By Nigel Burnham
Tony Blair and George W. Bush at Myrobella in 2003.
When British prime ministers resign or are booted out by the electorate, they are expected to evacuate their official residence – 10 Downing Street, London – as quickly as possible. But all is not lost – there’s always the constituency home to go back to.
What is surprising to many people is how very modest British prime minister’s constituency homes can be.
Former PM Tony Blair bought Myrobella, in Trimdon Colliery, County Durham, when he won his Sedgefield seat in the 1983 General Election. In her autobiography Speaking for Myself, published last year, Blair’s wife Cherie said they bought it for $48,283 (CAD) “and then spent the same again doing what was absolutely necessary.”
It was from Myrobella, in 1997, that Blair strolled with his wife and young family in tow across the open playing field to his local polling station on his last day as leader of the opposition. In November 2003, he invited U.S. President George W. Bush there to see how a British prime minister lived.
The modest home, a four-bedroom pit manager’s at the end of a row of houses built for coalminers, was in stark contrast to Buckingham Palace, where the then-president and his wife, Laura, had stayed the night before.
The president’s two Sikorsky Black Stallion helicopters landed on the field outside Myrobella, and the two leaders lunched on fish and chips in the local Dun Cow pub a few miles from Trimdon Colliery in the pretty town, which gives its name to Blair’s former constituency.
Former Prime Minister Tony Blair at Myrobella.
Blair was also home in his constituency when he paid his tribute to Diana, Princess of Wales following her death in 1997, when he famously described her as “’the People’s Princess”. It was also where the Blairs’ son Leo was baptized in May 2000.
After Blair left office, Myrobella became surplus to requirements and last October it was announced that the Blairs were selling and looking for $482,830 (CAD) – 10 times what they had paid in 1983.
The house did not take long to sell. It was bought by Paul Enisz, 48, a scaffolder, and his wife Tracey, 43, an occupational health therapist. They say they had no idea it had belonged to the prime minister and had hosted world statesmen such as Bush when they first visited Myrobella in December.
The couple, who are now renovating the property, paid $442,662 for the house –$40,244 less than the asking price – and think they got a bargain.
Since moving in, Enisz and his wife have discovered some unusual quirks. The phone line is linked directly to the police and the small modern brick building outside that looks like a garage is in fact a communications facility owned by the Home Office. The couple is unsure whether it will be removed.
“I’m as common as muck and I had no idea this had been the prime minister’s house until we were told about it,” says Enisz. “We were looking for a house out in the country – somewhere quiet that we could do up. We had looked at another house nearby and the estate agent mentioned this one. We’ve got a lot of work to do on it.”
Blair has done well financially over the years. Among his property portfolio is a $5.79-million five-bedroom Georgian house in Connaught Square, Central London, which has become his main base since leaving Downing Street, as well as a $9.25-million estate in Buckinghamshire – neither of which will break the bank since he’s estimated to have earned around $27.36 million since leaving office in 2007.
But his successor, the recently defeated Gordon Brown, also lives quite modestly when he’s home in Scotland, where solar panels have recently been spotted on the roof of his home in North Queensferry, Fife – not noted for its scorching climate.
Gordon Brown’s home in North Queensferry, Fife in Scotland.
At an average cost of $6,438 to install such panels, it will take Brown at least four decades to recoup his investment even with the generous grants for such “micro-generation” schemes announced in his own budget.
However, environmentalists point out that the average solar panel system can reduce carbon emissions by up to nine tons per year and that, they claim, is the true benefit.
One of Brown’s predecessors as prime minister, grocer’s daughter Margaret Thatcher, famously purchased a new house built by Britain’s biggest house builder Barratt in Dulwich, South London, to use as a retirement home, though she has actually spent much of her retirement in a home in the central London district of Belgravia. The Dulwich home proved to be an embarrassment for one of Barratt’s arch rivals, Taylor Woodrow, whose founder, Frank Taylor, was a personal friend of Thatcher’s and gave political donations to her Conservative Party during her time in office.
Things were much simpler in the days of David Lloyd George, Britain’s first modern prime minister, who led the country during the First World War. In North West Wales the Lloyd George Museum now portrays his life and times. A visit to Highgate, the Victorian cottage Lloyd George shared with his siblings, mother, uncle and grandmother, is memorable for the kitchen hearth where the walls were decorated with paint used to mark sheep.
