Messy Divorce Leads To Listing Of Kiddington Hall
Filed under: Estates

A bad divorce has forced another gorgeous property on the market. Maurice Robson says that his acrimonious divorce has led to the listing of Kiddington Hall in Oxfordshire, England. The Grade-II listed mansion in the Cotswolds is on the market for £42 million. The home was built in 1673 but it has only been in Robson's family for around 60 years (Robson is 65).
The Daily Mail reports that the home is on a 2,000-acre site with gardens designed by Lancelot 'Capability' Brown, the 18th century architect. The potential purchaser also gets a small village in the deal. Nether Kiddington has 18 homes and a kindergarten. Robson inherited the property in 1982 from his father, Sir Lawrence Robson, a founder of the accountants Robson Rhodes & Co. And how's this for a real estate deal, Sir Lawrence bought the house for just under £115,000 in 1950. It borders several other grand estates.
Maurice Robson was married to his wife for 24 years and they have two teenage children. According to the article, she accuses her ex-husband of a certain level of divorce melodrama saying that the home would have been sold anyway. Robson has already sold a 19,000-acre deer-hunting estate in Scotland but also owns a 17th century castle in the Scottish Highlands. It used to be when a man felt particularly aggrieved by his divorce settlement he might discreetly complain to a few friends over a good whisky. These days in some ways it almost seems like a battle scar to declare that the wife has taken off with everything.
The question is whether or not there is a buyer with deep enough pockets to take on Kiddington Hall. This isn't the ideal time to hoist this type of impressive listing onto the market even though it is reportedly an excellent property. The usual crowd of Russian and Middle Eastern billionaires will likely be trotted through the property over the next few months but that price would give even the most corpulent of fat cats pause.
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