stephen’s actions “fabulous” and one declared: “This is the most Scottish thing I’ve ever read.”

November 26, 2020
The Best Gastrowagon By Far

Land Rover converted into a ‘gastrowagon’ for television chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s first television series heads to auction

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall headed “for open country to spend some time eating off the fat of the land in a trawl through Britain’s wild larder” in his debut 1997 series for Channel 4, A Cook on the Wild Side.

During his quest for wild ingredients without a penny in his pocket other than for fuel, he found fame and also drove a 1965 Land Rover Series II 109” wheelbase that was converted into what is endearingly known as a ‘gastrowagon’ circa 1982.

Built specifically for the series, the vehicle was not only where the television chef and Eton contemporary of David Cameron cooked and ate, but also where he slept – in an upturned boat with a mattress perilously perched on the roof.

In the series, Fearnley-Whitingstall – whom is also widely known by the nickname ‘Hugh Fearlessly-Eatsitall – took his ‘Gastrowagon’ everywhere from the New Forest and Scotland to Trafalgar Square in London. It subsequently sadly got left to rot, but has more recently been “fully restored by Land Rover specialists John Brown 4×4 to ‘like new’ condition” according to auctioneers Bonhams.

Of this travelling cook’s paradise, they declare: “The roof-mounted boat is the sleeping quarters, while the back of the Landie features a full kitchen with a two-burner hob, oven, and fridge, all in very good working order and covered by a wind/waterproof canopy. Ancillaries include running water for the shower and wash basin as well as a ‘vintage’ ice cream maker. The bulkhead has been signed by Hugh since the restoration was completed and the vehicle is said to run and drive like new.”

Bonhams have set an estimate of £25,000 to £35,000 ($33,200 to $46,500, €28,000 to €39,200 or درهم121,900 to درهم170,700) for the 2.25-litre Land Rover ‘Gastrowagon’ and will sell it at their Bicester Heritage sale on 11^th December.

A socially distanced Christmas lunch on the road anyone?

Pictured top: The ‘gastrowagon’ and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall – whose ‘Hugh’s Fish Fight’ campaign we featured back in August 2013.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x9SvfXfYzGg

November 22, 2020
Dirty Dawn Can’t Take the Heat of the Coke

Dirty Dawn strikes again – Attention seeker and alleged racist and coke possessor Dawn Ward proves she cannot cope with a bit of truthful press attention

Dawn Ward was most likely a bully at school. Prone to pointing her finger and screaming like a banshee on butane, this attention seeking wench tries to fight dirty, but in reality is just a cowardly cretin.

After The Steeple Times quite accurately reported on Mrs Ward – a genuine halfwit harridan whom sadly rose to the Z-list as a result of seeking out publicity through an ITV show named Real Housewives of Cheshire – being charged with racially aggravated harassment of two Jewish brothers and possession of cocaine, she not only blocked us on Twitter but also got her troll troupe on the case.

In response to Twitter subsequently suggesting the removal of a link to our article, we say this: “We entirely stand by what we said about the Cheshire cat Dawn Ward and again highlight her for what she truly is: Trailer trash and the modern-day equivalent of Bet Lynch on steroids.”

Ward, whose “fish fueled fight” with a bit of “napkin slapping” with the singer Sinitta landed her with a conviction for assault in June 2016, should simply realise this as she awaits her truly deserved trial in March 2022: If she can’t take the heat, she shouldn’t go near the coke and quite frankly, she ought to bloody well get out of her especially naff kitchen.

Pictured top: Dawn Ward always delivers when it comes to posing for the camera.

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Dirty Dawn Can’t Take the Heat of the Coke – Washed up wastrel Dawn Ward often looks angry, but she’d be advised to tone down her temper when she appears in court for alleged cocaine possession and racially aggravated harassment in March 2022.

Dirty Dawn Can’t Take the Heat of the Coke – Dopey Dawn Ward has blocked on ‘The Steeple Times’ on Twitter. As Lauren Cooper in ‘The Catherine Tate Show’ would say: “Am I bovvered?”

Dirty Dawn Can’t Take the Heat of the Coke – Creosoted creature Dawn Ward – whom has also been accused of owing £500,000 to fellow ‘Real Housewives of Cheshire’ participant Leanne Brown – may have spent a small fortune on her kitchen, but anyone sane would just throw such naff faux woodwork in a skip.

Dirty Dawn Can’t Take the Heat of the Coke – If the plastic not fantastic wack job that is Dawn Ward had been born in a different age, she’d likely be a reincarnation of Violet Elizabeth Bott.

October 30, 2020
Wally of the Week – Richard Madeley

Richard Madeley returns to the tellybox to yet again share his completely lacking in relevance thoughts on coronavirus

Alleged shoplifter of champagne and husband of a gibbering old soak Richard Madeley made an utter prat of himself spouting drivel about coronavirus earlier this month and now he’s bloody well gone and done it again.

Appearing from his somewhat shabby kitchen on Good Morning Britain today by Zoom along with a genuine expert named Professor Susan Michie, Madeley branded lockdowns a “pointless game of hide and seek.” Going further, he then added: “There’s no point in running away and hiding from the virus… It’s not squashing the virus.”

Whilst some might suggest ‘The Dorian Gray of Daytime Telly’ might actually have a point, his curious choice of words about sums up this all-round wally and on Twitter the public reacted with an understandable hint of mockery. Of his not so sage expertise, comments included: “What a plonker” and “his mum Judy will kill him when he gets home.” Another quite accurately added: “I still have this feeling of dread every time I see Richard Madeley trending. ‘Oh, no, what’s he said now?’”

Madeley is currently self-isolating for 14 days after returning from a holiday in France. Perhaps, just for him, a special case could be made to make that permanent.

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Twitter users had a field day after Madeley’s latest blunder. One suggested he was showing “the first signs of the menopause.”

Amongst responses to the car crash performance was: “Will Richard Madeley go away if we lock him indoors?” Another added: “Seems Richard Madeley doesn’t agree with the lockdown! Understandable, it’s not so easy to nick supermarket bottles of wine when you shop online!”

October 1, 2020
A Set fit for a Peacock

Unmodernised ‘set’ in “rule-ridden” Albany, Piccadilly that was the London home of eccentric antiques dealer and ‘King of Chelsea’ Christopher Gibbs for sale; tour the home of the man who got Princess Margaret high on hash

Expelled from Eton “for being generally totally impossible,” antiques dealer Christopher Gibbs (1938 – 2018) was not a man one would have imagined would have liked the idea of living in a place with archaic rules. This “peacock pied piper to society in the Swinging Sixties” whose “drug consumption awed even Keith Richards,” however, surprisingly chose as his London base Albany in Mayfair and now his former residence is for sale.

“A hermitage; quiet as a lagoon, secluded from the roar of Piccadilly” according to the author Sheila, Countess of Birkenhead in her 1958 tome Peace in Piccadilly, Albany – which is only ever referred to as ‘The Albany’ by the extremely ill-advised – quintessential dandy Gibbs lived in the building for “more than half [his] life.” Whilst also owning properties including Davington Priory in Kent – which he later sold to Bob Geldoff – and a “mystic hangover” home in Tangier, it was here that this ‘King’ of “distressed bohemian” style found a place that offered him: “Perfection for a singleton, an oasis of serenity in the frenetic heart of West London.”

This curious “cloistered world” has numbered Sir Isaiah Berlin, Alan Clark, Lord Byron, William Gladstone, J. B. Priestley, W. Somerset Maugham and Terence Stamp amongst those who have passed its vetting committee of trustees and Gibbs – a man who legendarily got Princess Margaret so high on marijuana that she had to go to hospital – even embraced its “no pets, no children, no whistling, no noise and absolutely no publicity” policy.

Antiques dealer Christopher Henry Gibbs, (29th July 1938 to 28th July 2018), son of The Hon. Sir Geoffrey Gibbs KCMG and Lady (Helen) Gibbs CBE, was called the ‘King of Chelsea’ due to his ability as the ultimate connector. He put the Rolling Stones together with Prince Rupert Loewenstein (whom became their business manager) and he persuaded his friend John Paul Getty, Jr. to donate £50 million to the British National Gallery in 1985.

Christopher Gibbs by Robert Mapplethorpe and with Mick Jagger and Marianne Faithfull.

Christopher Gibbs pictured in his bathroom at L6 Albany, Albany Courtyard, Piccadilly, Mayfair, London, W1J 0AZ; the bathroom as it is today is in need of “some updating” according to agents GreenHunt.

‘Set L6’ circa 2013, as furnished then by Christopher Gibbs.

Photographed there by the curmudgeonly Victor Watts on a daybed that allegedly belonged to Lord Tennyson, described the home he created in an article for The New York Times’ ‘Style Magazine’ in April 2013:

“I had the place to myself and proceeded to make it my own in the accustomed style: sober mahogany, Oriental rugs, family pictures. I’ve continually reordered these rooms, distilling, paring, pruning, as chaste as my voluptuous nature allows.”

“So enraptured with my Albany life did I become that, reason deserting me (not for the first or last time) I gave up a spacious Bond Street gallery where I had my antiques shop and took one at the back of Albany, a small if elegant space with an entrance into the building, another onto the street and best of all a door into the underground passage – a quiet, invisible stroll home.”

“I love returning from Morocco, where I now spend much of my time, seeing the friendly porters at the door, hearing the clip-clop of feet on the Rope Walk, seeing the old-timers sitting in the little ivy-lined garden, sunning themselves by the little bronze statue of Antinous and the fountain, regularly invaded by the ducks from St. James’s Park – and enjoying sudden glimpses into other people’s lives through uncurtained windows, the hours marked only by the clock chimes of St. James’s Church, accompanied by the more uptempo tinkling of the clock at Fortnum & Mason, our local grocers.”

“At this point, when I am in London, I can’t imagine staying anywhere but Albany – all the more reason, perhaps, to clam up, maintain the longstanding omertà (or I should say discretion) that has held sway for centuries now, and count my blessings.”

Gibbs’ former home, ‘Set L6,’ is situated on the second floor in Albany’s Courtyard. It extends to some 1,178 square foot and includes a hall, reception room, kitchen, bedroom and bathroom. On the third floor, a separately accessed studio space has a shower room and kitchenette and of the property, the selling agents remark: “Whilst capable of immediate occupation, [it] does require the bathrooms being upgraded.”

Sold for just £60,000 ($75,000, €69,000 or درهم275,000) leasehold in March 2019 (presumably the term must have been very much towards its end), agents GreenHunt listed ‘Set L6 Albany’ on Zoopla first in May that year. Now, in April 2020, it remains for sale, but is instead listed on Primelocation. They seek £925,000 ($1.2 million, €1.1 million or درهم4.2 million) and offer it on a new 20-year leasehold with an upfront premium and a peppercorn ground rent.

Living in the building is not just the preserve of those with deep pockets. Peviously, in 2014, we featured ‘Set A5 Attic Albany’ – which was just £395 per week ($494, €454 or درهم1,800 per week) – whilst for those looking for something grander currently, a second and third floor freehold set is currently available through Sotheby’s International Realty for £4.95 million ($6.19 million, €5.69 million or درهم22.73 million). It extends to 1,890 square feet, is described as “meticulously refurbished” and includes an especially impressive drawing room.

Christopher Gibbs quoted:

“[I’ve always attracted] the grand and the raffish and the fast and the chic.”

“[I am] monumentally narcissistic.”

“I am a bit snooty… I do make exceptions, but very few.”

“We are here to learn, and my goodness I have a lot to learn.”

“[I was expelled from Eton for] Rabelaisian antics – illicit drinking, pantry raids of other boys’ rooms – that sort of thing.”

“Taste is something you catch – like measles or religion.”

“I like things in their natural state – people especially. As life goes by, that’s what I admire: objects and people that are unmonkeyed with, that are themselves, not trying to be something else.”

“I’m not interested in creating a dazzling impression of richness. We can make do with surprisingly little in life. It is best to have a few things which are really nice. I don’t approve of the mean look, but I do approve of the spare look, where every little bit is telling.”

“Being a shopkeeper, I used to sell things, sometimes.”

“I definitely suffer from the blown-mind syndrome… The only thing I’ll say in my favour, is that I was practically the only person I knew who actually went to work at nine o’clock in the morning, whether I’d been up to eight o’clock or not, because I had a job, my own business, and I realised that, if I didn’t, I wouldn’t have any of those things.”

“[I] help people make nice cosy homes where they are going to live happy, beautiful lives.”

“[I] encourage friends to dig into their heirlooms, to wear old clothes, to turn their backs on ugliness and conformism.”

“Collectors today want a good car, a good sound system, and a huge pink heart painted by Damien Hirst with dying butterflies on it which costs £400,000. Yet for much less you could buy something completely fascinating made 300 years ago.”

Quotes about Christopher Gibbs:

“Taste is difficult to define, but his is absolute perfection” – Min Hogg, founding editor of World of Interiors.

“[He was] like an 18^th century English parson who knew more about Etruscan vases than anyone at the British Museum” – Sir John Richardson, July 2018.

“I’m here to learn how to be a gentleman” – Mick Jagger of his then neighbour Christopher Gibbs whilst at a dinner party at his house.

“He was very flash… Sometimes he just wore tight jeans or fancy dress, like the others; but mostly his tastes were elaborate; suits with double-breasted waistcoats and cloth-covered buttons, and velvet ties, and striped Turkish shirts with stiff white collars, and cravats. Above all, he had a passion for carnations and was forever buying new strains, pink-and-yellow, or green-ink, or purple with red flecks” – Nik Cohn, author of Today There Are No Gentlemen, January 1971.

“Part Montesquieu, part Beau Brummel, and part Baudelaire… [Christopher Gibbs was a] well-born Renaissance man with an unmatched eye for aesthetics and a talent for friendship and the mot juste” – Hamish Bowles, international editor at large for Vogue, July 2018.

“Christopher was almost single-handedly responsible for making English antiques, and English heritage, look ‘cool’ again” – James Reginato of Vanity Fair, July 2018.

“A connoisseur of the weird and the wonderful” – Christopher Mason of The New York Times, September 2000.

“[He was an] acid-tripping ex-roué once known as the King of Chelsea” – Bitter words from the ex-Daily Mail ‘journalist’ and poison pen James Delingpole, executive editor of Breitbart.

“[The] avatar of Swinging London” – A more kind description from Sam Roberts of The New York Times.

“The arbiter of bohemian style” – Mitchell Owens of Architectural Digest Pro, July 2018.

“Christopher Gibbs: the man who brokered £50 million Getty grant to the National Gallery – and fed Princess Margaret hash brownies” – Huon Mallalieu of The Art Newspaper, July 2018.

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The entrance hallway of ‘Set L6’ has a fireplace.

The master bedroom of ‘

Looking into the reception room.

The somewhat basic kitchen is definitely in need of an upgrade.

The view from the set.

Albany’s famous ‘Rope Walk’ – Of it, Gibbs commented: “So ingrained is the sense of decorum that even to utter a friendly hello to a neighbor as we pass on the stone stairs or the covered outdoor canopy, known as the Rope Walk, might be violating a taboo, as if a few words of small talk could break the spell of privacy we Albanians prize so deeply. (A nod suffices, a hat raised to a lady.)”

Residents have access to the most peaceful outside spaces.

The third floor space included in the sale is arranged as a long, thin studio room.

It has a small kitchenette.

And a somewhat dated shower room.

A plan indicating how ‘Set L6’ is currently arranged.

A plan of the third floor studio space.

April 19, 2020