UK's most expensive home sold for record £140 million to Russian..

Park Place: Britain's most expensive home sold for record £140m

Britain’s most expensive home, Park Place, has been sold to a Russian buyer for a record £140m, it has emerged.

Park Place in Henley. The £140m sale price makes it Britain's most expensive house,  Photo: ALAMY

By Andrew Hough

8:00AM BST 13 Aug 2011

The buyer, who has not been identified, has snapped up the 300 year-old Grade II-listed property, in the village of Remenham, near Henley-on-Thames, Oxon.

The record sale also reportedly includes about 200 acres of the parklands, listed monuments, house, cottages, stables and a boat house.

The £140m sale price makes it Britain’s most expensive house, eclipsing the £136m sale at One Hyde Park, Knightsbridge, central London, earlier this year.

Experts said the sale showed that the top end property market was still buoyant despite the global economic crisis.

Park Place, which has 30,000 square feet of living space and is set in 570 acres, was bought for £42m in 2007 by Mike Spink, a developer who specialises in upmarket properties.

At the time it was the most expensive house bought outside London.

The developer has spent several million pounds undertaking extensive renovations of the property, which had a decaying exterior and was run down. He is also developing a second 300-acre phase of the estate, which is not part of the sale,

The property, which backs on to the Thames river, was put on the market in 2006 for £45 million after plans to turn it into a luxury country club were rejected by Wokingham borough council following a vociferous campaign by residents.

The main house dates from the early 18th century and was once owned by Frederick, Prince of Wales and eldest son of George II, and was substantially rebuilt in the late 1800s.

Rooms still have the original huge stone fireplaces and stained glass windows. The ghost of Mary Blandy, who was accused of poisoning her father in 1752, is said to haunt the grounds.

The original sale involved several outlying properties, including three houses, 10 tenanted cottages and a further eight in need of renovation.

The property, which was used until 1998 as a boarding school, has two golf courses, a boathouse on the Thames and a stable block. It was recently used in the remake of the film St. Trinians.

Earlier this month, Knight Frank, the estate agents, which has advised on the Park Place sale, published research that concluded that a "notable change is the beginning of international interest" from buyers, especially from Eastern Europeans.

“Our experience is that the ripple effect from London is just beginning to reach the Home Counties where, after a slow start to the year, sales activity is rising," said Rupert Sweeting, Knight Frank’s Head of Country House Sales.

“Generally, the market is still particularly price sensitive: if the price is right, a house will sell within six weeks of coming to the market.”

Mr Spink declined to comment to the Financial Times. Both Knight Frank and Savills, which also advised on the sale, declined to comment.