Earl’s shock as ex sells marital home for £5m
That’s £2m more than it was valued at in divorce last year
SHE celebrated her marriage to the Earl of Bradford amid unforgettable splendour, with 230 guests being treated to Taittinger pink champagne, a sumptuous dinner, flamenco dancing — and fireworks over the lake at Weston Park, Shropshire, her new husband’s former family seat.
But that all amounts to little more than loose change when compared with the peach of a payday that Penny, Countess of Bradford is now enjoying, thanks to her divorce last September, 14 years after that dazzling wedding.
Indeed, I can reveal that eminent obstetrician Penny, 61 — known professionally as Dr Penelope Law — has just sold the former marital home, two months after putting it on the market for £5.25 million.
It’s a particularly mouth-watering price as the five-bedroom West London house was valued at £3.3million in the divorce settlement. ‘Penny walked out in September 2020,’ a friend of the erstwhile couple tells me. ‘So, if she’s got the asking price, that will be nearly £500,000 for every year she was with him.’
The Earl, Richard Bradford, 75, is dumbfounded. ‘I didn’t even know it was on the market,’ he tells me, adding that he bought the house shortly before he married Penny. He spent about £500,000 ‘completely redoing it’. He says: ‘I was very proud of it and very much enjoyed it.’ The Earl, whose first marriage, to Jo Miller, ended in 2006 after 27 years and three sons and a daughter, met Penny, who had also been previously married, at Rugby School, where their respective daughters were pupils.
It is an encounter he has had cause to regret. ‘I wrote to the divorce lawyers today to say that I find it absolutely ridiculous what Penny got out of the divorce — two houses, leaving me with no house.’
Describing the arrangement as a ‘crazy’ division of spoils after a comparatively short and childless marriage, he adds that he would like Penny to return some of his belongings, including a picture he particularly treasures. ‘I bought it from Christopher Sheppard, my greatest friend, who died some years ago.’
It’s possible that the picture will have more than sentimental value. ‘I’m trying to get it authenticated as a Turner,’ Bradford adds. ‘Penny claims not to know where the picture is. It always hung in the same place — in the drawing room, just to the left of where my desk was.’
His ex-wife declines to comment, but Ayesha Vardag, who acted for her during her divorce, tells me: ‘Dr Law has no idea where the painting to which the Earl refers may be’, adding that he was ‘repeatedly given the opportunity to collect all personal possessions to which he was entitled and visited the house several times for that purpose’. Richard Bradford describes that statement as ‘b ****** s’, insisting he went to the house only once.