LOCATION: London
PRICE: £3,930,000 (list price)
SIZE: 2,775, square feet, 5 bedrooms, 3.5 bathrooms
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: The celebrity real estate word out of the U.K. is that Oscar-nominated period piece actress Keira Knightley and her new husband, James Righton of the indie rock Nu-Rave band Klaxon, acquired a family friendly house on a pretty, tree-lined street in the Canonbury conservation area in the the central London borough of Islington that was last listed for £3,930,000.*
The children will recall Miz Knightley and Mister Righton listed their boho-chic love nest in the arty farty and still somewhat gritty Spitalfields area of East London in mid-September (2013) for £3,000,000. It appears to Your Mama that the house was sold but—iffin we're being honest—we're not sure of the details. Anyhoo...
Although we think it's highly unlikely the newly wedded couple will take on a renter, the ever so slightly subterranean lower ground level has a separate exterior entrance as well as a walk-through wine cellar, a roomy laundry room, a flexi-use living room/lounge/media room with fireplace, and a potential bedroom—also with functional fireplace—that the sellers, according to digital marketing materials, did up as a home fitness room.
A zig-zagged central foyer and stair hall with well-placed and luxuriously windowed guest privy connects the various rooms of the raised ground floor including a street-facing living room with wide-plank wood floors, a marble-manteled fireplace, and two almost floor-to-ceiling windows equipped with internal shutters for privacy and light modulation.
The adjoining compact formal dining room has more wide plank wood floors, another marble-manteled fireplace, a rear garden view window also with internal shutters, and, at the time of its sale, the most godawful flesh-toned wall color that Your Mama sincerely hopes Miz Knightley and/or her team of lady and/or nice-gay decorators has the good sense to change out for something less corporeal.
The eat-in kitchen, located in an added-on section of the house above the single car attached garage, is reasonably large, well-equipped, and flooded with sun light due to the large sky light and wood-framed glass doors that open to the rear garden but it's also rather inconveniently located a half-flight of stairs and half a dozen steps or more from the dining room.
The first floor—we Americans call it the second floor—includes a small bedroom with built-in wardrobes and bookshelves and a larger bedroom—presumably the master—with an adjoining dressing room and direct access to a long and narrow hall bathroom with ordinary (but probably expensive) beige tile work accented with a lonely (and ill-advised) cobalt blue stripe. Two more bedrooms on the uppermost floor—one much larger than the other, both with fireplace—share a hall bathroom.
The deep, west facing rear garden is wonderfully un-fussy with a large, flat lawn that meanders through mature shrubbery and trees.
*A few quick clicks and clacks on Your Mama's bejeweled abacus shows that £3,930,000 converts to a whopping $6,474,090 at today's rates.
listing photos and floor plan: Savills