A five bedroom apartment on Grosvenor Square once the home of a glamorous playboy racing driver has been sold for £16.1 million in the biggest deal of its kind in the area for two years.
The lateral residence at 49-50 Grosvenor Square overlooking the Connaught Hotel spans the entire depth of an Edwardian complex built in the 1920s that became known as Bentley Corner.
It was the London pad of driver and pilot Bernard Rubin, the wealthy son of an Australian pearl trader. The block also housed three other gentlemen drivers Glen Kidston, Tim Berkin and Woolf Barnato - collectively known as the Bentley Boys - who would park their green sportscars outside after a day’s racing.
Barbara Cartland famously described the ‘Bentley Boys’ as “great drivers and even better dancers”. Between them the Bentley Boys won five le Mans in eight years in the Twenties and Thirties including Rubin’s victory in 1928.
The apartment, which still has the cocktail bar where Rubin would host lavish parties, has been snapped up by a British family buyer and is likely to undergo full modernisation.
Peter Wetherell, founder & executive chairman of agent Wetherell, which handled the sale, said: “This outstanding sale of the former Grosvenor Square residence of ‘Bentley Boy’ racing driver Bernard Rubin is one of the biggest property deals in Mayfair this year.
“This exceptionally large and rare first floor apartment overlooks Carlos Place and The Connaught Hotel where Rubin loved to dine and party with the other ‘Bentley Boy’ racing drivers, four of whom owned apartments in the same complex. With its ‘Bentley Boy’ history, high ceilings and Connaught views this trophy property is one of the finest lateral apartments in Mayfair.”
