The Grounds
He took a similarly rigorous approach to the rest of the property, which spans about 27 acres. He leveled an area so he could play soccer with his kids, installed a tennis court, and built a walled garden with fruits and vegetables.
He also repaved the courtyard around the house with stones he found in Bayreuth, Germany. “I was staying in a hotel quite close to the railway station, and saw acres of cobblestone from my window, in the rail yard,” he says. “I contacted Deutsche Bank through a friend of mine who lives in Heidelberg and bought 350 tons of them, which they pulled out of the ground and transported across Europe in 15 trucks.”
The property has a 1,500-square-foot guest cottage, and even though he doesn’t ride horses, de Burgh refurbished the property’s stables “because I thought someone might want to use them someday,” he says. “All of this is for the future.”
Despite the large house and extensive grounds, de Burgh says that they have no live-in staff. Instead, they have someone who he refers to as the “estate manager” who keeps things running, and a German gardener “who has an occasional assistant, but that’s about it,” he says. The house, he continues, is fairly self-sustainable.
In total, de Burgh says he’s “probably put more money into it than I’m asking back,” but his children have all moved out; his daughter Rosanna was crowned Miss World in 2003. “It just became too big.”
“Maybe,” de Burgh muses, “as a hard-headed businessman, I should have been a bit more careful. But I wasn’t, and we’ve created something spectacular.”
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.