The Westminster townhouse used as a bolt-hole by Margaret Thatcher when she was ousted from power in 1990 has come on the market priced at £3.65 million.
The Grade II* listed Georgian home on Great College Street was at the heart of many of the political dramas of the Eighties and Nineties when it served as the London residence of Conservative party Treasurer Lord Alistair McAlpine between 1984 and 1993.
Its most famous moment came when Lord McAlpine offered the three bedroom house to Margaret and Denis Thatcher as a refuge for their use after the Cabinet coup that ended her 11 years at 10 Downing Street in November 1990.
Despite owning a house opposite Dulwich Park in South London, Thatcher accepted the offer preferring to stay close to the British epicentre of political power.
According to her biographer Charles Moore when Thatcher lived at Great College Street in the early days after her fall from power thousands of supportive letters from the general public piled up in unopened sacks in the entrance hall and Thatcher struggled to dial people directly on the telephone and use the answering machine because since 1979 she had relied on the Downing Street switchboard to manage her calls.
Thatcher left McAlpine’s townhouse later in 1990, deciding it was too small to accommodate her staff. Her hairdresser Paul Allen later recalled: “I had to do the work with my back pressed up against the wall. She would sit tensed up in the chair and wouldn’t speak.”
Later that year she relocated to the former home of Mrs Henry Ford II on Eaton Square in Belgravia, before finally in 1991 moving to her own five-storey house on Chester Square.
Thatcher’s legacy is still evident at Great College Street, however, in the form of a ‘Division Bell’ she insisted on having installed, used to summon MPs to Parliament when a vote was about to be taken.
The house was later used as the headquarters for John Major’s campaign headquarters during the succession struggle after her fall, in which he ultimately triumphed as the new Prime Minister. In 1993 McAlpine offered it to anti-Major rebels, known as “the bastards” as their nerve centre for their rebellion against the Maastricht treaty.
It was also here during the 1980s and 1990s that Lord McAlpine and his wife Romilly entertained grandees of the Conservative party including the Thatchers, Cecil and Anne Parkinson and Norman and Margaret Tebbit.
The four storey 2,176 sq.ft house was originally built between 1720 and 1722. It has three reception rooms, a formal 10 seat dining room, and a wine cellar. Original features include panelling and fireplaces. On the lower ground floor there is a self-contained guest or staff apartment with a double bedroom, reception room, bathroom and serving area.
Harry Laflin, Director of Dexters (Westminster), said: “Offering unmatched views of the Palace of Westminster, Westminster Abbey and the ancient College Garden, this magnificent Georgian townhouse was formerly the London home of Conservative party treasurer Lord Alistair McAlpine, and provided a base for Prime Ministers Margaret Thatcher and John Major. Over many decades this house has hosted famous political figures and has an incredible sense of history, given its important heritage we anticipate significant interest in the property from discerning buyers from both the UK and internationally.”
