Britain’s Most Expensive Houses
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The Great British Dig: Historical Insights in Your Back Garden
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Everybody needs a round staircase darling. What else can you do to glide down the stairs at noon in a silk dress over your shoulders, a lit cigarette held limply, just like Bette Davis?
However, if everybody has one, an architect should come up with something to make a millionaire feel special.
At Harford Manor in Windsor, showcased on Britain’s Most Expensive Houses (C4), the solution was a curving set of steps from the stableyard into the party swimming pool.
You can make your guests’ frolics more fun by taking a few horses into shallow water. Caligula would have been proud.
The estate agents from UK Sotheby’s Realty, who pretentiously prefer to call themselves ‘brokers’
Harford, the most savage of Harford’s mansions in Windsor Castle and surrounding areas is infamous for their abominable state. You can see that someone dropped several boxes of cardboard and stamp on each one.
Still, if you’ve got no taste and too much money, it’s ideal. The estate agents from UK Sotheby’s Realty, who pretentiously prefer to call themselves ‘brokers’, reckon it will fetch £30 million — and they know a man in Dubai who regards 30 mill as pocket money.
The show was presented by no one: Arabella Weir, actress, provided a voiceover for the company. Cameras followed the sales team through the many ensuite bedrooms (in socks and bare feet to preserve the shag pile).
With a touch, the interior glass walls can be turned transparent or opaque. Metal-clad islands in the kitchen were adorned with garden leaves. Sun awnings on roof terraces were equipped with sensors for measuring wind speed.
Is there anything more extravagant or less useful?
Dubai’s man did not visit the location. It is likely that he looked through the brochure once and then decided to go for something more luxury for his racehorses.
Elsewhere, a Russian businesswoman called Anna with a cosmetic treatment clinic in Harley Street was being picky about London apartments in the £3 million to £5 million range.
You would expect pop culture to be included at this price. Anna wasn’t taken with actress Lily Cole’s flat in the clock tower of St Pancras, where the Spice Girls shot their Wannabe video.
‘Comedian Hugh Dennis, a born geography teacher who has somehow wandered into showbiz and doesn’t know how to get out’, writes CHRISTOPHER STEVENS
And she was unimpressed by the poky rooms overlooking The Beatles’ Abbey Road zebra crossing. However, she enjoyed a Battersea Power Station Suite.
I wonder if it comes with Pink Floyd’s inflatable flying pig . . .
These edifices and others will be a puzzle to archaeologists one day on The Great British Dig, History in Your Back Garden (More4).
Comedian Hugh Dennis, a born geography teacher who has somehow wandered into showbiz and doesn’t know how to get out, joined historians in Falkirk to uncover the remains of a Roman fort — buried under domestic gardens.
They were small: A fragment of Samian glazed Samianware from a dinner-service, a tile taken from a room that had heated walls and some spelt seeds.
The experts explained the evidence very well, while graphics provided a realistic picture of soldiers fighting on the Roman frontier.
Hugh wasn’t around much. That didn’t matter: some of the householders, though wary of seeing their flowerbeds excavated, soon took over the presenting duties. ‘As we go deeper,’ one chap told the cameras, ‘we’re hoping it will be like a time machine.’ Very professional patter, nothing wrong with that.