From the outside, the terraced house on one of London’s grandest streets is large and spacious, but the casual onlooker would never guess at the Tardis-like proportions of the 10,000sq ft property hidden behind its stucco-fronted facade.
The secretly palatial property blends in with its neighbours on a mid-19th century garden square in Knightsbridge. But behind its period facade the house has been entirely rebuilt with a double basement added before Kensington and Chelsea’s crackdown on mega-digs.
The 2014 renovation dug below the garden to create a new leisure suite with gym, swimming pool and cinema. There is also an underground passage connecting the main house to the mews across the garden.
It is one of only a handful of properties on uber-desirable Ennismore Gardens to retain its ownership of, and physical link to, a smaller terraced house on Ennismore Mews.
An internal door takes residents from the 9m-long kitchen in the main house to the ground-floor reception room of the mews, while a double lift operates to the upper levels.
Spread over seven storeys in its entirety, the 10-bedroom, 10-bathroom house — with five reception rooms — is now on the market for £26.75 million.
Strutt & Parker, which is marketing the property, said the location and size of the house – and its major renovation – made it a “rare find”.
Jonathan Inglis, head of the estate agent’s Sloane Street office, said: “This exceptional house has been meticulously restored behind the period façade – completely rebuilt nine years ago to provide modern living but with design features that are sympathetic to the building’s history.
“It is central to the garden square, with some of the best views, and the building work that’s been undertaken is not something that many projects can match in terms of scale.
“This house is almost unique because the infrastructure that links the full house – with a double lift on the basement and ground floor – allows for voluminous living spaces and seamless movement between the two.”
The mews house could be used as guest accommodation or staff quarters, he added.
Homes lining Ennismore Gardens have been popular with film stars including Michael Caine and Ava Gardner, who is celebrated with a blue plaque on the square.
An eight-bedroom property sold for £15.25m in 2007, which remains the highest-value transaction on the exclusive street. Many of the neighbouring buildings have been converted into flats.
A four-bedroom terrace on Ennismore Mews sold for £3.3m in 2021.
