Fit for a king

Short of acquiring a royal palace, there is ‘nothing of this grandeur or provenance so close to central London’

- Penny Churchill

THE skies above Denham aerodrome will be busier than usual in the weeks ahead as some of the world’s richest businessmen jet in to view stately, Grade I-listed Denham Place. Set in 43 acres of Capability Brown-designed parkland overlooking picturesque Denham village in Buckinghamshire, the property is now on the market with a guide price of £75 million through joint selling agents Beauchamp Estates (020–7499 7722), Knight Frank (020–7861 1065) and Savills (020–7409 8881). The estate is being offered for sale lock, stock and barrel, including all furniture and fittings, much of which has been commissioned by the current owners or painstakingly sourced from around the world.

There have been only seven owners of Denham Place since Anglo-Saxon times, when Ulstan, a Saxon Thane, donated the manor of Denham to the Abbey of Westminster. In 1531, Sir Edward Peckham leased the Abbey land known as Denham Great Park on which, 10 years later, having acquired the lordship of the manor, he built the pile he called Denham Place.

According to an article in COUNTRY LIFE (November 18, 1905), Denham Place passed through various hands after the Dissolution of the Monasteries, before being acquired in 1673 by Sir Roger Hill, whose father, ‘like most of the Commonwealth officers of State or law, had amassed a large fortune’. It took Sir Roger the best part of eight years to build his house, which he completed in 1700 at a cost of £5,549 in the money of that day. In 1773, Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown created the Grade II-listed parkland.