A very big house in the country: Most expensive UK home outside London goes on sale for £75 MILLION

Saturday, June 4, 2011

A very big house in the country: Most expensive UK home outside London goes on sale for £75 MILLION

By DAILY MAIL REPORTER

Updown Court: This luxury mansion, in Windlesham, Surrey, is on the market for £75million

Mansion boasts 103 rooms, five swimming pools, bowling alley and cinema

The most expensive country house in the UK has gone up for sale for £75million.

Updown Court has 103 rooms, five swimming pools, two penthouse apartments and a helipad. It stands in 58 acres of grounds.

The residence - in the Surrey village of Windlesham - was originally put up for sale with agents for £70million a few years ago.

Stately home: The house has 103 rooms, five swimming pools, two penthouse apartments and a helipad

The enigmatic owner behind Updown is bricklayer's son-turned-property developer supremo Leslie Allen-Vercoe, 67.

His company Rhymer Investments purchased it in 2002 out of receivership for £20million - and has since spent at least £30million on renovation work.

Now, an Irish bank has requested a drive to sell the mansion with a new price tag which reflects the vast sums ploughed into it.

Grand entrance: The hallway has two cast-iron banistered staircases and a row of marble columns

The neo-classical California-style mansion was built in 2002 on the site of an earlier property which was owned during the 1970s by Prince Sami Gayed of Egypt.

The house, which has 24 bedrooms and 23 bathrooms, has been built with some of the world's rarest materials - mainly Italian marble.

The mansion has a 50-seat cinema, a two-lane bowling alley, a gymnasium, a squash court, a flood-lit tennis court, a lake, a wine cellar for 3,000 bottles and a 'panic room'.