The rock 'n' roll house at Pooh corner
Cotchford Farm connects Winnie-the-Pooh with the Rolling Stones, two British figures that could hardly be more different. This slice of history could be yours for £2 million.
It’s probably the only place in the world where Winnie-the-Pooh meets the Rolling Stones. And now it is on the market for £2 million.
Cotchford Farm, in East Sussex, is forever etched into rock-and-roll history as the place where, in July 1969, guitarist Brian Jones was found floating face down in the swimming pool. But the house had a previous famous occupant, too. Four decades earlier it was the home of AA Milne, and the place where his son, Christopher Robin Milne, grew up, surrounded by Pooh Bear, Eeyore, Tigger and a host of other characters engraved on the British imagination.
A more unlikely pair, it would be hard to imagine. The Sixties rock star, sacked by the Rolling Stones, of all people, for being out of control, as against the young child who spent dreamy idyllic days dropping sticks off a bridge and exploring the Hundred Acre Wood with his animal companions.
Nevertheless, both have left their distinctive mark on the place. The pool where Jones drowned is still there, as are the panes of coloured glass he installed inside the house. And the pink fluorescent light tube that he put in one of the bathrooms is still working after all these years.
As for Milne-abilia, there is a statue in the garden of a be-smocked Christopher Robin. There is also a sundial commissioned by Christopher’s mother, Daphne. Frolicking around its base is a whole cavalcade of characters, from Owl to Piglet and Tigger to Kanga. They are still recognisable despite a thick layer of moss. Meanwhile, engraved on the dial itself, is the legend:
“This warm and sunny spot belongs to Pooh,
“And here he wonders what it’s time to do.”
The guardian of Cotchford Farm for the past 42 years has been Alastair Johns, a property developer who bought the place in 1970. To start with, he still got bills through his letter box that were addressed to the late Stone.
“That’s how I know that, in nine months, Jones got through 4,000 gallons of oil, trying to heat the swimming pool,” he says.
After a lifetime of working, he and his wife, Harriet, are now looking to take things easier, and spend more time at their house in France. Yet as someone who was a small child in the Fifties and a teenager in the Sixties, Alastair is well aware of the house’s symbolic significance to people of his vintage. In other words, people who didn’t just live through the Swinging Sixties, but are now in them – and have enough money to buy themselves this unique slice of history.
Of course, the name Brian Jones doesn’t mean much to anyone under 40. Alastair has eight grandchildren, the oldest of whom is 19. To them, the Rolling Stones are not so much from the past as from a bygone era. It’s different, though, for anyone aged 55 to 65, and either newly retired, or approaching retirement.
“To people of a certain age, this place is something of a shrine,” adds Alastair. “For many years, an Italian girl used to come and tie a sheaf of flowers to the hedge, on the anniversary of Brian Jones’s death.
“We’ve had Dutch fans come and float pages of magazines in the pool. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, some people drove all the way over here in an old Trabant to pay their respects. The car didn’t have the strength to get back up our drive.
“Then there was a very polite young Brazilian couple who came to the door. At one point, the girl started unbuttoning her blouse, which rather alarmed me, until she showed me her bare shoulder, on which was tattooed a silhouette of Brian Jones.
“When we had to modernise the pool, we sold the original tiles to Jones’s fans for £100 each. It netted £12,000 and helped pay for half the refurbishment work.
“By and large, the Jones fans are rather nice. They almost always contact us first, to make an appointment, and unlike the Winnie-the-Pooh crowd, they don’t think they can just walk in here, as of right.”
The stray-visitor factor is something that any would-be buyer of Cotchford Farm needs to consider. It is an inescapable fact that ownership of the house comes with the added responsibility of dealing with devotees.
“The numbers of callers increases every time there’s a new Winnie-the-Pooh film, or someone is looking to reopen the investigation into Jones’s death,” says Alastair. “For the most part, though, it’s quite manageable, about a dozen people per year.”
A small price to pay, says Robert Jacobs, the Savills estate agent who is handling the sale of Cotchford Farm.
“A house like this is extremely rare, with not just one set of famous connections, but two,” he says. “What’s more, that fame stretches around the world, and crosses all nationalities. The amount of interest in Winnie-the-Pooh in Japan, for example, is quite phenomenal.
“We’re expecting a huge number of inquiries when the property goes on the market. The hard part will be distinguishing between fans who just want to come and see the place, and people who are genuinely interested in buying it.”
But the asking price has not been noticeably inflated by the fame factor. Within the surrounding area (the picture-book village of Hailsham is half a mile away), £2 million is not uncommon for a six-bedroom house with grounds and a swimming pool. If pushed, the estate agents concede that perhaps there’s an extra £10,000 on top, because of the celebrity connection.
Mind you, in the same way that truly keen buyers aren’t likely to be deterred by the price of the house, so they are also unlikely to be put off by the fact that its previous occupants haven’t always been happy. At the time of his death, Jones had not only just been thrown out of the band he helped set up, but he had also lost his girlfriend Anita Pallenberg, to fellow Stone Keith Richards.
As for Christopher Milne, he may have enjoyed an idyllic childhood, but was teased in later life because of his father’s writings. His ongoing antipathy towards his childhood home was confirmed in 1976, when Alastair invited him to come and visit the house during the course of a nearby Teddy Bears’ Picnic event.
“We got a most vitriolic letter back,” recalls Alastair. “He said that if we thought he was going to go back on his promise never to set foot across the threshold here again, then we were very much mistaken.”
But millions of people all over the world remain enchanted by Christopher Milne’s childhood home. If he were still around to visit it now (he died in 1996), he would find the six-bedroom, 16th-century property just as characterful and beautiful as it was during the Milnes’ time here (1925-59).
Officially, the house has three floors, but there are so many landings and mezzanines, that it’s impossible to say, at any one time, exactly which storey you’re standing in. The attractive wooden beams look not just gnarled, but as if some creature from the Hundred Acre Wood has been in and gnawed pieces out of them. Yet they add to the enduring appeal of this lovely historic house.
Thankfully, there’s no longer any sign of the denim-blue paint with which Jones had started to daub the bits of ceiling between the beams. What is preserved, though, is the high-ceilinged bedroom in which Christopher Milne used to sleep, often scared by the sound of the wind in the great sycamore tree outside his window.
He wouldn’t have that problem today, mind you, since the once-scary sycamore tree is now dead and gone. As is the hollow walnut tree in which the two Christophers used to have their hideaway. A man-made tree house in the nearby bluebell wood serves as a modern-day alternative.
By contrast, of course, the nearby geographical landmarks still remain: Galleons Leap (or Gills Lap, as it is in real life) is still there, as is the Hundred Acre Wood (real name Five Hundred Acre Wood). And most famous of all, the bridge where Christopher Robin used to play Pooh sticks.
Milne history saturates the garden. The wall which Christopher used to throw his ball against still stands. You can see the meadow where he and his father used to play cricket with each other, returning to the house to find a jug of lemonade waiting for them in the dining room.
A lot has changed in the outside world since the departure of young Christopher Robin, as it has since the death of Brian Jones. But while property prices have soared, and the pace of life accelerated beyond all recognition, time at Cotchford Farm stands forever still.
Cotchford Farm is on the market from today for £2 million with Savills (01892 507000; savills.com)
Things to consider before buying a famous house
Check for FAT- That’s fame added tax. How much extra is being asked because of the link with someone famous?
Fame or infamy? - Was the previous owner known for good reasons (much-loved television personality), or is there another story to tell?
Ask about visitors - Find out how many people are likely to come here on a pilgrimage.
Investigate commercial possibilities - Are there pieces of memorabilia you can sell to visitors? Could you charge people an entrance fee to look around your house?
Think legacy - Is the reputation of your celebrity resident going to grow as the years go by (e.g. a Beatle, or famous author)? If so, your house value will go up. Best not to bank on this, though, if your celebrity was just in one series of Big Brother.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/property/9258085/The-rock-n-roll-house-at-Pooh-corner...
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Brian's Cotchford Farm for sale for £2 million (Read 1,569 times)
