A 13-bedroom Grade-I listed stately home that featured in the James Bond films Live and Let Die and The Man With the Golden Gun has been put up for sale with a price tag of £75m – which would make it one of the most expensive properties ever sold outside London.
Denham Place, which is set in 17 hectares (43 acres) of Buckinghamshire parkland designed by the 18th-century landscape architect Lancelot “Capability” Brown, is being sold by the multimillionaire cosmetics tycoon Mike Jatania.
The listing on Rightmove describes the house, built between 1688 and 1701, as an “exceptional residence [that] has been fully restored, and short of acquiring one of the crown estate royal palaces there is nothing of this grandeur or provenance so close to central London”.
The 28,525 sq ft property, described by the three estate agents selling it as “a private palace”, features “state room-style principal entertaining spaces” as well as a “family kitchen” and a professional catering kitchen.
Jatania, 58, who crystallised a $200m fortune selling his Lornamead cosmetics empire to Hong Kong’s Li & Fung in 2013, said he was hoping the fall in the value of the pound would entice super-rich US and Middle Eastern prospective buyers.
“In central London, the likes of Ken Griffin and other hedge fund managers have bought properties, so I’m sure the Americans will look at it,” Jatania, who has moved to tax-free Monaco, told Bloomberg. “There’s also been a lot of wealth created in the Middle East recently, and we know families there have a tradition of owning London homes.”
The house is being marketed by estate agents Savills, Knight Frank and Beauchamp Estates. Gary Hersham, the founding director of Beauchamp Estates, said: “With an illustrious provenance that includes royalty, a banking tycoon and famous film producers, Denham Place is a veritable trophy asset. Over the last three years we have seen a significant rise in UHNW [ultra-high-net-worth] families seeking large country estates close to central London providing them with the perfect home where they can completely control their living environment.”
Jatania, who is regularly named among Britain’s richest Asian people, is understood to have bought the house for about £20m in 2000 from the cigarette company Rothmans, which used the house as its international headquarters.
Over the years it has been home to members of the Bonaparte Imperial family, the US banker JP Morgan, the politician and movie financier Lord Robert Vansittart and Harry Saltzman, who co-produced the first nine James Bond films at Pinewood Studios, a 10-minute drive away.
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He chose to set James Bond’s boss M’s office in the library of the house for the films Live and Let Die and The Man With the Golden Gun.
As well as the main house and grounds – which include a meadow, lake, orchard, formal sunken garden and walled garden – the property includes a Grade-II listed coach house, estate cottages, ancillary buildings and substantial garaging for vehicles.
There is planning consent to change the coach house into a “VIP health spa” including gym, changing rooms, sauna, steam room, lounges, three treatment rooms, two wet-treatment rooms and a 15-metre outdoor swimming pool “that can be enclosed with a glass conservatory”.
