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It took less than a fortnight for Osman Kent and his wife Sue Broughton to realise the unusual heritage of their new Surrey home. “The second weekend after we moved in, the local Catholic priest turned up,” says Osman. “He said that it was the 200th anniversary of Catholicism in the area, and Lady Holland was a patron of Catholicism, and would we be OK holding a Mass in the garden? That was our introduction to the history of the place.”
It’s not every family that would happily host a pack of parishioners in their new home among the stacks of boxes and general flotsam of three boys under the age of 10. But that day in 1997 revealed that St Ann’s Court, the Grade II* listed house they had just bought in Chertsey, used to be the summer residence of Elizabeth Fox, Baroness Holland, who is buried at the bottom of the hill. Along with Holland House in Kensington, St Ann’s is where the first dahlias were planted in the UK.
It is actually two houses: a Tuscan red, L-shaped building with a black roof and large sash windows – formerly the coach house to the estate’s main mansion – and, 50ft across a courtyard, a contemporary white circular building built in the Thirties with three floors and full-height glazing. Its architect likened it to “a big cheese, with a slice cut for the sunlight to enter the whole house”.
Records of the estate date back to 1728, and over the following decades it passed into the ownership of Lord Charles Spencer and then Elizabeth Armistead, a former London prostitute who rose through the ranks of high society and counted among her many patrons the Prince of Wales, who would become George IV. She later became the long-term mistress of Charles James Fox, a prominent Whig statesman who served in the 1780s as Britain’s first foreign secretary.
I would make David Suchet an espresso and we would talk about design and politics – but he’s a method actor, so the whole time I was talking to Poirot
Although theirs was one of the most controversial affairs of their time, Armistead and Fox were madly in love and lived together quietly at St Ann’s. Fox even turned down a match with a daughter of Thomas Coutts, the bank founder, and married Armistead in a secret ceremony in 1795. He died just over a decade later, leaving Armistead to live out the remaining years of her life at St Ann’s, where she was a well-loved, charitable figure in the local community.
After her death, the estate passed to Henry Vassall-Fox, Fox’s nephew and the 3rd Baron Holland; it was his wife who introduced the dahlia to its grounds. By the 1910s, the property was owned by Sir Albert Rollit, a politician who had put forward a private member’s bill in favour of women’s suffrage that narrowly failed. By the Twenties it had passed to the newspaper magnate Sir William Berry, then proprietor of The Daily Telegraph, The Sunday Times and the Financial Times.
In the Thirties it was purchased by Gerald Schlesinger, a stockbroker, on the recommendation of his partner, the landscape architect Christopher Tunnard. Schlesinger had the 18th-century house knocked down and commissioned Sir Raymond McGrath, the renowned architect, to build the modernist masterpiece that stands today, the Round House. Sir Raymond called it his “most ambitious piece of domestic design in England”.
As well as its striking design, incorporating light and curves according to the compass-based “Lo P’an” divisions of feng shui, the house was built with a hidden feature specifically created for its owners. The master bedroom was shaped like a bow tie so it could be divided into two, with the bed separated in the middle and wheeled into wings at opposite ends. This allowed the couple to keep their relationship – then illegal – secret from visitors.
Just last year, St Ann’s Court was one of five properties, alongside the homes of Oscar Wilde and Benjamin Britten, to be marked by Historic England’s “Pride of Place” project uncovering venues with a notable Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual Transgender and Queer (LGBTQ) heritage. Historic England singled out the Surrey house as a prime example of “queer architecture”.
By the Eighties, the house had fallen into the hands of Phil Manzanera, the lead guitarist of Roxy Music, who converted the red Coach House into a professional music studio. It was the combination of the modern design of the Round House, the musical capabilities of the Coach House and the horticultural heritage of the grounds that attracted Osman and Sue to the estate 20 years ago.
Together we created something which not only paid homage to its origins but also brought it into the 21st century
Osman, a serial entrepreneur who founded the pioneering computer graphics microchip company 3Dlabs, needed a UK base to work from when he wasn’t in Silicon Valley (and a place to nurture his true passion, music), while Sue is a landscape designer. “We have eight acres of grounds, so Sue had a toy in the garden, and I had a toy in the studio, and we had an extraordinary family home,” says Osman. “My commute went from 5,000 miles to 100yd.”
He recently calculated that he did almost half a billion dollars’ worth of business deals out of the Coach House, while being close enough to watch his sons grow up – although he admits that this wasn’t an easy act to balance. “I’d be having a huge business meeting in the Coach House, and one of my sons would sneak in. But then there was the time my son had a friend staying upstairs and I hadn’t realised for a week.”
The family has continued to build the legacy of St Ann’s Court. After buying it from Manzanera, they embarked on a two-year project with the architect Steve Marshall to renovate and modernise the house. “Together we created something which not only paid homage to its origins but also brought it into the 21st century,” says Osman.
The house has since featured in films, television programmes and magazines, including Nintendo’s 2008 adverts starring Girls Aloud, the model Alexa Chung’s lookbook for her collaboration with M&S, and several episodes of Agatha Christie’s Poirot. “David Suchet would come into the Coach House, I would make him an espresso and we would talk about kitchen design and politics,” recalls Osman. “But he’s a method actor, and never gets out of character. So the whole time I was talking to Poirot.”
That Catholic Mass 20 years ago was the first of many large celebrations the family would hold at St Ann’s Court. “During the 3Dlabs years we used to hold an annual Bring the Family day, with horse rides and a funfair. We did gigs in the garden, and my eldest son got married there,” Osman says. “Our boys were notorious for their parties. But the house is so resilient – it would look like a bomb hit it, but within 24 hours (after an industrial cleaning) the serenity would return.”
Now that their sons have grown up and moved out, Osman and Sue are selling up to move to a smaller home in the nearby village of Longcross. St Ann’s Court is on the market with Savills for £7.9 million.
“The place is – both historically and space-wise – larger than life, and we feel like we’ve been a very good set of custodians for the house,” says Osman. “What it really needs is the next custodian who will make it a family home. It’s a fantastic house and it really needs to be lived in.”
