BUYER: Keira Knightley and
LOCATION: London
PRICE: £3,930,000 (list price)
SIZE: 2,775, square feet, 5 bedrooms, 3.5 bathrooms
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: The celebrity real estate word out of the U.K. is that Oscar-nominated period piece actress Keira Knightley and her new husband, James Righton of the indie rock Nu-Rave band Klaxon, acquired a family friendly house on a pretty, tree-lined street in the Canonbury conservation area in the the central London borough of Islington that was last listed for £3,930,000.*
The children will recall Miz Knightley and Mister Righton listed their boho-chic love nest in the arty farty and still somewhat gritty Spitalfields area of East London in mid-September (2013) for £3,000,000. It appears to Your Mama that the house was sold but—iffin we're being honest—we're not sure of the details. Anyhoo...
Listing details for the Knightley-Rightons new digs in Islington show there are five levels on four proper floors with five (or more) bedrooms, 3.5 bathrooms, and seven working fireplaces in a fairly compact although hardly tiny 2,775 square feet.
Although we think it's highly unlikely the newly wedded couple will take on a renter, the ever so slightly subterranean lower ground level has a separate exterior entrance as well as a walk-through wine cellar, a roomy laundry room, a flexi-use living room/lounge/media room with fireplace, and a potential bedroom—also with functional fireplace—that the sellers, according to digital marketing materials, did up as a home fitness room.
A zig-zagged central foyer and stair hall with well-placed and luxuriously windowed guest privy connects the various rooms of the raised ground floor including a street-facing living room with wide-plank wood floors, a marble-manteled fireplace, and two almost floor-to-ceiling windows equipped with internal shutters for privacy and light modulation.
The adjoining compact formal dining room has more wide plank wood floors, another marble-manteled fireplace, a rear garden view window also with internal shutters, and, at the time of its sale, the most godawful flesh-toned wall color that Your Mama sincerely hopes Miz Knightley and/or her team of lady and/or nice-gay decorators has the good sense to change out for something less corporeal.
The eat-in kitchen, located in an added-on section of the house above the single car attached garage, is reasonably large, well-equipped, and flooded with sun light due to the large sky light and wood-framed glass doors that open to the rear garden but it's also rather inconveniently located a half-flight of stairs and half a dozen steps or more from the dining room.
The first floor—we Americans call it the second floor—includes a small bedroom with built-in wardrobes and bookshelves and a larger bedroom—presumably the master—with an adjoining dressing room and direct access to a long and narrow hall bathroom with ordinary (but probably expensive) beige tile work accented with a lonely (and ill-advised) cobalt blue stripe. Two more bedrooms on the uppermost floor—one much larger than the other, both with fireplace—share a hall bathroom.
The deep, west facing rear garden is wonderfully un-fussy with a large, flat lawn that meanders through mature shrubbery and trees.
*A few quick clicks and clacks on Your Mama's bejeweled abacus shows that £3,930,000 converts to a whopping $6,474,090 at today's rates.
listing photos and floor plan: Savills