Extensively renovated, the 18th-century residence features a separate mews house and an upper-level lounge overlooking the city.
After eight years of ownership, plus a seven-year, nearly $63 million renovation spearheaded by London‘s MSMR Architects and 1508 design studio, West Ham United Football Club chairman David Sullivan has decided to kick his U.K. mansion back on the market.
The wealthy Welsh media mogul—who amassed his fortune as a publisher of pornographic magazines and proprietor of erotica shops, and chief of the Daily Sport and Sunday Sport tabloid newspapers—is looking to sell the historic residence for $94.6 million, as first reported by The Wall Street Journal. Records show he purchased the Georgian-style dwelling for around $34 million in 2015 from convicted fraudster Edward “Fast Eddie” Davenport, a British entrepreneur and socialite known for hosting raucous, celeb-studded parties at the premises during his tenure there.
Originally designed and built by the noted architect brothers Robert and James Adam way back in the mid-1770s, the Grade II*-listed property has been occupied by numerous aristocrats through the years, including antiquarian and traveler Joseph Wyndham, 4th Earl of Abergavenny William Nevill and James Blyth, a millionaire who founded the famed gin distillery W&A Gilbey.
More recently, the building served as the Sierra Leone embassy, as well as a main location for the Oscar-winning film The Kings Men, an Agent Provocateur fashion shoot featuring Kate Moss and Amy Winehouse’s Rehab music video.
Billed in marketing materials as “one of the largest and most remarkable houses in central London”—and sited on the unusually wide Portland Place street, within walking distance of Regent’s Park, West End and Marylebone High Street—the property features a six-story main home and separate mews house, for a total of 11 bedrooms and 10 baths in nearly 21,000 square feet of meticulously preserved living space replete with bespoke joinery, marble finishes, hand-painted wallpaper and artisan chandeliers.
Highlights include an opulent entrance hall adorned with a curving staircase, along with a formal dining room spotlighted by a hydraulic wall that disappears at the push of a button to reveal an adjoining reception room. There’s also a gourmet kitchen outfitted with an eat-in island and accompanying breakfast nook.
A plush master retreat occupies the entire second floor, and comes complete with dual dressing rooms and baths; and elsewhere is a screening room, wine cellar, gym, massage room, an indoor pool and spa, and a top-level atrium “sky lounge” boasting a seated bar and access to a terrace overlooking views of the BT Tower.
The listing is held by James Gubbins of United Kingdom Sotheby’s International Realty.
