The Queen of the Historical Novel Hopes Her Mansion in Hartlepool will also be a Bestseller
Mail on Sunday, October 17, 2004
As a prolific and prize-winning historical novelist whose regularly makes bestseller lists, you might expect Philippa Gregory—like her contemporaries—to make her home in a sophisticated city.
Leeds-born Barbara Taylor Bradford, for example, divides her time between a luxurious riverside flat in Manhattan and a house in an exclusive Connecticut suburb, while Jackie Collins has swapped London for Los Angeles—where Yorkshire’s Helen Fielding now mostly lives, too.
Yet Philippa lives unashamedly in Hartlepool, a town with few, if any, literary pretensions. It doesn’t even have its celebrity MP now Peter Mandelson has gone to Brussels.
She says: ‘when I go to London literary parties, someone says they live in Islington or Oxford and someone else says they are lovely places. When I say that I live in Hartlepool, they say, "Where's that?" Or "how extraordinary!" As if I weren't allowed to live there somehow.’
But Hartlepool will soon lose one of its best-known faces as the family is moving to a large farm on the North Yorkshire Moors. Philippa is selling Parklands, the Victorian mansion in Hartlepool's prestigious Park Conservation Area that she bought four years ago with her then fiancé Anthony Mason, who runs the Learning Links centres in the North East. Philippa also founded Hartlepool People, a centre for adult education for which Mason—now her second husband—was another founding member.
Philippa first hit the best-seller list in the mid-Eighties, with a first novel, Wideacre, which she wrote while completing a PhD in history. She was living in Hartlepool with first husband Peter Chislett, editor of the Hartlepool Mail, and their baby daughter.
With the success of Wideacre, Philippa decided to write rather than teach. She followed it with two more novels in the best-selling Lacey trilogy. Over the years, she has written children's books and contemporary thrillers, including the bonkbuster Zelda's Cut, in which a writer runs off with a cross-dressing agent.
But she prefers writing historical novels, and her most recent books have been among the most popular: the Queens Fool, her last novel, was on the Top 20 list for five months, while The Other Boleyn Girl sold 600,000 copies, was made into a BBC film starring Natasha McElhone and has been optioned by a Hollywood production company with Keira Knightley tipped for the lead.
Her new novel, the Virgin Queen, is published tomorrow, and she has already started a novel on Catherine of Aragon. Researching and writing a book takes her about two years.
Shortly after finishing Wideacre, her editor husband retired and the family went south to a spacious detached house on a two acre plot near Midhurst, West Sussex, for about a decade.
"But after my first marriage finished, Tony and I met up again about five years ago," she says. "He was single too and we got together."
She recalls: "we had the conversation couples with separate families have: where to live? My daughter was at York University and Tony's children, business and extended family were in Hartlepool. His roots are here. So we moved into his small Fifties family house on the main road into town."
Hartlepool was on the way up, thanks mostly to a big marina restoration project that brought luxury flats, restaurants, clubs and other leisure facilities to the town. For a time, Hartlepool was one of the hottest property spots in the country. Its profile was also raised by Mandelson.
A total of six children aged from three to 17 meant a move to larger premises was inevitable. "In Hartlepool you know you want to be in the West Park area. We needed at least four bedrooms and, as we both work from home, two receptions. Parklands is the largest unchanged house in this street and one of the largest in Hartlepool," Philippa says. When it came on to the market, they pounced.
When prosperous farmer and landowner George Wooller built Parklands in 1890, he sought to impress--and succeeded. The front door opens into an oak-panelled galleried reception hall with sweeping staircase and vaulted ceiling.
"Three years ago we had our marriage blessing ceremony and party in this hall. We came with all six children down the staircase. It was really lovely."
The house is large enough to allow the various age groups to have territory of their own but, organised around the hall, is compact rather than sprawling. The master bedroom alone (33ft by 25ft) has more space than many terrace houses and the garden has a small football and cricket pitch for the children, and amenities for the grown-ups.
This Victorian ‘gentlemen's residence’ incorporates the upstairs-downstairs England of its era. Hidden in one wing is a second stairwell and a series of rooms originally for domestic staff and now used by the children. A working bell-pusher used to summon servants is among the brass fittings, ceiling reliefs and other original features.
"The original servants’ kitchen down the back stairs was no good for a modern family that cooks together, socialises and spends half their lives in the kitchen,’ Philippa says. ‘We converted what used to be a parlour into our kitchen and the old kitchen is now the kids' hang-out room." She also turned the occasional bedsit at the top of the house into a minimalist master bedroom--with little more than a bed, a chair and some paintings. Light floods in from windows on three sides and a massive glass dome.
The family has been happy in the house—and in Hartlepool. “There is a lot of energy and a lot going on here, and we are not going that far away,’ Philippa says. ‘Living in a town made me realise that I really want to live in the country. I have a horse, my eight-year-old stepdaughter Victoria has a pony, and we love riding together.”
Hartlepool estate agent Richard Burn says that Parklands has already attracted serious potential purchasers, including "three women friends who were going to pool their money and move in with their families and pets, like a commune. They bought a Victorian house elsewhere in Hartlepool.
‘Last year Meat Loaf was rumoured to be interested in moving to Hartlepool. He says he is a fan of Hartlepool United, although I've never seen him at the ground."
Hartlepool’s most expensive homes sell for about £1m, whereas the cheapest have price tags of about £50,000. But hundreds of new flats and houses will be built on the marina, a project that has single-handedly put all of Hartlepool on the North East’s property map.
"A buyer for Parklands can come from anywhere in Teeside," says Burn, "now that they know we have these MVPs - magnificent Victorian piles."
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Parklands is for sale for between £500,000 and £550,000 through Michael Poole estate agents, 01429 264116.