Billionaires battle over Lady Rosamund’s £62m pad HOUSE HUNTERS ARE DOWNTON GRABBY
RICH fans are battling for a £62million slice of Downton Abbey history.
The posh pad used as the London home of Lady Rosamund Painswick – the Earl of Grantham’s sister, inset – is up for sale.
Thanks to the show’s global success, wealthy fans from the US, China, Russia, the Middle East and Japan are now competing for the opulent mansion.
The house in London’s exclusive Belgravia – which is home to a string of foreign billionaires – would cost a staggering £199,501 in monthly mortgage repayments.
And that’s after putting down a £6million deposit. A property insider said: “The house is incredibly desirable as it stands, but the Downton factor takes it to a whole new level. “Buyers from overseas love properties that embody Britishness and it doesn’t come more quaint than Downton Abbey. “So interest in viewing the house is off the scale.” ITV filmed the Belgrave Square mansion for exterior shots. Rooms at West Wycombe Park, a National Trust property in Buckinghamshire, were used for the indoors scenes. Locations manager Mark Ellis said: “Wycombe looks out on to beautiful fields, so we put up new curtains so the viewers can’t see.”
The London pad has a pool, six bedrooms, six bathrooms, four sitting rooms and a private garden and terrace.
Residents’ parking is included and Hyde Park Corner Tube station is just a few minutes’ stroll through some of the capital’s most upmarket streets.
The house is owned by Grosvenor Estate – a property firm set up by the late Duke of Westminster, one of Britain’s richest men thanks to his family controlling swathes of prime London real estate.
The elegant square was built by architect Thomas Cubitt in the 1820s and became the exclusive haunt of the British aristocracy.
But today most of the grand mansions have been bought by overseas billionaires, making it the richest residential square in the country.