ONE woman’s divorce is another’s opportunity. The heiress Jemima Goldsmith has just bought one of the finest estates in Oxfordshire after its owner was forced to sell as a result of parting from his wife.
Last week Goldsmith, whose father was the financier Sir James Goldsmith, secured Kiddington Hall, a “mini stately home” set in 466 acres of landscaped parkland near Woodstock, north of Oxford.
For close to £15m she gets a grade II-listed nine-bedroom house, with five reception rooms, an orangery and a tennis court. A property source said: “It was a romance. She just fell in love with it.”
Goldsmith is buying into an exclusive neighbourhood. The property is bordered by Blenheim Palace, ancestral home to the Dukes of Marlborough, and estates owned by the Saudi royal family and the Wills family, who made their fortune in tobacco.
Kiddington Hall, which had also attracted interest from Simon Cowell, the television impresario, was last sold in 1950. The price then was about £115,000. For 60 years it was the prized possession of the Robson family after it was bought by Sir Lawrence Robson, founder of the accountancy firm Robson Rhodes.
His son, the Honourable Erik Maurice Robson, 66, was desperate to hang on to the estate, which he had inherited in 1982. However, he was ordered by a judge to sell it after the break-up of his 24-year marriage to his wife Chloe, who was awarded a settlement of £8m. She has said that financial pressures would have led to the sale of the estate with or without their divorce.
Mark Lawson of the Buying Solution, a bespoke property search agency, said: “It is a very fine house and one of the best estates in the county. It sits in the middle of its park, high above a beautiful lake, and has some great reception rooms with lovely high ceilings and period plasterwork.”
Built in 1673, the hall is set at the end of a gravel drive bordered on both sides with lime trees. The main house is covered in red and green creepers and, come summer, roses climb up its yellow stone walls. Behind the house are immaculate formal gardens and parkland designed by Lancelot “Capability” Brown, the great 18th-century landscape architect.
Goldsmith, who is adept at playing the property ladder, may need to spend a few more millions to modernise the facilities.
“It does need some work doing to it,” said Lawson. “If you were imaginative and spent a couple of million on it, you could create a home worth £20m-plus.”
An overhaul would include roof repairs, rewiring, new bathrooms and complete redecoration. Goldsmith seems to enjoy such challenges: last year she sold a white stucco-fronted Chelsea townhouse after spending two years and £2m reconfiguring it, adding a roof terrace and digging out under the garden to create a huge basement.
If she does refurbish the estate, it would become a perfect pastoral retreat for Goldsmith and her two sons, Sulaiman, 13, and Kasim, 10, by her former husband Imran Khan, the cricketer turned politician.
Although she was romantically linked with the actor Hugh Grant for a long time, Goldsmith has recently been dating Luke Janklow, an American literary agent.
Mark McAndrew, head of farms and estates at Strutt & Parker, one of the agents appointed to sell Kiddington Hall, confirmed that the house with its surrounding parkland had been sold, with a second buyer picking up the remainder of the 2,000-acre estate. He could not comment on the identity of either purchaser.
The original price for the entire estate was £42m. It is believed that the second buyer, who has acquired five farms, Kiddington village and more than 1,600 acres, was Alec Reed, the founder of the Reed recruitment group. A noted philanthropist, his most recent project is the Big Give, a website that matches wealthy donors with charities in need of funding.
- Indian Jouranlist.
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