For Sale in London: Bestselling Writer Dame Barbara Cartland’s Former Mansion

Although few read her any more, Dame Barbara Cartland was one of the best-selling authors of the 20th century. During her long life (1901-2000), the unusually fecund English author wrote some 723 novels, selling close to a billion copies. They were mostly romances set during the Victorian or Edwardian periods, as innocent and tame as watered milk, usually called something like “The Impetuous Duchess” or “The Wicked Marquis.” The Guinness Book of Records named her the top-selling author in the world, and she was also named the most prolific after writing 23 novels in 1976 alone.

All that literary success led to great wealth and by 1936, Cartland, her husband, their two sons and her daughter from her first marriage, were living in South Street in Mayfair, London, by some accounts the most posh part of the capital. Designed by the famous architect Detmar Blow, the Cartland family mansion was built in 1902-1903, with then-fashionable Arts and Crafts style detailing, by stockbroker and politician Sir Cuthbert Quilter. Once completed, Quilter rented the house to Lord Dunglass, where his son, Sir Alec Douglas Home, a future British Prime Minister, was born in 1903. Now, the Cartland family’s grand old mansion has come for sale with Wetherell asking $39 million. With the pound at almost an all-time low against the dollar, this may be a great time for an Anglophile American billionaire to purchase a uniquely pedigreed trophy property in London.

During World War II, the author worked for the War Office in London and also for the St John Ambulance Brigade. After the war, she used her Mayfair home as a place for entertaining family and friends, who included Margaret Campbell, the exceedingly scandalous Duchess of Argyll, and Lord Mountbatten, uncle of Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh, who was later killed by an IRA bomb. Cartland’s daughter Raine (1929-2016), subject of an “eye-opening” new biography, married her first husband in her mother’s Mayfair house. He later became an earl, which made her a countess. Raine subsequently married another earl, Johnny Spencer, father of Princess Diana. Diana didn’t get along with her stepmother at first, calling her “Acid Raine,” however, towards the end of Diana’s life, the two women became friendly.

In addition to hosting a wedding or two, Barbara Cartland feted luminaries from around the world before she sold the Mayfair house in 1950. (She used the proceeds to buy Camfield Place, formerly the country home of Beatrix Potter, where she lived until her death in 2000.) As it stands today, the double-fronted Mayfair mansion — in British-speak that means it has windows on both sides of the door — sprawls over five floors with terraces on the first, second and fifth floors.

With six bedrooms, six receptions rooms and six bathrooms, plus a couple more powder rooms, the 8,513-square-foot Grade II listed dwelling also offers a glitzy “wellness suite” on the lower ground floor. Housed in a 20-foot-high atrium, and perfect for avoiding the frequent London drizzle, the wellness suite includes not just a swimming pool, sauna and relaxation area, but a cocktail bar.

The stately entrance hallway is embellished with stunning limestone flagstone floor tiles, a stone fireplace and an impressive wooden staircase, designed in a late 17th century style. On this floor is also a large dining room, a study with a balcony overlooking the wellness atrium, as well as a kitchen and a powder room. Up one flight of stairs are three more public sitting/drawing rooms, one of which opens to the terrace garden.

The next floor features the impressive primary suite, complete with bathroom, dressing room and private terrace. Up again are two more bedrooms with en-suite bathrooms, and there are three more en-suite bedrooms on the lower level. Last of all is the roof terrace, with wonderful views over central London. Too many stairs? No problem, planning permission allows for the installation of an elevator.

Peter Wetherell, founder and chairman of Wetherell, says: “This is one of the finest mansions in Mayfair, a beautiful property that combines period features with modern amenities, including the spectacular wellness suite with swimming pool on the lower ground floor. The house has entertained royalty, aristocrats and politicians alike in its time.”