It’s adieu to Beckingham Palace-sur-Mer
IT was an extravagant impulse buy even by Victoria Beckham’s standards – snapping up a 200-acre French estate after falling in love with it at first sight.
But she and her husband David are rarely seen at the Domaine Saint-Vincent mansion – and have decided to put it on the market for £3million.
The sale comes after the former Spice Girl spent a reported £5million renovating the 19th Century property to match her up-to-the-minute tastes.
But she already believes the look is dated. The Moroccan-themed pool house, reportedly built without permission in 2007, is especially said to be ‘of its time’, as is the black and marble kitchen and the chintzy silver dining room.
The sale comes after it was reported that the couple have bought a sprawling £27million country estate in the Cotswolds. It may seem they barely need the funds from the French estate, dubbed Beckingham Palace-sur-Mer, since the couple have a combined £210million fortune.
But Victoria has finally accepted that paying for staff to maintain the French mansion’s vast tracts of land in their prolonged absence is a waste of money. It is the latest shift in the Beckhams’ property portfolio, as they recently moved into the £31.5million home in Holland Park, West London, that they had been renovating.
The couple bought the six-bedroom property in the French village of Bargemon, near the Cote d’Azur, for £1.5million in 2003. But a neighbour told The Mail on Sunday: ‘They are never here any more.
‘When their children were smaller they used it often but now they are never in France during the school holidays.’
The Beckhams try to spend the breaks in Los Angeles if possible. Their children – Brooklyn, 16, Romeo, 13, Cruz, ten, and Harper, four – consider the US their home-from-home, following David’s career with LA Galaxy, and prefer going there to holidaying in France. Only last week the family were spotted in California buying Hallowe’en decorations.