The £50m mansion: Britain's most expensive new-build property
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To spend £50m on a new house seems excessive; to splurge another £30m on doing it up astonishing. But the super-prime section of the London property market is a rarefied world, with laws of its own. Indeed, the new Kazakh owners of the grandest house on The Bishops Avenue, north London’s billionaires’ row, believe they bagged a bargain when they bought Toprak Mansion earlier this month. But the decor, it seems, is not right. And, despite the five reception rooms, nine main bedrooms and 16 bathrooms, spread over 23,000 sq ft (the equivalent of 15 semis), the place is not big enough. So, although Toprak, the most expensive new-build property sold in Britain, has probably been lived in for only a week or so since it was completed seven years ago, the owners are calling in the builders. By the time they’ve finished, as well as all the basics de rigueur for the self-respecting billionaire – such as wireless audiovisuals, pressurised purified water on tap and automatic security shutters – they will have a 30-seat cinema, squash and tennis courts, a billiards room, a beauty salon, a 24-carat gold-plated whirlpool bath, a new staff lift and a small river, complete with canoe. Even the helicopter gets its own lift: the landing pad in the garden will sink, James Bond-style, into the ground and a roof will slide across on top. The end result, expected to cover 42,000 sq ft, looks certain to outclass its next-door neighbour, Lakshmi Mittal, whose own 25,000 sq ft house, Summer Palace, can be peered into from the mansion’s 80ft main reception room. (Not that Mittal is often there: the Indian steel magnate spends most of his time at his other home in Kensington Palace Gardens, west London.) |
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