SELLER: Heather MillsLOCATION: Robertsbridge, East Suffolk, UK
SIZE: 10,550 square feet, 8 bedrooms, 6.5 bathrooms (plus additional guest/staff quarters)
PRICE: £3,900,000
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: While whittling away a punishing hangover during the weekend, Your Mama received a covert communique from a lovely British gal we'll call Wanda Flowers who clued us in to the listing for a stately country estate in the historic village of Robertsbridge in East Sussex–that's in England, lads and lassies–owned by Heather Mills, uni-legged activist and ex-wife of Paul McCartney.
Miz Mills' Edwardian country mansion is currently listed with an asking price of £3,900,000, and amount that Your Mama's currency conversion contraption shows translates to $6,168,280 at today's rates.
Miz Mills, a former model who lost one of her legs after she was struck in 1993 by a motorcycle riding police officer in London, married Mister McCartney in June 2002, made a baby named Beatrice the following fall, separated in 2006 and reportedly received a £24,300,000 settlement (plus £35,000 per year for child care and education expenses) when she divorced her Beatle in the spring of 2008.
Earlier reports, which indicate the estate can be leased at a rate of £7,995 per month, state property in Robertsbridge was acquired by Miz Mills in 2007 after she split but before she divorced Mister McCartney. Robertsbridge, located about 55 miles southeast of London, is the Medieval village known (or at least promoted) as the home of modern cricket, a highly-charged ball and bat game Your Mama has never managed to properly figure out partly due to our aversion to those bulky and awkward and entirely unsexy padded leg pads the players wear
Online listing information provided by Miss Flower shows the Miz Mill's bucolic property encompasses 14.9 acres, some of which is woodland and some of which in landscaped in that charming, rough around the edges sort of way for which the English are so well known. The dignified but approachable-looking three-floor residence contains a total internal interior area of around 10,500 square feet according to listing information and includes 8 bedrooms and 6.5 bathrooms plus an attached guest/staff cottage with an additional bedroom and bathroom.
Listing information we peeped does not include any photographs of the interior but plenty of the exterior that show a meandering, multi-winged brick-built pile with crisp and contrasty sky-blue multi-paned window frames.
Photographs of the exterior show the house hugs a motor court where elevated planters and a carved stone pediment mark the front entry. Floor plans included with marking materials shows a reception hall with adjoining powder pooper that opens directly into the banquet hall-sized and fireplaced dining room. A 30-foot long drawing room with towering bay window and a nearly 22-foot long library complete the public wing of the residence.
Less formal family quarters include a commodious (if not capacious) eat-in kitchen, a bedroom-sized walk-in pantry, sitting/family room, and a play room that opens to a terrace tucked into the rear of the house.
Front and back stairs lead up to the second level–the first floor in UK real estate-speak–where there are four principal family bedrooms each with private facility. One bedroom offers an adjoining dressing room or nursery and the master suite contains a royal-sized bedroom, generous fitted dressing room and a two-room bathroom with wet room. Two smaller bedrooms on the second floor share an over-scaled bathroom that stretches more than 23 feet long and almost 8 feet wide.
The discreet rear stairs climb up to the the third floor where two more bedrooms–one rather too narrow–flank a games room and share a bathroom that by comparison to all the other bathrooms is downright squeezy.
An two-floor attached guest or staff suite–listing information charmingly calls it a bijou cottage–contains a sitting room, fully-equipped kitchen with dining area, a divided bathroom, and one bedroom. Squirreled away off the rear stairway that connects the family/service wing of the lower level with the bedrooms on the second floor is a "secret room" with sloped ceiling divided by a chimney stack.
Attached at a perpendicular angle to the main portion of the house are a two-car garages, a "carriage room" capable of housing a third car, two-stall stable with adjoining tack room and a workshop/garden storage space. Additional space above the garage offers a large room with balcony, smaller room with attached half bathroom and storage space.
The land plan included with marketing materials for ex-Missus McCartney's country spread shows the estate grounds include a detached two-car garage, large swathes of woodlands, two paddocks for the ponies (one large one small), a sand arena, grass tennis court and a greenhouse over by the swimming pool situated far enough from the house (and a terlit) as to encourage swimmers and waders to do their business behind a nearby tree.
In addition to snatching up this house post-separation, shortly after her divorce Miz Mills went on a bit of a real estate buying spree. In August 2008 she dropped $4,900,000 on an 1,853 square foot condo at one of the green glass Richard Meier-designed towers that line up alone the West Side Highway in lower Manhattan. Property records show she sold the 2 bedroom and 2-bathroom full-floor aerie (above)–all did up and done over in a contrasting palette of white and red–in mid-February 2011 for $5,000,000.Sometime in late 2008 ex-Missus McCartney splashed out around £2,350,000–around four million dollars at 2008 rates–for an approximately 2,600 square foot apartment in the uppity Allingham Court complex on The Bishop's Avenue in the far northern reaches of London. By September 2009 Miz Mills had a caught a case of The Real Estate Fickle and flipped the 3 bedroom and 3.5 bathroom condo-crib back on the market with a substantially increased asking price of $3,750,000. It appears from our brief and unscientific research on the interweb that the condo remains listed but with an even higher asking price of £4,150,000.
What's not clear to Your Mama is why Miz Mills in a heated mood to divest herself of her pricey properties but we imagine the lightening of her real estate load will lead to some speculation as to her financial circumstances. Just to be clear, Your Mama has no notions whatsoever of the heft and power (or lack thereof) of her bank accounts and we make no assumptions about such things based on her recent real estate activities.
listing photos and floor plan (Robertsbridge): Country Property Group, Goudhurst
listing photos and floor plan (New York City): Prudential Douglas Elliman via Street Easy
