Damien’s in a pretty pickle
It looks as though Damien Hirst’s grand extension plans could be heading for a setback. Back in July, the world’s wealthiest artist applied to Westminster council for permission to overhaul his £39.5m pile in Regent’s Park. Hirst, 50, who has just opened the Newport Street Gallery in Vauxhall, south London, wants to build a double-height basement extension below the garden and former stable block of his 18-bedroom Palladian property, designed by John Nash. He also wants to alter the grade I listed building inside and out, knock down the former gardener’s house — replacing it with a building that has an “art-handling lift” to the basement — and put in a glazed structure to link the main house to the stable block.
A report last week by the Westminster planning applications committee recommended that permission be refused because too many trees would need to be cut down or be affected by the development. Seems it’s back to the drawing board for Hirst.
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Will anyone bite
Anthony Hopkins didn’t enjoy his time at school in south Wales. The Silence of the Lambs star once said: “I was called Dumbo, like the elephant, as a child, because I couldn’t understand things at school.” Hopkins, 77, recalled how he would teach himself: “I was reading Trotsky’s History of the Russian Revolution at Cowbridge Grammar School when I was 14. I remember someone saying: ‘You’re a commie, are you?’... The book was taken away from me.” His alma mater has since been turned into homes, and fans with £375,000 to spare can pick up a 541 sq ft one-bedder there.
01446 773500, wattsandmorgan.co.uk
Look before you leap
Ealing may seem an unlikely place to nurture one of the greatest ballet dancers the world has ever seen, but Margot Fonteyn moved to the west London suburb when she was four; it was there that she started ballet lessons, and her love of dancing began.
Born Margaret Hookham in Reigate, Surrey, in 1919, Fonteyn lived in Ealing until 1928. One of the prima ballerina assoluta’s homes in the area was 3 Elm Grove Road, a detached house built on the estate of Spencer Perceval, the only British prime minister to have been assassinated. The 4,660 sq ft property, which has seven bedrooms, three bathrooms and a 96ft landscaped garden, has been carefully restored by the current owners, who have now put it on the market for £3.5m.
020 8840 4545, hamptons.co.uk