A £25 million price tag now sits on one of London’s most politically significant addresses for Pakistan. Ormeley Lodge. The name will not mean much outside Pakistani politics, but the address certainly will.
This week Knight Frank and Sotheby’s International Realty put the Georgian mansion on the market. It sits in Richmond. Imran Khan lived there on and off for nearly two decades, from his marriage to Jemima Goldsmith at the property in 1995 until his last stay around 2014 well past their divorce nine years into the marriage.
Their midsummer wedding ball packed the walled gardens that year London aristocracy standing next to Pakistan’s cricket elite, an odd mix even by Richmond standards.
But he kept the annex for his political meetings and media interviews, while Jemima and her mother, Lady Annabel Goldsmith, occupied the mansion. Supporters passed through. Journalists too, and fundraisers.
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Then came 2014’s protests. Crowds gathered outside the gates while Khan sat inside; his aide Zulfiqar Bukhari eventually drove him out through them, according to reports from that period.
Lady Annabel died in October last year. She was 91. For five decades she’d run this house, hosting everyone from Princess Alexandra to Hugh Grant at parties that became something of a fixture in British high society. Her son Ben Goldsmith later called the property an empty shell without her. Following her passing away, it was decided that instead of maintaining the property as a family home which is not being lived in any more, it be sold off instead.
What’s up for sale: Grade II*-listed property, 15,814 square feet, ten bedrooms, seven bathrooms, a separate cottage, staff mews and 2.3 acres of walled garden located between Richmond Park and Ham Common. Just ten miles away from Hyde Park Corner
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Jemima Goldsmith has moved on from the property too. She’s preparing to marry Irish-Australian financier Cameron O’Reilly now, splitting time between Switzerland and West London. Her sons with Khan Sulaiman and Kasim left home years ago, separately, on their own paths.
A 1995 wedding opened this chapter. In between: a cricketer became prime minister, lost the job, ended up in prison. And whoever buys the house is getting a building associated with important events in recent Pakistani political history. Whether they know it or not.
