with a rock n’ roll mystery thrown in…

The house where Christopher Robin, son of author AA Milne, and inspiration for the Winnie the Pooh books, grew up is on the market.

Cotchford Farm, which the author bought as a country retreat for his family in 1925, is set in what is commonly known as Pooh Country, in Ashdown Forest, Sussex.

Nearby are locations which will be recognised by lovers of the books such as the 500 acre wood, Galleons Lap, Pooh Corner and the Poohsticks Bridge just half a mile upstream.

But the history of this house is more than just a children’s bedtime story.

Founder member of the Rolling Stones, Brian Jones, also owned the house until he mysteriously drowned there aged 27, in 1969.

His death was initially thought to have been caused by an asthma attack, though it’s widely believed that his builder admitted to killing him in a deathbed confession.

The property, which is Grade II listed and dates from the mid 16th Century with later additions, comes with six bedrooms, 9.5 acres, a heated pool, and foresters rights.

It’s on the market at £2 million with Savills UK.

One third (34%) of properties currently for sale have been reduced in price since first coming onto the market – down from 37% in February. The average discount on the original asking price has fallen by more than £500 over the same period.

Newcastle tops the list of places where the biggest discounts are currently being offered by sellers with average reductions of 11.1% (£22,151). Sellers in Liverpool have also made large concessions, knocking 9.2% (£14,031) off their original asking prices on average.

Rotherham has the highest proportion of discounted properties for sale with 43.9% of sellers having cut their asking prices at least once. Other areas with a high proportion of asking price reductions include Swansea (42.5%) and Barnsley (41.6%).

on the market…

Tara Fitzgerald, British actress best known to most of us for her roles in Sirens, The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill But Came Down a Mountain, and as Dr Eve Lockhart in Waking the Dead, is selling her grade II listed home in Penzance.

Pic: Top Telly

According to our sources, she wants to spend more time at her home in the ‘bad lands’ (she said it, not us) of Shepherd’s Bush.

In an interview in the Telegraph a few years ago Tara said that going to her Cornish house for the weekend with her family is her idea of heaven.

She told the interviewer  that she can see and smell the sea from the house, though her favourite beach is Sennen Cove, about which, she says,  ”When the sun shines, the sea is an incredible turquoise.”

The property is a beautiful end terrace Georgian townhouse with sea views and clouds painted on the sitting room ceiling.

It’s on the market for £499,950.

That may sounds like a lot, but when Haughey, embroiled in tax controversies, sold the place in 2003 to Manor Park Homes they paid €45m for the place. Manor Park Homes subsequently went into receivership.

The mansion dates from 1770 and was designed by James Gandon, architect of Dublin’s Custom House and the Four Courts.

It comes with a lavish ballroom and an Irish bar, the latter put in by Haughey and designed by architect Sam Stephenson.

The estate also boasts 23 stables, a tack room, a dairy, paddocks, an equestrian arena, outdoor swimming pool, gate lodge, gardener’s cottage, a lake and 250 acres of land.

Haughey, leader of the Fianna Fail party, served three terms in office, mainly in the 80s and 90s, but his career was mired in controversy – from gun-running, phone-tapping, embezzlement and tax evasion, to the discovery of a fugitive murderer at the home of his Attorney General.  And to cap it all, a long extra-marital affair with a gossip columnist.

In addition to the Gandon estate his lavish personal wealth included racehorses, a 50 ft sailing yacht Celtic Mist, and a private island home off the coast of Kerry.

Several tribunals eventually investigated his affairs and uncovered a slush fund in the Cayman Islands, a slew of dubious loans, back-handers from businessmen and, perhaps most shocking of all, the misappropriation of money raised to pay for a liver transplant for his colleague Brian Lenihan (it ended up in Haughey’s bank account).

“My work was my life,” Haughey protested to the tribunal. “There was no room for any sort of extravagant lifestyle.”

This, from a man who in 1991 paid more than £16,000 for his bespoke silk shirts and dressing gowns at Charvet of Paris, where staff addressed him as “your excellency”.

Haughey died of cancer in 2006.

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But don’t throw a street party just yet…

The latest figures from the Council of Mortgage Lenders show that while the number of UK repos remains stable, with 9,600 homes repossessed in the first three months of this year (identical to the first three months of 2011), there is good news in terms of mortgage arrears.

The number of mortgages with arrears of 2.5% or more of the outstanding balance fell to 157,800 (1.4% of all loans), down from 160,300 at the end of December 2011 and 170,500 at the end of the first quarter of 2011.

Great news. But for how long?

With building societies, including the Halifax, announcing rate rises for over a million borrowers, and cuts to benefits payments putting further strain on overstretched household finances, the situation looks likely to be temporary.

Cloughjordan, a village in Tipperary, is home to an inspiring eco-development that shines like a good deed in a naughty world.

It was set up by a charity, Sustainable Projects Ireland, with the intention of creating a supportive social community living in a low-impact way.

How did they do it? They placed an ad in the Farmers Journal seeking fertile farm land adjacent to a village with good transport links and then they bought the site in 2006 for “approximately €1 million”.

The money came from Sustainable Projects Ireland, deposits from future tenants, and backing from social investment fund Clann Credo.

The 67-acre village site has a community farm, 17,000 mixed native trees and housing. It has planning permission for 114 low-energy homes and 16 live/work units. The first home was built in 2009 and to date 34 houses have been built. Twenty more are under construction.

Various technologies have been used – timber frames, cob, lime hemp, hempcrete, recycled newspaper insulation, recycled glass, reed beds, and passive house designs.

A renewable energy centre provides heat and hot water to all homes, and an eco hostel is now open. The foundations have been laid for our green enterprise centre, and plans are in place for more community buildings.

The prices  range from around €800 per sqm for self-builders to €1,500 per sqm for some of the most expensive ‘turn-key’ houses   – they bough the land in 2006 so we’re guessing you could get cheaper now – but the project itself is unique. It deserves to succeed, and we wish them well.

Here are some pictures of the work in progress:

While two films about the life of Linda Lovelace are in production, the house where infamous porn film Deep Throat was filmed, in a neighbourhood called Ye Little Wood in Coconut Grove, Miami, is for sale.

Built in the early sixties the house was owned by renowned Miami playboy (and owner of a private collection of the Queen’s underwear), Baron Joseph “Sepy” De Bicske Dobronyi, who died in 2010.

Lovelace declared in her first two biographies that filming Deep Throat, known as the first porno with a plot, was a liberating experience. But she later claimed to have been coerced to perform by her abusive husband, Chuck Traynor, who threatened to kill her, brandishing guns to control her on set.

The film, which cost under $50,000 to make, is said to have taken $600 million at the box office, however Lovelace died penniless in a car crash in 2002 at the age of 53.

But if the walls of this house could talk, it wouldn’t all be dirty. Dobronyi is also said to have entertained Hollywood royalty at his home, including Frank Sinatra and Brigitte Bardot.

The property has an atrium-style living room with a circular fireplace, a free-form pool, three guest cottages, and a wine cellar, although, perhaps given its history, the agent listing it suggests that new owners may well prefer to bulldoze and start again.

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Snettisham Beach in Norfolk has been put on the market after being owned by the same family since 1868.

Industrialist Edward Green bought the land for shooting as it was next to property owned by his friend, the Prince of Wales, the future Edward VII.

But his descendants, Ken Hill Farms and Estates, have put the two miles of beach, 235 acres, and busy carpark, on the market for £1.25 million.

The site, which is leased by Snettisham Parish Council, has been open to the public for 25 years, and includes beach, dunes and marsh, and is well known for its wildlife, flora and fauna.

Manager John Austen told the Lynn News, ‘People want to own a piece of England.’

Well, you can’t say he didn’t warn us…

Eighties electro-pop star Gary Numan is as good as his word as he puts his rather nice 1920′s home and estate on the market.

If you missed his rant last year following the London riots Numan told us that leafy Waldron, some 40 miles from London, was just too dangerous for his family, and he was relocating to Santa Monica, CA, where, apparently, there is no crime.

According to the Brighton daily, the Argus, Numan claimed, ‘There is not one bit of trouble and not one surly or aggressive person there. Everyone is friendly.’

This was followed by confused quotes from the elderly inhabitants of the Sussex village who couldn’t remember there being more than the odd person forgetting to deadhead their daffs, and this statement from Father David Charles, the priest in charge of All Saints church in Waldron. ‘There’s only a couple of hundred residents and they are mostly retired. If there are any gangs roaming about I’ve certainly missed them.’

Anyway, this rather nice house, albeit with a rather unusual pink and red colour scheme, is on the market for £995k.

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So says a press release from the CLG.

Today Housing Minister Grant Shapps and Immigration Minister Damian Green will hold the first in a series of cross-Whitehall summits with representatives from the police, the UK Border Agency and local government.

The meetings, says the release, will find ways to close down thousands of sheds and outbuildings being rented out illegally to migrants, including some with no right to be in the UK (we presume the migrants, not the sheds).

These modern day shanty towns, according the the CLG, are often visible on websites such as Google Earth, can be plagued with rats and cockroaches - and are potential death traps with dodgy wiring and poor sanitation.

Housing Minister Grant Shapps added:

“It is a scandal that these back garden slums exist to exploit people, many of whom are prepared to return voluntarily to their home country but instead find themselves trapped into paying extortionate rents to live in these cramped conditions.

“I want to see a crackdown on these criminal landlords. So today we are launching a national taskforce, made up of the police, local councils, the UK Border Agency and HM Revenue and Customs to close down these ‘beds in sheds’, help those living there to be reunited with their families and ensure their so-called landlords feel the full force of the law.”

Enforcement actions to be considered include:

• encouraging councils to make greater use of legal powers across planning, fire safety, housing and environmental health
• how to better measure the extent and nature of the problem, drawing on information collected by Whitehall and Town Halls
• how best to ensure councils and the police share the intelligence available and enforcement activity
• closer working with organisations such as the Indian High Commission to help those wanting to return home; and
• steps to prevent more “beds in sheds” from being created.

Highgate supershed: £259,950

We suspect that this £260,000 property in Highgate Village – dubbed “London’s most expensive shed” – will not be on their radar. We love the optimistic spin in the ad: “Properties of this nature in the area are extremely rare.”

It’s 250 sq ft of “of bright studio space” and the new owner will only be able to spend a couple of nights a week there due to a clause in its lease. It costs 12 times the average London salary.

They do shanties differently in prime London!

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