Margaret Thatcher's former flat in Chelsea for sale: former PM's two-bedroom home listed for a 'bargain' £1.2m - but there's a catch...
Margaret Thatcher ended up strutting the corridors of power — after relaunching her political career walking the corridors of a sixth-floor Chelsea mansion flat.
In 1953 Mrs Thatcher, then 28 and two years married, was juggling her career as a lawyer with her political ambitions and caring for twins Carol and Mark, who were less than a year old.
The scene was the family’s flat in Swan Court, Chelsea Manor Street, part of the Cadogan Estate. Now the two-bedroom, two-bathroom property, built in 1930, is for sale for £1,235,000 through Strutt & Parker.
In the lobby, residents still use the oak letter box where the future PM more than likely posted the letter to Tory grandee Donald Kaberry, in which she expressed her determination “to return to active politics” after having the twins.
In 1949, Margaret Roberts met businessman Denis Thatcher at a social event in Dartford, Kent, a safe Labour seat where she had moved to stand for election. She was 23 and he was 33. They married in December 1951. She would not be prime minister till 1979, but she was on her way.
She moved into Denis’s bachelor pad in Old Chelsea. It was “light… with a fine view of London”, as she would write in her memoirs. Accessed via well-maintained oak-trimmed corridors with thick carpet, number 112 is a long, rectangular, 1,200sq ft flat. A corridor runs up the middle.
To the left is a small dining room, then a larger sitting room. There’s a hatch into the dining room from the hall and just opposite is the small kitchen, from which Margaret — or Denis — might have dashed with meals.
Original bronze-handled Crittall windows run down the east-facing side of the flat. The young wife must have leant out to admire the sprawl of Chelsea roofs. Today you can see the Shard.
On the other side of the corridor is a large bathroom, a loo, and two bedrooms. The flat is still laid out as it was in 1951, though the wallpaper hung by Margaret is gone. In 1957, the couple moved to Farnborough, where, from 1959, Margaret was based while MP for Finchley.
The sale is due to a death after a long tenancy and the flat now needs a total refurb. People rarely sell up in this well-built, discreet block, with 24-hour porterage. Last year, actor John Cleese sold a flat he owned there.
Because of its 24-year lease, the Thatchers’ old home is offered at a bargain price for the area. The new owner will be able to extend the lease, perhaps for about £600,000, but they will save on stamp duty.
With a redesign, this could easily make a three-bedroom flat with one en suite, while the kitchen and living areas could be opened up.
WHAT YOU COULD DO WITH THE PLACE
Chelsea interior designer Fiona Barratt-Campbell would create a master suite with bedroom, dressing room and en suite, and also knock through the current master bedroom, living room, and take out the hall wall to form a big kitchen-living-dining area.
A second bedroom with its own bathroom could replace the current kitchen and dining area. She would use a Farrow & Ball palette of greige, taupe and natural linen, with chevron woodblock floors and Carrara marble bathrooms.