Fund manager Fairway Capital, advising the Fairway Capital Fund, has sold a £38m 840sqm fully refurbished and modernised eight-bedroom mansion on Wilton Crescent in London’s Belgravia, including a mews house on Kinnerton Street to the rear, to a UK buyer.
The sale of the turn-key mansion on Wilton Crescent is believed to be London’s first super-prime residential deal of 2025 and follows £120m worth of deals that Fairway Capital has secured over the last few months of 2024 to buyers from the UK, Middle East and Asia.
During the 2024 Festive and New Year period Fairway Capital were in negotiations with the eventual buyer, alongside four other competitive bidders, mostly international buyers, who were in London over the Festive season shopping and looking at properties for sale. Fairway Capital observe that the buyer and other bidders had waited until the UK general election and Autumn Budget were out of the way before starting discussions regarding the purchase of the mansion.
The mansion was acquired by fund manager Fairway Capital in 2021 with the major refurbishment works undertaken by Leconfield Property Group. The Wilton Crescent mansion was originally built in 1827-8 by Thomas Cubitt and William Howard Seth-Smith based on a masterplan by Thomas Cundy II under the auspices of Robert Grosvenor, the 1st Marquess of Westminster. Wilton Crescent fronts onto a 0.2 hectare crescent-shaped garden, the landscaping designed by James Wyatt.
The Belgravia townhouse was originally one of the London homes of the Ponsonby family, the Earls of Bessborough. From the 1840s onwards it served as the Belgravia residence of Sir Spencer Cecil Ponsonby (1824-1915), a son of the 4th Earl of Bessborough, who was a senior diplomat and courtier, serving as Private Secretary to Foreign Secretary Lord Palmerston and later Comptroller of Buckingham Palace during the reign of King Edward VII.
Guests at the mansion included Lord Palmerston, neighbour Lord Randolph Churchill and the 4th Earl of Clarendon and Sir Spencer Ponsonby was a cricket fanatic (as Treasurer of the MCC he laid the foundation stone for the pavilion at Lord’s Cricket Ground), who would practice cricket on the lawns of the Belgravia crescent garden.
During the Edwardian era the townhouse and crescent was clad in Portland stone in a Neo-Classical style between 1908-1912 by architectural practice Balfour and Turner, and the mansions in the crescent were modernised with new lighting and plumbing.
Most recently during the 1990s and early 2000s the mansion served as the London home of the then billionaire financier Glenn Maud who commissioned Robert Kline (decorator to King Charles III) to interior design the house in a makeover reported to have cost £6 million.
In 2021 the mansion was acquired by Fairway Capital with the meticulous reconstruction behind the Grade II Listed Neo-Classical façade undertaken by Leconfield Property Group.
The restored mansion provides substantial accommodation over basement, lower ground, ground and four upper floors. It has a spacious entrance hall and inner hall, restored original cantilevered main staircase and newly installed passenger lift. The main house provides three large reception rooms and a family kitchen/breakfast room on the ground and first floor floors with five VIP bedroom suites (all ensuite) on the upper floors.
On the lower ground floor is a gymnasium, staff kitchen, staff bedroom and family sitting room, opening onto the newly landscaped rear garden. Leconfield Property Group built a luxurious private health spa in a newly constructed basement under the main house with a 9-metre swimming pool with wave/current technology, treatment room, steam room and changing facilities.
The extensive refurbishment project by Leconfield Property Group included bespoke joinery throughout, beautifully restored cornicing to the principal rooms, reproduced Louis XVI fireplaces, custom design Versailles and Herringbone style parquet flooring, new designer kitchens with Brazillian marble worktops and Gaggenau appliances and luxurious bathrooms with book-matched Italian marble. The refurbished two storey mews house provides a double garage, kitchen, reception room, two bedrooms and a bathroom.
George Brooksbank, CEO of Fairway Capital, said: “We are delighted to confirm the sale of the turn-key mansion on Wilton Crescent in Belgravia, which we believe is London’s first super-prime residential deal of 2025. It follows £120m of resales that Fairway Capital secured over the last few months of 2024 to buyers from the UK, Middle East and Asia.”
Brooksbank added: “With the UK general election and 2024 Autumn Budget out of the way there has been a noticeable return to the prime central London market of discerning buyers over the last few months. Buyer confidence has returned and we are looking forward to a successful and busy 2025. All our deals involved newly refurbished, built or consented properties funded by Fairway Capital and developed by Leconfield Property Group. The finished products have seen highly successful sales campaigns, clearly appealing to the younger demographic, with the majority of the buyers being in their early 30s to early 50s.”
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