Tasteful Friends, the Turville Grange estate

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Love this from the headline...

"Estate where Jackie Kennedy's stylish sister Lee Radziwill hosted Princess Margaret"

Maggie would go anyplace that would have her 😂

Beautiful home but I hate indoor pools

That is the most dispiriting interior decor I’ve ever seen.

Agreed R2, especially as long as they had booze and ciggies, and they'd let her perform at the piano

Why do English people love wallpaper so much? Oh, well, easy to fix, I'll take it.

"Bolthole" is another Englishism that's hilarious. Sounds private. Sold.

Lee had not lived there in decades.

What a dump!

bourgeois home, like the illustrious ex owners decades ago.

I'm not sure what "Grade II listed" means, but I'm guessing it means you'd have to apply for approval to make changes to the exterior and maybe other parts of the property.

Anyone have any experience with that?

You're not a princess, Lee.

Now that all the Russian oligarchs are hiding their assets, who is a potential buyer for this £20 million estate that likely will cost £1 million a year or more in maintenance and taxes?

A Kazakhstani-friend of the York Duchesses?

A Chinese Communist bolthole?

I like the traditional English Country decor, but this dining room is just an awful shade of Mauve...

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Stas was moderately attractive before Lee sucked the life from him, as she was wont to to do.

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Twee; and carpet in the bath.

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I like outdoor nooks.

^ Lou Grant - outdoor nooks and spunk

I do to, R3... hate them.

Rolled around laughing at this cutline: The dining room in the White House is regal enough to serve as the primary dining space in any normal home

A lot of the photo descriptions border on hilarious... they must have bright, bored and bitter intern.

Gorgeous but it needs to be updated

too... too... Tina, get me the spell check!

[quote]A Kazakhstani-friend

"Kazakh" is a person from Kazakhstan. "Kazakhstani" is gibberish.

I thought she wasn’t as financially secure as Jackie Onassistance. That’s not the house where she departed from life is it?

[quote]Kazakhstani definition - A native or inhabitant of Kazakhstan.

Go back to your warm beer and chips, Duchess Pork.

No one offended you or your Russian mod-adjacent friends.

My parents had a memorial book of JFK and there’s a campaign photo with Radziwill sitting in the ground looking up at JFK and his body looks great.

Princess Lee remodeled the house and grounds extensively from 1963 until about 1974 when she divorced Stas (she never expected him to live that long with the way she spent his money).

And they sold the estate to Henry Ford II.

Apparently Jackie and her children spent Christmases with them there after JFK was killed.

To quote a Chicago-housewife, "Christmas in London would be like something out of Dickens."

Very cheaply renovated and decorated by the Ford-model wife.

R1 - Some people I knew had a Grade I and it was more like the house owned them.

Oops, that was supposed to be for R10.

[quote]I like the traditional English Country decor, but this dining room is just an awful shade of Mauve...

I see it as more of a peach shade, which is the color that gives all your guests a glow and makes them look great. With proper lighting of course.

But that first bedroom - ai yi yi! That's not bedroom decor.

What is that red trim on the walls of the dining room?

Do all the 12-year-old boys in the neighborhood call it "Turdville Grange"?

Dowdy

I love it. Especially all the little cottages sprinkled everywhere. But the very first thing Id do is rip up all those ghastly carpets and tear down that hideous wallpaper.

I'm too lazy to read the whole article, but does anyone know when this place was built and for whom?

R29, JFK initiated a fitness campaign while POTUS, asking every American if they could walk 50 miles.

On a dare, Stash Radziwill agreed to try and was successful.

At the time of his death, he was on holiday with a much younger girlfriend. Women found him attractive.

I don't care for the interior at all but the exterior is stunning.

I've always wondered how they get the lawn to look like that. The intermittant stipes of pale and deep green.

I think it is charming. The entire property appears to be thoughtfully used.

They auctioned all the good furnishings from Turville belonging to Mrs Henry Ford III a while back, what's seen here is the rsidue

# residue

Private in ground pools, in cold climates with little sunlight are pointless, let alone an indoor in a 300 year old house without proper ventilation. I can only imagine the costs in the UK. A beautiful, authentic early 20's Spanish colonial revival up from my parents place had an addition like that put on in the late 60's. It ruined the character of the house until fixed 5 decades and one dead coed found underneath the slab. Besides the creepy stashing of mistress (most likely "accidentally" killed by drunk ex wife #2 via shove out veranda door from 20 feet above grade during construction) and was my ENT until he died. The whole house smelled of chlorine, had major mold problems and the addition was demolished (via hazard ordnance because it was never given a proper variance, only found out after his death) in the mid-2000's causing an HOA civil war during the critical mass years of the housing bubble. The whole history makes it a white elephant.

Not a big wallpaper fan, but those are not cheap panels. Not for everybody, but often in houses that age a must with uneven plaster walls a necessary evil.

I'll bet Lee frolicked with Peter Beard in the pool when Stash was away and the kids were in boarding school.

I'm imagine Peter Beard's nude golden body was a thing to behold

when he was Lee's bright shiny boy.

Does anyone know why it takes so long for a dead celebrity/rich person's house(s) to go up for sale? It will be several years and you've forgotten about it. Then suddenly so-and-so's estate is for sale.

Thanks r41, I’d forgotten that. Do you remember title of the photo book?

R50, Barbara Cook's son had her apartment listed for sale while she was practically still warm.

I'd like to see it expanded - knock down all those dusty old walls and totally gut renovated in a fabulous French Baroque style.

Love it!

I like it, and it is appropriately decorated.

[quote]I'm not sure what "Grade II listed" means, but I'm guessing it means you'd have to apply for approval to make changes to the exterior and maybe other parts of the property. Anyone have any experience with that?

Yes, and your assumption is largely correct – except a) you have to apply for approval for any changes to ANY part of the building, not just the exterior, and b) requests for visible exterior changes to a listed building are routinely denied. You can build separate buildings on the same property, which the owners here did with their lavish pool house, but you may as well assume a given exterior is effectively encased in amber.

[quote]Now that all the Russian oligarchs are hiding their assets, who is a potential buyer for this £20 million estate that likely will cost £1 million a year or more in maintenance and taxes?

Britain has scores of affluent people who can afford a £20 million estate, much like Americans do. Could be a celebrity buyer, or a City banker looking for a country house not far from London (and Oxfordshire is only about 90 minutes' away). Or it could be any of the thousands of Middle Eastern oil scions who continue to use the UK to avoid paying any form of taxes on their income. (They're easy to spot. Just look for the young, swarthy, studly drivers of the myriad Ferraris, Lambos and McLarens in Mayfair, Belgravia, or any other unusually posh part of the London area.)

[quote]I've always wondered how they get the lawn to look like that. The intermittant stipes of pale and deep green.

Simply a matter of setting one's riding mower to effectively "comb" half the yard in a different direction. Like hair, grass can look much different depending on how it's "conditioned."

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Lee had exquisite taste.

Lee curated some prime cock in her day...

Lee could not get enough of Peter Beard.

^ I wonder if Lee ever got pregnant by Peter?

Lee must've been furious when Peter moved on to Cheryl Tiegs and other younger women.

I thought she did get pregnant by Beard? She had at least one abortion apparently

The interiors are hideous.

WTF were the designers thinking?

Ugh.

She says quite a lot in this interview.

Old lady from the 50s decor.

One of Lee's rooms at Turville Grange in the 1960s.

Lee had some decorating hits but this is a big miss - she always overdid the oversized botanical prints.

Here's Lee's room

Another shot of Lee's Turville Grange sitting room

A nice exterior shot from Lee's era.

Lee's Turville Grange dining room, using scarves for wall covering.

This photo shows how big the house is - much larger than it appears from the front.

Jackie and Caroline at Turville Grange one Christmas.

Poor little Anna Christina "Tina" Radziwill sits in a room alone at Turville

R68, If those walls could talk . . .

Lee and Jackie with Nureyev at Turville one Christmas.

R76, Possibly Bobby.

Jackie and her children at Turville with Lee and Tina.

Tina is truly the phantom daughter/niece.

She would have inherited anything Lee left behind, being her sole heir, but I don’t believe there was much besides the sale of Lee's apartment.

Jackie left money to Tina, but that was in 1994.

Lee liked to refer to Turville as her "little Augury".

Here's a complete reprint of an article about Lee's Turville.

Nureyev was so hot in this photo...

[quote]The 49-acre estate of Turville Grange was bought by Lee Radziwill and her husband Prince Stanislas Radziwill for £55,000 in 1966 (equivalent to £1,047,437 in 2020).

The house itself wasn't that expensive. I wonder how much Lee's redecorating cost.

R6 you bring up a question that I've always asked too. Everytime I see a househunting or decorating show set in the UK I've noticed every wall is covered with hideous wallpaper and floors are covered with ugly carpeting.

R83, it's all part of the "English country" aesthetic – and yes, it's definitely a "thing." (Also, no one uses "carpet" in upper-crust British homes, dear. Those are rugs, though I agree they're hideous.)

Everyone calls it Turdville.

£18.5M? As if.

I’d gut the kitchen. Aside from that , I think it is lovely.

I hear that some guest have been "violated" by the ghost of Nureyev's large Russian peen during the night....

Wallpaper might be an "English aesthetic," but I learned from another Tasteful Friends thread that this gal put wallpaper everywhere. And for some reason, the wallpaper usually matched the sofa.

R87, Hello, Rudi!

Let's try again . . .

Princess Margaret didn't like either of the the Radziwills. But, a free meal is a free meal.

I think the pool house was constructed long after The Radziwills sold the estate.

No in the article above, it says that Stas helped design the pool house.

This was the Radziwill's original design of the pool house - it's be updated since then.

I love the property as a whole (it’s charming!), but the decoration is absolutely hideous. I mean, potlights?! A carpeted bathroom? Wall-to-wall carpeting *everywhere?! That kitchen is a disgrace, and don’t even get me started on the wallpaper!

I’d love to take the place back to the late 18th/early 19th century, style-wise, with rich Georgian colour and clean, classical lines. Oh, to have such a “bolthole”!

Good bones, lovely grounds, bad interiors. The floors are especially bad. As everyone has said, carpeting everywhere and shitty tile in the kitchen.

But I’d take it.

Lee's botanical prints went everywhere with her; Turville, New York apartment, Paris apartment, Then she gave them to Tory Birch not long before she died.

I could never invite Truman and Gore to Turville Grange at the same time. They were just a couple of fags anyway.

I like it, very cool, especially the wallpaper and the rugs. There's a few things I'd change (can lights for a start like R94 mentioned) and maybe tweak the kitchen, but I'd need to pool resources with a bunch of other people with a love of twee English country decor to manage a place this size. That could be a challenge

The British have been aiding and abetting the rich Russians for years. Anyway the Brits can continue to rape the world for money, they will. Undoubtedly much of the funds used to invade Ukraine came from the UK.

Did they find the walk in safe where Peeks kept her énorme cunt?

I wonder how many times Jackie made her O face under the Turville Grange roof?

That kitchen has been neglected for several decades.

"Last night I dreamt I went to Turville Grange again"

Lee and Peter Beard were frolicking naked in the pool...

Stas was drinking Polish vodka and smoking in one of the sitting rooms...

And poor little Tina was sitting alone in the Flower Arranging room, petting her cat...

According to the biography "The Bouvier Sisters", Lee underwent two abortions, one via Peter Beard and one via Rudolf Nureyev.

I'd have assumed the size of Nureyev's penis would have left her with severe internal injuries.

Rudolf Nureyev had sex with women? That's news to me.

R106, He was bisexual.