[www.telegraph.co.uk]

Cotchford Farm connects Winnie-the-Pooh with the Rolling Stones, two British figures that could hardly be more different. This slice of history could be yours for £2 million.

By Christopher Middleton

6:30AM BST 12 May 2012

It’s probably the only place in the world where Winnie-the-Pooh meets the Rolling Stones. And now it is on the market for £2 million.

Cotchford Farm, in East Sussex, is forever etched into rock-and-roll history as the place where, in July 1969, guitarist Brian Jones was found floating face down in the swimming pool. But the house had a previous famous occupant, too. Four decades earlier it was the home of AA Milne, and the place where his son, Christopher Robin Milne, grew up, surrounded by Pooh Bear, Eeyore, Tigger and a host of other characters engraved on the British imagination.

A more unlikely pair, it would be hard to imagine. The Sixties rock star, sacked by the Rolling Stones, of all people, for being out of control, as against the young child who spent dreamy idyllic days dropping sticks off a bridge and exploring the Hundred Acre Wood with his animal companions.

Nevertheless, both have left their distinctive mark on the place. The pool where Jones drowned is still there, as are the panes of coloured glass he installed inside the house. And the pink fluorescent light tube that he put in one of the bathrooms is still working after all these years.

As for Milne-abilia, there is a statue in the garden of a be-smocked Christopher Robin. There is also a sundial commissioned by Christopher’s mother, Daphne. Frolicking around its base is a whole cavalcade of characters, from Owl to Piglet and Tigger to Kanga. They are still recognisable despite a thick layer of moss. Meanwhile, engraved on the dial itself, is the legend:
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“This warm and sunny spot belongs to Pooh,

“And here he wonders what it’s time to do.”

The guardian of Cotchford Farm for the past 42 years has been Alastair Johns, a property developer who bought the place in 1970. To start with, he still got bills through his letter box that were addressed to the late Stone.

“That’s how I know that, in nine months, Jones got through 4,000 gallons of oil, trying to heat the swimming pool,” he says.

After a lifetime of working, he and his wife, Harriet, are now looking to take things easier, and spend more time at their house in France. Yet as someone who was a small child in the Fifties and a teenager in the Sixties, Alastair is well aware of the house’s symbolic significance to people of his vintage. In other words, people who didn’t just live through the Swinging Sixties, but are now in them – and have enough money to buy themselves this unique slice of history.

Of course, the name Brian Jones doesn’t mean much to anyone under 40. Alastair has eight grandchildren, the oldest of whom is 19. To them, the Rolling Stones are not so much from the past as from a bygone era. It’s different, though, for anyone aged 55 to 65, and either newly retired, or approaching retirement.

“To people of a certain age, this place is something of a shrine,” adds Alastair. “For many years, an Italian girl used to come and tie a sheaf of flowers to the hedge, on the anniversary of Brian Jones’s death.

“We’ve had Dutch fans come and float pages of magazines in the pool. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, some people drove all the way over here in an old Trabant to pay their respects. The car didn’t have the strength to get back up our drive.

“Then there was a very polite young Brazilian couple who came to the door. At one point, the girl started unbuttoning her blouse, which rather alarmed me, until she showed me her bare shoulder, on which was tattooed a silhouette of Brian Jones.

“When we had to modernise the pool, we sold the original tiles to Jones’s fans for £100 each. It netted £12,000 and helped pay for half the refurbishment work.

“By and large, the Jones fans are rather nice. They almost always contact us first, to make an appointment, and unlike the Winnie-the-Pooh crowd, they don’t think they can just walk in here, as of right.”

The stray-visitor factor is something that any would-be buyer of Cotchford Farm needs to consider. It is an inescapable fact that ownership of the house comes with the added responsibility of dealing with devotees.

“The numbers of callers increases every time there’s a new Winnie-the-Pooh film, or someone is looking to reopen the investigation into Jones’s death,” says Alastair. “For the most part, though, it’s quite manageable, about a dozen people per year.”

A small price to pay, says Robert Jacobs, the Savills estate agent who is handling the sale of Cotchford Farm.

“A house like this is extremely rare, with not just one set of famous connections, but two,” he says. “What’s more, that fame stretches around the world, and crosses all nationalities. The amount of interest in Winnie-the-Pooh in Japan, for example, is quite phenomenal.

“We’re expecting a huge number of inquiries when the property goes on the market. The hard part will be distinguishing between fans who just want to come and see the place, and people who are genuinely interested in buying it.”

But the asking price has not been noticeably inflated by the fame factor. Within the surrounding area (the picture-book village of Hailsham is half a mile away), £2 million is not uncommon for a six-bedroom house with grounds and a swimming pool. If pushed, the estate agents concede that perhaps there’s an extra £10,000 on top, because of the celebrity connection.

Mind you, in the same way that truly keen buyers aren’t likely to be deterred by the price of the house, so they are also unlikely to be put off by the fact that its previous occupants haven’t always been happy. At the time of his death, Jones had not only just been thrown out of the band he helped set up, but he had also lost his girlfriend Anita Pallenberg, to fellow Stone Keith Richards.

As for Christopher Milne, he may have enjoyed an idyllic childhood, but was teased in later life because of his father’s writings. His ongoing antipathy towards his childhood home was confirmed in 1976, when Alastair invited him to come and visit the house during the course of a nearby Teddy Bears’ Picnic event.

“We got a most vitriolic letter back,” recalls Alastair. “He said that if we thought he was going to go back on his promise never to set foot across the threshold here again, then we were very much mistaken.”

But millions of people all over the world remain enchanted by Christopher Milne’s childhood home. If he were still around to visit it now (he died in 1996), he would find the six-bedroom, 16th-century property just as characterful and beautiful as it was during the Milnes’ time here (1925-59).

Officially, the house has three floors, but there are so many landings and mezzanines, that it’s impossible to say, at any one time, exactly which storey you’re standing in. The attractive wooden beams look not just gnarled, but as if some creature from the Hundred Acre Wood has been in and gnawed pieces out of them. Yet they add to the enduring appeal of this lovely historic house.

Thankfully, there’s no longer any sign of the denim-blue paint with which Jones had started to daub the bits of ceiling between the beams. What is preserved, though, is the high-ceilinged bedroom in which Christopher Milne used to sleep, often scared by the sound of the wind in the great sycamore tree outside his window.

He wouldn’t have that problem today, mind you, since the once-scary sycamore tree is now dead and gone. As is the hollow walnut tree in which the two Christophers used to have their hideaway. A man-made tree house in the nearby bluebell wood serves as a modern-day alternative.

By contrast, of course, the nearby geographical landmarks still remain: Galleons Leap (or Gills Lap, as it is in real life) is still there, as is the Hundred Acre Wood (real name Five Hundred Acre Wood). And most famous of all, the bridge where Christopher Robin used to play Pooh sticks.

Milne history saturates the garden. The wall which Christopher used to throw his ball against still stands. You can see the meadow where he and his father used to play cricket with each other, returning to the house to find a jug of lemonade waiting for them in the dining room.

A lot has changed in the outside world since the departure of young Christopher Robin, as it has since the death of Brian Jones. But while property prices have soared, and the pace of life accelerated beyond all recognition, time at Cotchford Farm stands forever still.

Cotchford Farm is on the market from today for £2 million with Savills (01892 507000; savills.com)

Things to consider before buying a famous house

Check for FAT- That’s fame added tax. How much extra is being asked because of the link with someone famous?

Fame or infamy? - Was the previous owner known for good reasons (much-loved television personality), or is there another story to tell?

Ask about visitors - Find out how many people are likely to come here on a pilgrimage.

Investigate commercial possibilities - Are there pieces of memorabilia you can sell to visitors? Could you charge people an entrance fee to look around your house?

Think legacy - Is the reputation of your celebrity resident going to grow as the years go by (e.g. a Beatle, or famous author)? If so, your house value will go up. Best not to bank on this, though, if your celebrity was just in one series of Big Brother.

Cotchford Farm connects Winnie-the-Pooh with the Rolling Stones, two British figures that could hardly be more different

Well maybe not that far apart..........Mick Jagger - Tigger.......Bill Wyman - Eeyore........Charlie - Owl..........Ron - Roo...............



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 2012-05-13 18:37 by EddieByword.

I want it! But I'm about £1,955,99 short. Gonna check down the sofa cushions and have a car boot sale.

Lovely house in the heart of the English countryside, and those connections and history make it a dream to a Stones fan. Maybe we could all chip in a few grand and have it as a iorr time share!

Looks so beautiful .. I'm sure whoever buys it could eventually make the £2m back by charging for guided tours for people like us!
[www.rightmove.co.uk]

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dannyhowells
Looks so beautiful .. I'm sure whoever buys it could eventually make the £2m back by charging for guided tours for people like us!
[www.rightmove.co.uk]

Wow, just a beautiful property, you're right. Thanks for posting that link.

Thank you Green Lady,
for both sharing a nice little story and
for posting the full story, without having to click a "mystery link".

What an interesting little story that article chock full of tasty tidbits to go with my morning coffee.

How sad that Christopher Robin was teased so much that he grew to hate the place.
How interesting that Brian started painting things with denim-blue paint.
And... the various tales of people who visited.... it is really a great article.

Thanks GL

The grounds are gorgeous. I would love to live there.

Wasn't looking too good, but I was feeling real well.

Beautiful place. No wonder Brian loved it so much.

Imagine swimming in that pool - creepy.

Too bad it can't be designated a historic property so what remains won't be changed.

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24FPS
Too bad it can't be designated a historic property so what remains won't be changed.

It has got some protection already as a Grade 2 listed building......I'm not sure what that exactly means but I'm pretty sure you'd have to have a pretty compelling case to change anything.............This report is a few years old but if you scroll down you'll see what I've mentioned.................

Daily Telegraph - Inside Story: Cotchford Farm

Saturday 8th April 2000

Matthew Gwyther reports:

To live in a house once occupied by a celebrated individual can be trying enough but when your home once belonged to two of them, separately, the flow of unwanted pilgrims can become an ordeal.

This is exactly the double-whammy experienced by Alastair Johns and his wife, Harriet, owners of Cotchford Farm in Sussex. Cotchford is the "House at Pooh Corner" and was bought by the author A A Milne, who lived there on and off from 1924 with his wife and son Christopher Robin. Nearby are the "100 Aker Wood", "the six Pine Trees" and the Poohsticks Bridge. The bridge has recently been rebuilt to accommodate the thousands of Winnie the Pooh fans who flock to the area, strip the surrounding trees and watch their twigs float in races downstream. More notoriously, though, Cotchford was also owned in the late 1960s by the Rolling Stone Brian Jones, who drowned in the swimming pool in 1969.

Every year Mr and Mrs Johns put up with several hundred unwanted visitors on their doorstep. "On the whole the Brian Jones lot are incredibly nice and polite. They apologise for the intrusion. "The Winnie the Pooh bunch, on the other hand, think they own the place. One afternoon we caught a couple in the garden who had lined up 16 teddy bears to photograph."

By contrast, soon after the Berlin Wall came down three East Germans drove all the way to Cotchford in a Trabant to pay their respects to their dead Rolling Stones idol. They quietly asked to have a look at the pool. "The drive down to the house is so steep," says Mr Johns, "that they couldn't get back up in first and had to turn around and drive back up in reverse."

Cotchford did not have altogether happy memories for Christopher Robin Milne, who spent much of his time up one of the trees. The ten acres of grounds leading down to the stream contain at least 50 mature oaks. Mrs Milne employed three full-time gardeners and turned muddy fields and paths into terraced lawns with walkways and a summerhouse. Her son later spent much of his life in embarrassed retreat from his unwanted fame and thought "that my father had got to where he was by climbing upon my infant shoulders, that he filched from me my good name and left me with nothing but the empty fame of being his son".

With their more welcome fame and newfound wealth, the Rolling Stones invested in large country mansions. Mick Jagger bought Elizabethan Stargroves in Berkshire, which had been owned by Oliver Cromwell; Charlie Watts bought a place in Sussex from Lord Shawcross; Bill Wyman acquired a place in Suffolk and Keith Richards bought and still owns a house in West Wittering, West Sussex.

Unlike his colleagues, Jones had never owned his own place before Cotchford. The purple haze of 1967 never left him as he shifted from rented flats to hotels to the Priory Clinic. He suffered two highly publicised drugs busts and lived in terror of being arrested again by the police. By the time he reached the sanctuary of Pooh's place, for which he paid £35,000 in November 1968, he was in a mess. Blues musician Alexis Korner said he looked like "a fat, mummified Louis XIV". He felt robbed by the musical direction the band was taking, which was anathema to him and - worse - he had lost his girlfriend Anita Pallenberg to Keith Richards. "First they took my music," he moaned, "then they took my band, and now they've taken my love."

Jones decided that his new property required much building work, inside and out, including a proper drainage system. Being towards the bottom of the slope, Cotchford suffers from flooding when heavy rain falls. ("We've been flooded seven times since we arrived," says Mr Johns, "and last Christmas Eve I was up fighting the water until 1am.") Jones fell out badly with his builders, a foreman - who moved into Cotchford for the duration - and his four-man gang. The £10,000-worth of works proceeded at a crawl and, such was Jones's suspicion that he was being taken for an expensive ride, he installed an Intercom system upstairs so he could hear what they were up to below.

Mr Johns thinks it just as well the work was never finished. "He was just beginning to ruin it when he died. One of the only things his builders achieved inside the house was to paint the spaces between the ceiling beams denim blue." During that 1969 summer, when he wasn't crashing his Vespa through the front window of a village shop after a visit to the Haywagon pub, Jones spent long hours in the garden lounging with white wine or brandy by his two statues and upsetting the locals with loud music. Both statues are still there. One is a life-size figure of Christopher Robin, the other a sundial with hand-carved figures of Piglet, Eeyore and Pooh dancing, accompanied by the inscription "This warm and sunny spot belongs to Pooh and here he wondered what to do".

Jones was indeed left wondering what to do after he was fired from the band in late May, 1969 with a £100,000 pay-off. In the early morning of July 3 he was found face-down in the deep end of the pool, "his hair floating around him like a fan", as one of the Stones' biographers wrote. The coroner's verdict was one of misadventure -"swimming whilst under the influence of alcohol and drugs". However, since his death there have been suggestions in a book, Who Killed Christopher Robin?, that Jones was murdered.

Cotchford is far more peaceful these days. Mr Johns, who found it in a newspaper small ad column in 1970, says he still finds it agreeably "soporific". The building, Grade II listed with six bedrooms, is not a classically proportioned farmhouse.

Its original section dates back to about 1580 but the next four centuries saw numerous modifications. One of the later additions was a Velux window in the ceiling of what had been Christopher Robin's bedroom. Mr Johns thinks Cotchford must now be worth about £1 million. John Powell of Powell and Partner, the local estate agent, thinks that might well be a realistic price. There is strong demand for property in the area as people move further out from London. "Cotchford would sell instantly," he says. "Even empty building plots are going for £500,000."

Nice addition Eddie.

I like this story, for some reason, maybe it is... oh I dont know, I just like it all.... except for the flooding part.

The seller is throwing in free life preservers, right?

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straycatuk
Imagine swimming in that pool - creepy.

I would certainly avoid it if I was planning any misadventures.

Just curious.... Did anyone here buy one of the...

“When we had to modernise the pool, we sold the original tiles to Jones’s fans for £100 each. It netted £12,000 and helped pay for half the refurbishment work."

or ever see one re-offered for sale?

If we all chip in, we can buy this together, make it the IORR Mansion. It would be the coolest collective on earth with a 24/7 party going on, blasting Stones songs for most of the time. And we'd take turns keeping an eye on whoever is taking a swim.

The Grade II listing would be all about the historic structure of the old farmhouse - nothing at all to stop a new owner ripping out the relatively modern pool if they felt like it, though there might be restrictions on what could be put in its place. . I don't think the listing system existed in Brian's day - they probably wouldn't have been happy with the blue denim paint!

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LieB
If we all chip in, we can buy this together, make it the IORR Mansion. It would be the coolest collective on earth with a 24/7 party going on, blasting Stones songs for most of the time. And we'd take turns keeping an eye on whoever is taking a swim.

Count me in .. what a life!

The land and the exterior of the house is charming. The interior though, however rustic, doesn't look £2 million to me. Something tells me this object will cost a lot of money to keep in a good condition.

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LieB
If we all chip in, we can buy this together, make it the IORR Mansion. It would be the coolest collective on earth with a 24/7 party going on, blasting Stones songs for most of the time. And we'd take turns keeping an eye on whoever is taking a swim.

Funny idea, LieB! 52 iorr:ians, 52 shares, abot £38 500 each, one weeks stay per member every year. Done deal! A week in late July for me thanks!

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Stoneage
The land and the exterior of the house is charming. The interior though, however rustic, doesn't look £2 million to me. Something tells me this object will cost a lot of money to keep in a good condition.

It looks £2m to me. Also, as you say, an extortionate amount in maintenance etc.

I'd love to look around it .. I wouldn't be surprised if there's some of Brian's original 60s stash lurking somewhere, behind a wall or under a floorboard. I just imagine it would be as spooky as hell for a Stones fan to live there.

gatherin' up all my pennies now, and gonna buy some lotto tickets!! And if I win, da party is on MEEEE!!

Seriously, whoever does get the house I hope will be cool like the John's are ...
---------------------

"Doctor please, some more men please,
To Cotchford Farm, out by the pool...

What a drag it is they couldn't revive him"

Brian Jones 2/28/42 - 7/2/69

Let's all get togetha and buy it!!!! I mean, there are quite plenty of us, surely we could try at 24/7s party 365 days a year. Yummy, neighbours won't be pleased.

You're a rag trade girl, You're the queen of porn, You're the easiest lay on the white house lawn!!

Damn! Just now I don't happen to have an extra £2m available...

- Doxa

Nothing to stop any of us expressing an interest in buying it and making an appointment to take a good look around of course!

The Stamp Duty on a £2M house would be 7% i.e £140,000 + agents fee + solicitors fees + structural survey. It's going to be an expensive purchase!

Why don't we all kick in 1000 pounds and buy it and use it as a bed and breakfast?

I think it would be a blast.

I agree - great idea to buy it. Perhaps we could turn it into a rest home for aged Stones fans? Or as suggested a B & B...for Stones fans. (But those Winnie people sound like jerks!)

I think it looks charming and I'm a sucker for a pool.

I wander what Brain paid for the house back then.............

__________________________

It would spook the crap out of me to live there. The apartment where writer F. Scott Fitzgerald died in Hollywood in 1939 still exists, pretty much as it was. The apartment was empty when I went there but there was movement in the thindrapes and I could see the infamous fireplace mantle that he sprung from a chair and grabbed onto as he suffered a massive heart attack. I can't imagine going near that pool on Cotchford Farm for a swim.