Once, the poor girl had to hold her togs together with safety pins, but Elizabeth Hurley has come a long way – as the contrast between her former London flat and her new country estate shows
OK, so the modest maisonette that housed Liz Hurley in the 1980s is in posh Fulham, and it’s now on the market for £650,000 – not exactly a starter home for most – but she did have to share her entrance hall with civilians, so it can’t have been easy.
And as the Victorian conversion is a terrace, Liz probably had to keep the noise down whenever her boyfriend of the time, a certain floppy-haired, bumbling young actor, came to visit.
Liz lived in the Sherbrooke Road apartment for three years in the late 1980s, during which time she appeared in the film Rowing with the Wind (no, we’ve never heard of it either) and fell in love with fellow cast member Hugh Grant, who was playing Lord Byron.
When Liz was in residence, the white-fronted upper maisonette had one bedroom, but it has since been refurbished and extended. The 810 sq ft property now has an extra bathroom and bedroom in the attic.
The hefty price tag for Liz’s old digs is not just attributable to the improvements and the celebrity connection. Fulham, in southwest London, is one of the most expensive areas in the UK.
So what of Queen Liz’s latest purchase? Last summer, Liz and her fiancé, Australian cricketing colossus Shane Warne, 43, clubbed together to buy Donnington Hall, a £6m 187-acre Georgian estate near Ledbury, on the Herefordshire/Gloucestershire border.
The house has four reception rooms, 13 bedrooms, five bathrooms, a cellar, four cottages, 12 stables, a coach house, a lake and a tennis court – so no chance of the couple and their four children treading on each other’s toes.
We wonder if the model, actress and swimwear designer has reserved a space at the back of one of the wardrobes for that safety-pinned Versace dress – the one she wore to the Four Weddings and a Funeral premiere that would transform Hugh Grant’s life, and hers, forever?
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