A home fit for a dancing queen: The 15th Century retreat where the Royal Ballet legend Dame Margot once lived is on the market for £1.6million

  • Former home of Royal Ballet legend Dame Margot Fonteyn has gone up for sale
  • Amerden Bank in the Thames-side village of Taplow is being marketed at £1.6m
  • The property became a hub of ballet activity after Margot moved in in the 1950s 

Pictured: Royal Ballet prima ballerina Dame Margot Fonteyn

Pictured: Royal Ballet prima ballerina Dame Margot Fonteyn

It was the bolthole she could escape to at the height of her fame. In the 1950s and 1960s, Royal Ballet prima ballerina Dame Margot Fonteyn was lauded as the best in the world, forming a lasting partnership with Russian star Rudolf Nureyev.

As a retreat from the adulation she received on stage at Covent Garden, she would head to the Thames-side village of Taplow in Buckinghamshire, where her family had bought Amerden Bank, a 15th Century former coach house.

Nureyev – the first Soviet from the arts world to defect to the West – would often join her, and it is said he planted one of the trees in the grounds. It was Dame Margot who had arranged Nureyev’s first appearance in Britain in 1961.

In fact, Amerden Bank, which is on the market for £1.695 million with Strutt & Parker, became a mini-community of ballet dancers when Dame Margot was there. Fellow Royal Ballet star Pamela May and her family installed themselves in one of the property’s wings, and ballet teacher Gerd Larsen stayed in a nearby cottage.

‘The loneliness of her London flat was relieved by weekends spent at Amerden,’ wrote author Meredith Daneman in her biography of Dame Margot. The book also reveals that it was Dame Margot’s mother, Hilda Hookham, who was the driving force behind the purchase of Amerden Bank in 1954.

It was then priced at £2,000, which included a garden measuring a quarter of an acre beside the Thames.

Dame Margot married Panamanian diplomat Dr Roberto Arias in London in 1955, and four years later she was arrested in Panama and spent a night in prison for helping Arias attempt a coup in his homeland. In 1964, a rival politician shot Arias, leaving him a quadriplegic.

As a retreat from London, Dame Margot Fonteyn would head to the Thames-side village of Taplow in Buckinghamshire, where her family had bought Amerden Bank, a 15th Century former coach house (pictured) 

As a retreat from London, Dame Margot Fonteyn would head to the Thames-side village of Taplow in Buckinghamshire, where her family had bought Amerden Bank, a 15th Century former coach house (pictured) 

Dame Margot gave her final performances in the 1970s, before retiring to Panama to live with her husband and his children from an earlier marriage, although Amerden Bank stayed in the family. Shortly before Arias’s death in 1989, Dame Margot was diagnosed with cancer, and she died in Panama City in 1991, aged 71.

‘I used to tour theatres,’ she said towards the end of her life. ‘Now I tour hospitals.’

It was on one of these ‘tours’ that she met television director Patricia Foy, with whom she was to raid her archive at Amerden to provide photographic stills for a documentary on her life in 1989. 

AT A GLANCE

Price: £1.695 million

Location: Taplow, Buckinghamshire

Bedrooms: Five

Unique features: Former home of Dame Margot Fonteyn; tree planted by Rudolf Nureyev in the grounds; access to River Thames towpath.

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The house had become something of a repository for Dame Margot memorabilia in her time away. And, in a way, it still is. The reception hall serves as a reminder of its famous past owner, with paintings of the legendary ballerina adorning the walls.

The house stayed in the Fonteyn family until 1999, and such was Dame Margot’s affection for the place that she named one of her US dance studios Amerden Bank.

The spacious, five-bedroom house stands on a private lane and also has access to a towpath along the River Thames via a secure gate. Other features include four reception rooms, three bathrooms, a kitchen/breakfast room, a large conservatory overlooking landscaped gardens, a bright dining room, a drawing room with a limestone fireplace and French doors opening on to a dining terrace.

An oak staircase leads to the first-floor bedrooms. The master bedroom overlooks the back garden and River Thames and has an en-suite dressing room. The house is accessed via a gravelled driveway.

‘It’s been an honour and a privilege to live in the home of the dancer I have adored and admired,’ says Amerden Bank’s vendor, who prefers not to be named. ‘I am a keen ballet fan and attend Covent Garden regularly. Our magnificent entrance hall has become a homage, with several paintings of Dame Margot on the walls.’

  • struttandparker.com, 01494 854697
The master bedroom overlooks the back garden and River Thames and has an en-suite dressing room 

The master bedroom overlooks the back garden and River Thames and has an en-suite dressing room 

 

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