SELLER: Petra Ecclestone
LOCATION: London (Chelsea), UK
PRICE: £32,000,000
SIZE: 7,995 square feet, 3-5 bedrooms, 5 full and 2 half bathrooms (plus a staff flat)
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: In case y'all didn't get your fluffy fill yesterday of the outlandishly spendy real estate ways of 28 year old Formula One racing heiress Tamara Ecclestone today Your Mama has a little ditty about her brassy blond, baby-bumped but still thin as a cat walker 24-year old baby sister Petra (Ecclestone) Stunt who also—as it turns out—has her starter house in London on the market. In Missus Stunts case, instead of a gated contemporary in Chelsea, it's a ritzy, white stucco townhouse mansion on gorgeous Eaton Square in London's super-posh Belgravia nabe that's on the open market with a £32,000,000 price tag. A few quick clickety-clacks on Your Mama's currency conversion contraption shows that's a bone rattling $52,116,500 (U.S.), at today's rates.
Missus Stunt acquired the home—most reports suggest it was paid for by her billionaire daddy Bernie—sometime in 2009 for an unknown sum of dough and shared it with her independently wealthy jet setter boyfriend turned husband James Stunt and a whole bunch of dogs. Mister and Missus Stunt were married in an extravagant ceremony in a 15th century lakeside castle outside Rome—the same one where Tom Cruise married his third ex-wife, Katie Holmes—that the tabs, blogs and gossip glossies say cost Momma and Daddy Ecclestone anywhere from £1.3 million to much as $18,750,000.
Current listing information and the floor plan show the 22-and-some foot wide townhouse spans 8 floors—six above ground, two below, measures 7,995 square feet and contains multiple reception rooms, three dedicated bedrooms plus two more potential bedrooms converted by Missus Stunt into dressing rooms. Your Mama counted five full and two half bathrooms, not including the tiny three-quarter number in the one-bedroom basement level staff flat.
The floor plan included with current marketing materials shows a rather svelte, bowling alley-like ground floor entrance hall that runs alongside the roomy formal dining room with built-in buffet, luscious chevron pattern wood floors, heavy duty moldings and a fireplace over which appears to hang a little something butterfly-ish by artist Damien Hirst. We can't say we care for the drippy chandelier that we're certain cost more than Your Mama earns in an entire year but—at the risk of sounding unforgivably rude—still looks to us a bit too much like a bunch of giant, bedazzled condoms.
The hall makes a slight hitch to the left to squeeze past the main staircase where it open to and continues past a snug central reception lobby/foyer nuzzled between the dining room and kitchen complex.
The corridor narrows as it pushed deeper into the house and passes a half bathroom and passenger elevator that services seven of the townhouse's eight floors. A half dozen steps (or so) steps descend into an airy and very contemporary center island eat-in kitchen with gleaming white marble tile floors, fixture-free milk chocolate-colored cabinetry and top grade integrated appliances. An extra wide (gas) fireplace surmounted by a huge flat screen t.v. anchors one side of the room and on the other a geometric staircase—with railings that resemble crutches—that climbs up to a roof terrace that's also accessible from the upstairs reception rooms.
The casual dining area, lit by a gigantic, jellyfish-like chandelier, spills out though a trio of tall and slender French doors to a narrow but wide balcony that—we imagine—peers our over the mews that runs behind the houses on Eaton Square and provides access to the double garage downstairs.
One floor up—the first floor for for Brits, the second for Americans—a spacious but still manageable, two-room reception suite spans the full 22-plus foot width of the townhouse. Combined the two rooms stretch more than 36 feet front to back where French doors connect to a 200-plus square foot terrace equipped with high parapets and planted with privet hedges for maintaining a modicum of privacy in the middle of the city.
The architecture in the main living and dining areas remains unreservedly grand and retains—or at least mimics—the exact sort of period detail that Your Mama might expect to find in an august townhouse of this era in London. There are polished wood floors, high ceilings with elaborate plaster moldings, three street-facing windows that stretch divinely from floor-to-ceiling and, finally, a fireplace surrounded by a glorious carved mantelpiece and mirror.
Three deep sofas in the gunmetal gray-walled living room girdle a book- and tchotchke-laden coffee table and are all three buried a cacophony of neutral colored but variously-textured pillows. We spy at least one fur lap blanket that is likely to be fake if Missus Stunt's PETA-supporting and foie gras-hating sister had anything to say about it. Real or faux fur throw blankets aside, the snazzy but essentially casual room is unquestionably dominated by a controversial, circa-1970 Terry O'Neill photograph of American bombshell Raquel Welch wearing a her famous chamois bikini from One Million Years B.C. while sexily lashed to a wooden cross. In some other average rich person's house Your Mama would guess the O'Neill photograph would be a expensive reproduction. But, somehow, we imagine Missus Stunt's O'Neill is the real damn deal.
Anyhoo, Missus Stunt's master suite spans the full width of the townhouse and occupies the entire third and fourth floors. The lower portion contains the street-side bedroom with fireplace, a fitted walk-in closet and additional cupboards an da large but hardly egregiously sized bathroom that opens to a small private balcony. The upper portion of the master suite—originally two bedrooms with private facilities and only inconveniently accessible by the main public stair—was custom converted by Missus Stunt into a pair of sleek and jam-packed dressing rooms, each of which have direct access to a small private bathroom. In an early 2011 article in the Daily Mail—an article that includes a picture of the heavily maquillaged lady-girl of the house languidly lounging in her living room in front of the aforementioned O'Neill photo—Missus Stunt remarked that one dressing room is for her "casual wardrobe" and the other her "evening wear." That, children, is a perfect example of how an arguably overindulged, modern day heiress with access to unlimited funds rolls.
Each of the two guest/family bedrooms on the fifth floor have private attached bathrooms. A tight staircase curls up to a small attic space under the eaves on the sixth floor that is marked on the floor plan as a "Storage Room." We don't know what exactly Missus Stunt stores here but Your Mama would bet both our long-bodied bitches, Linda and Beverly, that whatever it is has a designer label and/or was luridly expensive.
The decked terrace off the second floor reception room(s)—the one that's also accessible from a staircase in the kitchen—has a couple of portable heaters for taking the edge off London's notorious damp. A large square glass panel in the deck sky light for a light well/atrium that drops through the kitchen and down into the basement where it allows Miz Stunt's personal fitness room a little bit of natural light. In addition to the gym, the basement also includes a half bathroom, a two-car attached garage with direct entry, a wet bar/kitchenette and a staff flat with living room, kitchen, bedroom, bathroom and a semi-private outdoor space with direct access to the street.
A sub-basement, conveniently accessible by stairs and elevator, contains a room for the home's mechanical systems and laundry equipment as well as cinema/media room with built in snack bar and shelving, upholstered walls, mood lighting and deep sectional sofas.
As Your Mama and every other property gossip around the globe have discussed the recent real estate activities of (Mister and) Missus Stunt ad nauseam over the last couple years we'll suffice to say that the expecting couple frequently reside in the Holmby Hills area of Los Angeles where in the summer of 2011 she paid $85,000,000 for Showbiz widow Candy Spelling's immense, 123-room pile known as The Manor. The Stunts had the place worked over in short order by L.A.-based designer-builder Gavin Brodin who also oversees the overhaul of sister Tamara's 70-or so million dollar mega-mansion on London's leafy, guard gated and brutally expensive Kensington Palace Gardens.
The previous year, in late 2010, Missus Stunt—most likely with a huge financial leg up by one or another of her expensively divorced parents—shelled out an ear piercing $90-100,000,000 on what's known as Sloane House, an historic Grade II listed mansion (and adjoining lodge) in London's hoity-toity Chelsea 'hood. Missus Stunt has since gutted—and we mean gutted*—Sloane House and proceeded with a custom refurbishment that Your Mama unscientifically guesstimates could easily cost her and her Mister a right proper ten or more million pounds.
Have a look see at the photos and floor plans here, while they're still online because they're really quite a doozy.
*Your Mama thanks a kind commenter for sending through the link for the developer-builder of Missus Stunt's new home in Chelsea. To see just how far down to the stud Sloane House was taken, click through to the developments page and scurry around in there until you find the photos marked at "Sloane House."
