The country cottage once owned by Princess Margaret and Antony Armstrong-Jones, also known as Lord Snowdon, has been listed for sale at approximately $5.3 million. This marks the first time the property, known as The Old House, has been publicly available on the market.
The historic home in West Sussex, originally built in 1481, was gifted to Lord Snowdon by his uncle, designer Oliver Messel, before his marriage to Princess Margaret. The Messel family had owned the property since 1890.
Upon acquiring the 5,750-square-foot home on 5.52 acres, Lord Snowdon transformed the dilapidated cottage into a private retreat. He hosted numerous prominent figures, including actor Peter Sellers, ballerina Dame Margot Fonteyn, Bianca Jagger, and financier Sir Evelyn de Rothschild. Theo James-Wright, director at Blue Book Agency, described the property as "an extraordinary creative retreat" where "royalty mixed with artists, actors, writers and designers."
Snowdon’s renovations included a redesigned kitchen, a balcony salvaged from Ascot Racecourse's Royal Box, a newly created lake, and a "time capsule" of newspaper clippings detailing royal events and scandals. The estate features a main house with six bedrooms, a pool house that can serve as a guest suite, a garden office, a library, and a tractor shed.
The rich history of The Old House inspired an episode in the third season of the Netflix series, "The Crown."
While this is the first public listing, Lord Snowdon sold the home privately in 2003, and the current owners purchased it off-market in 2005. James-Wright emphasized the rarity of acquiring a property with such "provenance, architectural significance and cultural importance."
Princess Margaret and Lord Snowdon married in May 1960. Their wedding was the first royal wedding to be televised globally. The couple had two children, David Armstrong-Jones and Lady Sarah Chatto. They announced their separation in 1976 and finalized their divorce in 1978. Princess Margaret died in 2002, and Lord Snowdon passed away in 2017.