Cowdray Park, at Midhurst in West Sussex, is up for sale, as are many of its finest contents including a Gainsborough painting, which is expected to fetch £6 million at auction.
Cowdray Park has been the seat of the Viscounts Cowdray.
Cowdray Park, which is next to the world famous polo club, went on the market in September last year and has been the Pearson family seat since 1909.
In addition to the 44,000 sq ft mansion, there is also a hamlet of cottages, indoor and outdoor swimming pools, pony paddocks and stables, two lakes, landscaped gardens and a cricket pitch, set in 110 acres of parkland.
Lord Cowdray, has now moved to the more modest Greenhill house at Fernhurst, where he and Lady Cowdray lived before he inherited the mansion in 1995. He had hoped to turn the historic house into a hotel, spa and conference centre, but abandoned the plan after failing to find a business partner with whom to realise the scheme.
Lord Cowdray has previously said he wanted to save his son and heir Peregrine, 16, from the responsibility of maintaining the house describing it as “a noose around his neck”.
He has also said: "I'm not the sort of person who feels hugely attached to things, and it's a big house. It's time for us as a family to let go.”
Nice place. One wonders why it's being sold, they're keeping the estate - so I doubt they need the money.
ReplyDeleteW.
Yes, enormous house at over 40,000 sq ft.
ReplyDeleteI thought the Frazer place in Holywood was big at 12,ooo sq ft at the time it was built.
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