Glenconner family slash price tag on island idyll
WHEN Princess Margaret’s dear friend Colin Tennant, 3rd Lord Glenconner, bequeathed everything he owned in the West Indies to his estate manager and carer, Kent Adonai, his family was left stunned.
A court battle ensued and the family finally reached a settlement with Adonai which saw Colin’s home in St Lucia, Beau House, and half the land going to his grandson and heir, Cody Tennant.
To cut the family’s ties with the Caribbean last year, Cody put his grandfather’s house up for sale, together with 95 acres, for $23 million, or about £18 million.
An American was going to buy it, but time ran out on him, and Beau House is now on the market again, for a vastly reduced price of $5.5 million (£4.35 million), with just two acres of land.
‘We were initially trying to sell the whole estate but now will sell smaller parcels,’ explains agent Penny Strawson.
A visitor tells me: ‘Sadly, the last of Colin Tennant’s books and possessions have been put in black bin liners. It’s a sorry end. The “G” coat of arms is still above one of the doors.’
Glenconner would have bequeathed a much larger fortune had he retained control of Mustique or even just his own property there, The Great House. Instead, after falling out with many of those he had lured to the island, he sold up and, in 1992, moved to St Lucia, 100 miles away, where he had bought 480 acres, taking his pet elephant, Bupa, with him.
It was there that he eventually created another ‘Great House’. But old age and ill health were beginning to catch up with the peer, a man whose charm was arguably only matched by the ferocity of his temper.
‘He really only finished the house very shortly before he died in 2010,’ Strawson says.