Far from being hit by the credit crunch, the seriously wealthy in Britain are splashing out as energetically as ever, if not more so. In May, Chris Evans spent £5.5m on a 1961 Ferrari 250 GT California Spyder at an auction in Italy a record for a Ferrari. Evans is not alone, says the Mail. The luxury car market is booming, with the new Rolls-Royce Phantom Coupe, which costs £295,000, sold out until next year.
Fine wines are doing well, too. "We've sold many cases of 1982 Chateau Lafite Rothschild (£20,000 a case) this summer," says a Berry Bros spokesman. "Our problem is sourcing enough wines at this level, not selling them." Meanwhile, in the fashion world, Mulberry, purveyors of expensive leather handbags, says UK sales are up 29%, Burberry says profits are up 25% and designer Karl Lagerfeld is having no trouble selling £25,000 Chanel Couture outfits, even if, as you might guess, many of his clients are wealthy Russians.
As for the property market, Knight Frank say the prices of prime properties in Britain are 19% higher than a year ago, after rising by 1% in July and 2.9% in August on a month-on-month basis. Knight Frank may be right it is certainly precise but an interesting test of the top end property market is at hand: Encombe estate in Dorset is up for sale with an asking price of £25m.
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Set in rolling hills, close to the sea, Encombe is one of the loveliest estates in England and this is only the fifth time in its 1,100 year history, as The Sunday Times notes, that it has come on the open market. Owned by Charles McVeigh, an American merchant banker who bought it for £11m in 2002 (and who will soon move to a smaller house in Wiltshire), it has great charm, with 2,000-odd acres, three lakes one right in front of the house, between it and the sea and, when you're shooting, wonderful views from the encircling hills. Despite its size, the Grade II-listed Georgian (originally Elizabethan) house is surprisingly cosy inside.
It's not an easy place to get to, though, nestling, as it does, just south of Corfe Castle in the Isle of Purbeck. It was owned for a while by the Pitt family and William Pitt the Younger, Britain's youngest prime minister, often wrote saying how sorry he was not being able to visit "dear, unknown, delightful, picturesque Encombe". That was in the 1780s, but the journey from London is still a battle, especially if, like McVeigh, you do it by car. But the chances are that the new owner of Encombe will be some rich Russian with a helicopter.
It's a shame there has to be a new owner. McVeigh, the most congenial of hosts, has quietly preserved all that's best about the estate while devoting huge amounts of energy and tact, not to mention money, restoring the house. (All the windows have been replaced by Georgian-style panes, for example.) I haven't spent much time there, but I will be sad when it changes hands; I will be unlikely ever to go there again.
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