Why, London’s a Capital Idea

Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, who have been living on and off in London during the last few years while filming and doing stage work, have bought a home there for $3.28 million.

The house is near a prestigious school for boys called Dulwich College. The school, whose best-known alumni are authors P.G. Wodehouse and Raymond Chandler, was established in 1619.

Cruise, 37, and Kidman, 32, have a son, who is 4, and a daughter, 6. The family also has homes in L.A. and Australia, where Kidman is scheduled to film “Moulin Rouge” starting this month. She just wrapped “Birthday Girl,” filmed in England. Cruise just completed “Mission: Impossible 2,” filmed in Australia and the U.S. He starts work in January on Steven Spielberg’s “Minority Report,” to be shot in L.A.

The couple’s new London home was built about the turn of the century and is 4,000 square feet, local real estate agents said. The five-story building has nine bedrooms and a driveway with parking for 10 cars, other sources added.

The home is in a small enclave of houses and is considered expensive for the area, Dulwich Village, south of the River Thames.

There are two parks and a golf course in the neighborhood, which has been described as “laid back” and “just right for families” but not far from the heart of the theater district. Actress Brenda Blethyn also lives in the area.

Kidman made her London stage debut in David Hare’s “The Blue Room” in 1998, when she and Cruise also finished filming Stanley Kubrick’s movie “Eyes Wide Shut” in England.

The most expensive house on the market in the United Kingdom, also one of the largest houses in London, is a $57.4-million 20,000-square-foot home in Kensington Palace Gardens.

The asking price is for a 99-year lease. The property, owned by the Crown Estate, is on a private, gated road adjoining Kensington Palace, a royal residence where Princess Margaret lives. The road is patrolled by police 24 hours a day.

It is the first time that one of the 28 houses on the road has become available since 1985. It is also the first time that the Crown Estate has extensively refurbished a home there before putting it on the market.

Built in the 1850s and given a French empire exterior style in the early 1900s, the house also was expanded recently to include an orangery with a pool, a gym and steam and massage rooms. The house has 10 bedrooms, nine baths, four reception rooms, a drawing room with a sitting room, a commercial kitchen, air-conditioning, an elevator and garage parking for eight cars.

The house had been occupied by the Nigerian high commission. “Their lease ended, and they wanted to buy elsewhere, so they handed it back to the Crown Estate,” said Richard Crosthwaite, a partner with Knight Frank in London, which has the listing.

Among the neighbors are the Norwegian ambassador and the sultan of Brunei.

Robin Nuggent, an architect with Broadway Malyan, cultural heritage restoration architects at Weybridge Surrey, oversaw the renovation and expansion.

The most expensive sale in the United Kingdom in recent years was a deal about a year ago for a Regent’s Park house at a reported $65.6 million. The buyer: Prince Jefri, brother of the sultan of Brunei.

Another house, a 15,000-square-footer called the Old Rectory, in Chelsea, sold last year at $37.7 million to a Greek businessman, London real estate agents said. And two years ago, Aubrey House, on three acres in the Holland Park area of London, sold for $27.9 million.

London’s largest private apartment, or flat, is now on the market at about $21 million, according to Charles Smith of Sotheby’s, which has the listing.

The three-story flat, in the Belgravia area of town, is 13,000 square feet in size.

It has been owned by Sir Evelyn Rothschild, 67, and his American-born wife, Lady Rothschild, who separated in February after 25 years of marriage.

Lady Rothschild was known as Victoria Schott before she and the banker were married in New York. The couple had two sons and a daughter before separating.

London-based actress Janine Ulfane has put her Hollywood Hills home, with its sunken baths and Moorish-style fountains, on the market at $2.6 million.

Ulfane spent two years restoring the Southern California villa, built in 1929, but she is reportedly too busy with London stage work to occupy the house.

Hugh Henry of Mlinaric Henry and Zervudachi Ltd. of London designed the interiors, and Odom Stamps, of the L.A. design firm Stamps & Stamps, was the architect. The London firm restored the late Princess Diana’s family home, Spencer House, in London and is redecorating London’s Royal Opera House.

Fred Henry at Prudential-John Aaroe & Associates, Los Feliz, has the listing.

Jonathan Harmsworth, the fourth Viscount Rothermere and chairman of the Daily Mail and General Trust, a global media empire, has sold a Beverly Hills-area home that had been owned by his father, who died in 1998, for slightly more than $2 million.

The house also once belonged to actress Elizabeth Taylor and was owned at another time by composer-lyricist Jerry Herman. The buyer is a hotel developer who plans to live there.

The ranch-style 8,000-square-foot-plus house was built in 1951 on a two-acre promontory. It was expanded in the ‘60s and again in the ‘80s.

Harmsworth, 31, listed and sold the house through Mauricio Umansky of Hilton & Hyland, Beverly Hills. Umansky also represented the buyers.

A home in the St. James’s Park area of London, on a site that Henry VIII once owned as pleasure gardens and on a street with an ancient history of cockfighting, has come on the market at $17.2 million.

Built in 1680 and rebuilt in 1773, the 4,000-square-foot house, near Buckingham Palace, was recently refurbished by Donald Install Associates, which coordinated the recent fire restoration at Windsor Castle, and it was furnished by designer Suzie Counsell. The house, on Queen Anne’s Gate in part of the National Heritage’s Birdcage Walk conservation area, is listed with Sotheby’s.

Did you miss Thursday’s Hot Property column in Southern California Living? Want to see previous columns on celebrity real estate transactions? Visit https://www.latimes.com/hotproperty on the Internet.