BUYER: Kate MossLOCATION: London, U.K.
PRICE: £7,950,000 (list)
SIZE: 6,728 square feet
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Just before the Christmas holidays (2010) Your Mama discussed the humongous house in London's Highgate 'hood that on-again/off-again/on-again lovers Jude Law and Siena Miller recently scooped up for around eight million pounds.
The Law-Miller manse, some of y'all may recall, sits on the very same celebrity-choked street as homes owned by a number of other high-profile and arty-farty Brits including Tantric sexers Sting and Trudy Styler who have been known to lease their crib out to notable names such as Pierce Brosnan and tea-house queen George Michael and his long-time American man-mate Kenny Goss who reportedly purchased their house from divalicious androgyne Annie Lennox. Not on the street but nearby neighbors include the wonderfully vee-rile Oscar-nominated actor Clive Owen (Closer, The Bourne Identity) and Oscar-nominated writer/director/actor/producer Terry Gilliam (Brazil, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and about a bazillion Monty Python movies)
Hoity-toity Highgate is soon to get another resident with an internationally known name: supermodel and single mommy Kate Moss who's set to plunk down around seven and some million pounds for a mansion with a long history as a literary haven.
Miss Moss, now in her late 30s, rocketed to fame and fortune as a teenager in the mid 1990s when she appeared on the modeling scene in the early 1990s looking like an emaciated string bean. She was, for better and/or worse, a painfully thin antidote to the hulking and curvaceous glamazon supermodels like Cindy Crawford, Claudia Schiffer and Naomi Campbell that dominated the catwalks and fashion rags in the 1980s and early 90s.
Miss Moss's itty-bitty body has appeared on every runway and in every fashion publication that matters and earns many millions each year shilling for fancy fashion houses such as Gucci, Chanel, Dior, Versace, Louis Vuitton, Calvin Klein and on and on and on. She's appeared on more than 50 magazine covers, gave birth to a beautiful daughter, had a cocaine scandal–natch–that only increased her fame and fortune and (allegedly) had sexual relations with the potty-muthed and not particularly reliable Courtney Love, according to the potty-mouthed and not particularly reliable Courtney Love as well as a number of Miss Love's other ladee pals in London. Blah, blah, blah. Who cares if she did sleep with loony-tunes Love and a few other lesbionic ladees? The glam life of an international supermodel shouldn't resemble the bland life of a suburban hausfrau so bully for Miss Moss for dabbling in drugs and–as Bravo's Andy Cohen would say–dipping her toe in the Ladee Pond.
Anyhoodles poodles, it's no so surprising perhaps that Miss Moss would want new digs given that her current crib in London's St. John's Wood, which she acquired in 2007, seems to have some bad ju-ju that clings to it like white on rice. In May of 2010 three pieces of art were burgled right out of her house including a pricey piece by the obsessively furtive graffiti artist Banksy. Just a few days later her basement filled up with crap, literally, and destroyed household appliances, furniture, a few photographs by legendary photographer Mario Testino and at least some of Miss Moss's extensive shoe collection.
For what it's worth, in the same interview that kooky Courtney Love divulged the 411 about (allegedly) doing the dirty with Miss Moss she also said that she and the supermodel are still good friends and that, in fact, she almost bought Miss Moss's mansion in St. John's Wood. We sort of doubt that since most reports–and Miss Love herself–indicate that money is tight for Miss Love and it's not likely that without a loan from her daughter that she'd be in the position to afford Miss Moss's multi-million dollar house in St. John's Wood.
Miss Moss's new house sits on Highgate Hill, one of the highest points in London, which gives it lovely almost bucolic views out the windows of the upper floors. In the 1820s and 30s the residence was occupied by a Dr. James Gillman who took in troubled friend and patient Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Mister Coleridge, for those who don't have university degrees in English Literature, was a poet and pasha of the Romantic movement who wrote among other difficult things the impossibly long Rime of the Ancient Mariner and the magnificent but incomplete Kubla Khan. Mister Coleridge was also an opium addict who died in the house in 1834. The house was later occupied by notable English novelist (The Good Companions, Angel Pavement) and playwright (Dangerous Corner) J.B. Priestley.
Listing information for the property shows the historic 4-floor residence has 7 principal bedrooms, 7 fireplaces, 2 kitchens and 4 full and 2 half poopers. Additional living space in the basement–known in Brit-speak as the lower ground–includes a sizable staff/guest suite with generous sitting room, two bedrooms, 2 poopers, laundry facilities, a breakfast/dining room and a wee kitchen. The lower ground floor also includes, according to listing information and the floor plan included with marketing materials, a utility room, storage space, wine cellar, boiler room and a large vault.
The front section of the main living level consists primarily of a large entry/reception hall with fireplace and an intimately scaled paneled dining room with fireplace, hardwood floors and a view of the walled and gated front garden. A 30-foot long paneled drawing room with a quartet of floor-t0-ceiling French doors stretches along the back of the house and opens to a slim balcony that leads out to a large patio and extra deep rear garden. The main kitchen at the front of the house stretches all the way to the rear where a the breakfast room has a view of and access to the backyard garden.
The second level–the first floor for Brits–has two bedrooms that share a single pooper, an intimately scaled bookshelf lined study and a master suite that currently consists of dressing room with fireplace, bedroom with fireplace and full wall of closets and private pooper with free-standing soaking tub/shower. Iffin we were Miss Moss, which we most certainly are not, we'd combine the existing master suite with the larger of the two adjacent bedrooms and combine the second bedroom with the study to create a flawless and private guest suite with sitting room and private facilities.
There are four more bedrooms on the uppermost floor that share two bathing and terliting room. There's also a good-sized windowed kitchen, which makes this a perfect set up for Miss Moss's little daughter Lila and whatever household staff Miss Moss employs to take care of her.
The floor plan included with the listing shows one of the rooms on the top floor labeled "Coleridge room," which indicates to Your Mama's pea-sized brain that this was the room occupied the the troubled but brilliant Sam Coleridge.
Miss Moss will likely move into the house with Jamie Hince, her current musician beau of the last few years. Your Mama quietly but firmly suggests Mister Hince keep on his relationship toes lest Miss Moss call the movers and boot his ass to the curb like she did with that heroin loving dumbass Pete Doherty character she used to go with.
Presumably Miss Moss's mansion in fashionable St. John's Wood/Primrose Hill will go on the market. The buyers will count among them celebrity neighbors who include Daniel Craig–who used to get with Miss Moss–and Gavin Rossdale and Gwen Stefani who live primarily in a Los Angeles mansion previously owned by Jennifer Lopez.
As far as we know–and we really know so precious little–Miss Moss continues to own a 10-bedroom farmhouse property in the Oxfordshire Cotswold village of Little Faringdon that she picked up in late 2003 or early 2004 for around £2,000,000.
listing photos: Marcus Parfitt
