Robbie haunted by £1.35m loss on ghostly country pad
COUNTRY house prices have boomed during the pandemic, but pop star Robbie Williams has agreed to sell his rural idyll for a huge discount after discovering that it was haunted.
I hear the former Take That singer, whose solo hits include Angels, has accepted an offer on Compton Bassett
House in Wiltshire, after slashing the asking price by £1.35million — that’s
more than five times the average British house price.
He and his wife, former X Factor judge Ayda Field, 42, bought the sevenbedroom property for £8.1 million in 2008.
They put it on the market last September with a guide price of £6.75million. An estate agent at Knight Frank confirms that it
has now been sold ‘subject to contract’.
The price cut is something of a shock because rural house
prices in the South-West are said to have increased by more than 10 per cent in the past year as city-dwellers move to the country.
The 18th-century property sits on a 71-acre estate, and has its own football pitch, tennis court, 73ft-long swimming pool, helicopter hangar and gym, as well as additional accommodation for staff and guests.
Williams, 47, revealed in 2020 that the house had left him and his four children, Theodora (‘Teddy’) nine, Charlton, seven,
Colette, three, and Beau, 23 months, feeling that it was haunted. ‘There is one room that I am suspicious of,’ he said. ‘It gives me the creeps. ‘Teddy, our daughter, was sleeping in there. She doesn’t any more. ‘Teddy told me, “That room scares me. I don’t like that house.” I said, “It scares me, too. You don’t have to sleep there any more.” ’ He added: ‘If there is great grief or great pain or tragedy, I think it can soak into the walls and leave an essence there that remains for a very, very long time.’ Potential buyers are also said to have been turned off by a nearby landfill site, which locals say causes a ‘horrible smell’. In 2013, neighbours complained of an ‘obnoxious’ pong from the dump.