Fancy owning a piece of motorsport history? The former home of Formula 1 legend, Rob Walker, is for sale for £4.95 million with John D. Wood & Co.
Walker, whose racing team won nine world championship Grand Prix — making it Formula 1’s most successful privately-owned team— bought 1 Clover Mews, Chelsea, in the late 1940s.
He was a member of the nearby private members club, Garden Corner Club, and didn’t feel that there was sufficient parking for members’ cars.
The solution? To buy all five houses on the mews for the club, which then had large garages — big enough for around nine cars — and small flats above.
It cost £2,000 back then for the entire mews, around £59,000 in today’s money.
“There was plenty of parking down on [Chelsea] Embankment, but it was quite a swish club,” says Walker’s son, also called Rob Walker. “Some of the members had some pretty nice cars, and they needed garaging.”
Like the other mews houses, Walker Sr converted the garage space into a living area, and later expanded the house’s footprint by extending into the loft. “Originally, the whole mews was stables, and they were pretty pokey to be honest: when my father first bought it, it was just one floor. But now, they’re all very spacious.”
Walker Sr, an heir of the Johnnie Walker whisky family, also owned Nunney Court, a Grade II-listed country home in Somerset, and used 1 Clover Mews as a London bolthole.
His racing team was based in Dorking, and he and his wife, Betty, would stay at the house at least once a week.
Walker Sr is often credited with building a motor racing legacy during the sport’s golden years in the 1960s and 1970s. Using some of his family fortune, he founded his racing team in 1953, famously signing Stirling Moss.
Between 1958 and 1968, his team won its nine Grand Prix — including Monaco three times — cementing his status as Formula 1’s most successful private team owner. As a consequence, the house was frequented by high-profile motor racing personalities, including Moss and Bernie Ecclestone.
“Robbie’s father’s motor racing chums would come in – he had all sorts of people driving for him,” says Penny Walker, Walker Jr’s wife. “There have been wonderful parties there – it’s been really fun.”
Walker Sr’s car, the Delahaye, was kept in the garage – and once featured in an advert for Johnnie Walker called The Gentleman’s Wager, featuring Jude Law. “Robbie had to teach Jude Law how to drive the thing, which was quite fun.”
After finishing school, Walker Jr moved in for around four years, with his parents and sister regularly coming to stay.
“I used to have a lot of parties,” he says. “Of course, with my parents living in Somerset, I used to bring up Scrumpy cider, which cost five shillings a gallon, and had a pretty major effect on people who drank it. When my parents came up and when my sister came over from Australia, it was a lovely family atmosphere.”
Walker Jr met Penny in 1978 and they continued to use the house as a London base, eventually moving in permanently and living there for more than 30 years.
He bought the house from the family in 2004, following the death of his father, aged 84, two years previously. The other mews houses had been sold by this point. “We’d been living there anyway,” he says. “My sister didn’t really need it, so it worked out well.”
The Walkers made some of their own changes to the house, expanding it once again and adding a bathroom. Today, it covers 2,228 sq ft, with a kitchen and open plan living space on the ground floor and four bedrooms, plus a study, on the two floors above.
“It’s deceptively spacious, if you look at it from the outside. People walk in and say: ‘I had no idea it was going to be like this’,” says Walker, now 79.
“Because ours is on the corner, all the rooms are very light. It has high ceilings too, which is not what people expect from a mews. It resembles a London house more than a mews house.”
Naturally, there is also a 140 sq ft garage, plus additional parking — although Walker, who had a brief racing career of his own in Australia, no longer drives.
Currently, he is in the process of selling his father’s famous Delahaye Type 35 sports car, purchased in 1938 and dubbed the fastest car in Britain after it won a race at Brooklands, Surrey. “It’s a very beautiful car,” he says. “It was a formidable machine.”
The couple have been spending more time in the country since the pandemic, and, after almost 80 years in the family, have decided to put the house up for sale.
“We’ve reached the age where we’ve decided that it’s sensible to sell,” says Walker, who intends to use some of the equity to help their daughter buy a property. “I’ll miss it hugely, because it’s been such a large part of my past.”
The couple feel that the house is well-suited to another family, as well as a frequent traveller looking for a lock-up-and-leave property. “It’s not the usual Chelsea terrace — it’s very special,” says Penny Walker. “I’d love to see it go to somebody who appreciated its history.”
“It’s always been fabulous fun: lots of parties, dinners, friends coming up to stay,” she adds. “It’s just been the happiest place. That’s the saddest thing about leaving it: we’ve had such great times there.”
