Walk through GL and history Freddie purchased Garden Lodge in 1980, but its complete transformation took some time. When he bought the house it was in a sorry state, divided in two to accommodate different families and Freddie’s goal was to restore it to a big house again. The amount paid at that time for the house was 500,000 pounds, after which they tried to buy it from Freddie for a million pounds and he refused to sell it. Mary Austin saw an ad for the property and showed Freddie that she had authorized Mary to close the deal. Freddie invited Japanese landscape artist Mr.高原竜太郎(Takahara, Ryutaro) to work at Garden Lodge. Freddie had always had a flair for style and spent a fortune transforming the house into a lavish palatial home.
The work ended in late 1985 when Mercury moved into the house regularly. The house was built in the late Victorian period (late 19th century) and was originally owned by an aristocratic family whose mother was a painter and sculptor. Her study in the house became Freddie’s master suite. But this place has a history before Freddie bought it… Garden Lodge, an irregularly shaped neo-Georgian house set behind a high brick wall west of Logan Mews, was built in 1908-1909 for the painter Cecil Rea and his wife. , sculptress Constance Halford. It is an imposing building in which a tall front studio wing with a large window on the ground floor has been housed in a conventional two-story Georgian Revival house. Rea’s architect was the obscure Ernest William Marshall (1868-1937). The builders were M. Calnan and Son located at 242A Commercial Road. Rea lived in Garden Lodge until his death in 1935, and his widow continued to reside there until 1938. The house was recently occupied by Peter Wilson, the president of Sotheby’s (he rented it to Tomas Harris). The most spectacular thing about this story is that Tomas Harris until his untimely death in 1964 in a car accident. Tomas Harris was a spy who worked with Garbo in WWII…if you know the history of WWII, you’ll know that he was the one who helped trick the Nazis into ignoring the D-Day invasion by giving them misleading information through his double.
Garbo agent. In H.Lloyd Goodall Jr’s book “The Clandestine History of a CIA Family” he writes that Tomas Harris and his wife Anita were fellow spies. Together they formed a fictitious team of 27 bogus sub-agents, who were created to convince German intelligence that Garbo was a reliable spy. Who would have thought that that place had such a fascinating history, Freddie even liked the place and its beauty… The top floor of the house was used as a study. The house accumulated art objects that Freddie acquired throughout his life. Remember the video Slightly Mad, where Freddie appeared wrapped in various ostrich feathers? Well, that was a decorative quilt that he used on his bed! To this day, there is a Japanese koi pond that Freddie loved: every morning, whenever possible, he fed the animals himself. There is also the garden with his flowers, where he had fun playing with his cats. Speaking of Freddie’s cats, inside the house, in the laundry room and in the kitchen, there were two specific doors so that the kittens could move freely. Source: wnilsen
