A Sussex mansion with a top-flight cinema room is on sale for £3.5m

The cinema room is made from the fuselage of a Virgin Atlantic Boeing 747

Thirty years later the property was bought by Norman Biggs, a renowned mathematician, and it stayed largely the same until it was bought in 2013 by a young family with big plans.

Almost a decade later, the most eye-catching product of these plans is the cinema room, which is made up of the fuselage and furnishings of the top deck of a Virgin Atlantic passenger jet.

“My wife works for an airline and we know Richard Branson and the whole family,” says the owner of Northbrooks, who does not wish to be identified. “He decided to sell all his [Boeing] 747 fleet and demolish one plane, called the Scarlet Lady.

“So we had to get down to south Wales at 7.30am to see it before it got crushed. We took the upper class [Virgin’s equivalent of first class] fuselage with eight seats, the sides, the windows — and we created a home cinema.”

They also took the ceiling lights and the 1980s bar. “You can lose yourself in a film and you wouldn’t know where you are. You could be on a private jet,” the owner says.

This isn’t the family’s first renovation rodeo. The owner, who is the founder of a loft conversion company, has bought 25 houses before.

The owners added an extra storey to the original bungalow

He had an offer accepted on another mansion in 2013, but he decided instead to go for Northbrooks because of its peaceful location.

“It had no neighbours, no footpaths, no road noise, no aircraft noise — unfortunately, in Sussex you usually get at least one of those,” he says.

Another selling point was that it’s within walking distance of Hurstpierpoint College, the public school that his son wanted to attend.

The main draw, however, was what the house represented: a blank slate where they had permission to add an extra storey.

An original feature they wanted to keep was the approach to the house, a long winding driveway lined with lime trees. “You could be driving down to a château in France, coming down our drive,” the owner says.

The kitchen leads directly to the games room and rear garden

Much of the renovation of the 9,000 sq ft main house was finished within two years, including eight bedrooms (six en suite), a games room, an upgraded kitchen with an Aga, modern insulation and a wood-burner with glass doors in the living room.

The façade was transformed into a New England ranch-style clapboard, and the back aspect was inspired by a chalet in Courchevel, in the French Alps, where the family once took a skiing holiday.

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At the end of a corridor in the main house, a bookcase acts as a secret doorway to a separate bedroom wing, where the family’s oldest daughter can have her own space.

“I think houses should be fun,” the owner says. “In a house we had before we had table tennis and snooker in a completely different room from the main hub of the house — and no one ever used it.

Much of the renovation of the 9,000 sq ft house was finished within two years

“In this house, we put the games right off the kitchen so we can have a quick game of table tennis or a round of darts while waiting for dinner. Everyone sits down together to eat, then moves seamlessly to the living room to watch TV. It’s all happening in one space.”

The tennis court was one of the first additions to the property, which they aimed to build as close to the main house as possible. “The problem is, if you’ve got anything that’s a walk away, you don’t tend to use it,” the owner says.

He waited for three months to see where the last of the summer sun fell before building the pool house, which is self-contained. This has made it ideal for parties over the years, and the owners rented it out on Airbnb during the pandemic, for £500 a night.

The fire pit can be found at the end of the pool complex

There’s a fire pit at the end of the pool complex, a sauna with a hot tub next to it, and an outside shower. There are also stables on the land, plus approval for a garage with a games room above.

If the buyer has more than the £3.5 million asking price, and even loftier ambitions than an aircraft-themed cinema, Southbrooks is on sale through separate negotiation. Next to Northbrooks, the plot has a further seven acres of land, including two one-bedroom barn conversions next to a lake and a “secret garden”.

Now the owner’s children have flown the nest, he says it’s time to move on to the next fixer-upper, albeit a smaller one this time. “Two people don’t need this amount of space and we’re not making full use of it. I think it’s really selfish staying here. I think someone else should have the opportunity to have the great times we’ve had.”
£3.5 million, hamptons.co.uk