UK's most expensive home rumoured to have sold for £140 million
A Russian oligarch has reportedly purchased Britain's most expensive home – which was once owned by King George II's son – for an estimated price of £140 million.
The report of the sale has been accompanied by speculation over which oligarch had bought the 300-year-old country house set in 81 hectares of land in Oxfordshire at Remenham on the Thames River at Henley. Political uncertainty has been viewed as a significant factor for the outflow of capital from Russia, amounting to £18.4?billion in the first four months of this year, a sizeable proportion having gone into foreign property.
The reports have homed in on a 54-year-old Russian steel tycoon Vladimir Lisin, with a fortune of £15 billion, as the possible buyer of Park Place from developer Michael Spink, who bought the estate 2007. At the time Park Place was a decaying country house set in 231 hectares that fetched £42 million – the highest figure ever paid in Britain for a house outside London at the time.
The Daily Mail reported that Spink spent around £100 million on the restoration and reconstruction of the Franco-Italianate mansion and estate.
The estate once belonged to Frederick, Prince of Wales, eldest son of George II, and was recently used in the remake of the film St Trinians.
It has two golf courses, 10 tenanted cottages and another eight in need of renovation. The home boasts 27 bedrooms.
Its £140 million price tag makes Park Place the UK's most expensive home, knocking One Hyde Park, London, off the top spot, which was sold for £136 million earlier this year, the report says.
Frederick Prince of Wales, the eldest son of George II, was ostracised from his father's court. His widow, Princess Augusta, decided to move and sold the property to General Henry Seymour Conway, who commissioned a series of large tunnels underneath the estate at the time of the French Revolution.
The mansion other owners have included the Earl of Malmesbury, the Greek shipping billionaire John Latsis and a local council, which ran it as a school.
Spink has retained more than 120 hectares for development
One of the near neighbours are the currency trading tycoon Urs Schwarzenbach who holds Riverina, New South Wales grazing properties, and his Sydney-born wife, Francesca Schwarzenbach-Mulhall, who paid £35 million for Culham Court, a Georgian mansion on 260 hectares at Henley-on-Thames.
