That’s a lot of dough TV Prue’s home ‘is on market for £10m’
BAKE Off star Prue Leith is reportedly selling her showstopping Gloucestershire home for a cool £10 million.
According to gossip columnists, the celebrity chef has asked discreet celebrity estate agents to sell the Cotswold manor house she has lived in for more than 40 years.
But she is said to be still planning to live nearby, close to the former family home and husband John Playfair, who still has his own place.
She and her first husband, the late Rayne Kruger, are said to have paid just £80,000 when they bought the Georgian manor house in Chastleton Glebe in 1972.
Now the handsome traditional Cotswold stone house – where the Great British Bake Off judge brought up her two children and developed a love for gardening – is worth millions.
Leith, 80, is said to have asked a boutique company to sell the property, which has a lake and one of the most famous kitchens in the UK.
According to reports, the company has clients from the sporting and entertainment industry and says it aims to provide a service with discretion, integrity and excellence to a limited number of sellers and buyers.
Prue has often spoken of and been pictured at her idyllic home, which is said to come with an accompanying country estate.
Adopted daughter Li-da lived there after escaping the genocide in Cambodia and once said: “My childhood here was like a fairytale”.
Prue’s son, Danny Kruger, is a Conservative MP in Wiltshire.
On her website Prue wrote in her blog: “I’ve lived in the same house in the Cotswolds for over 40 years.
“We bought it when my children were two years old. It was a big old house with a ramshackle garden with the bones of good design still visible in the trees and hedges.
“When we took possession, I couldn’t tell an oak from an ash, had never grown so much as a tomato plant, and had little idea where to begin.
“But ignorance truly is bliss, and gardening quickly became addictive.”
Mr Kruger died in 2002 and in 2016 the celebrity chef married her second husband, John Playfair.
Last year she said they kept separate homes because they are both too old and have too much stuff to move into one house.
“We live together in my house, sleep together in my house each night, but the thing is, he still has his house where all his stuff is,” she explained.
“Imagine me having to move half my clobber out of the house for his – he is the most untidy man I have ever met, I am neat and organised.”
According to the Mail on Sunday, Leith is planning to move to a property she has been building nearby and has already had interest in the family home.
On Monday Prime Minister Boris Johnson launched a review of hospital food carried out by Ms Leith.
Recommendations included using plates instead of plastic trays and upgrading kitchens to provide 24/7 service that caters for a variety of needs, from new mothers in a maternity ward, to patients hungry after a long fast due to surgery, and staff working overnight.
She said: “The review provides bestin-class examples of how hospitals can serve delicious, nutritious and nicely presented meals on a budget.
“Food is not only important to health, but to morale. Hospital mealtimes should be a moment of enjoyment and a pleasure to serve.”
A spokesman for Ms Leith declined to comment to the MOS on the reported sale.