Alexander Skarsgård Buys Hillside Hideaway

BUYER: Alexander Skarsgård
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $1,850,000
SIZE: 2,479 square feet, 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Despite living and working in Los Angeles for more than half a dozen years, Swedish-born film and television actor Alexander Skarsgård resisted setting down real estate roots in Tinseltown until March (2012)—we first heard from a clever canary we'll call Fatima Figgereditout—when he shelled out $1,850,000 to acquire a sensitively preserved and thoughtfully updated mid-century modern residence pneumatically perched on a private promontory at the tail end of a quiet cul-de-sac in the the celeb-studded hills above L.A.'s upscale, boho-hipster Los Feliz neighborhood.**

The ever-so-slightly but deliciously buck-toothed Mister Skarsgård is probably best known as the powerful, powerfully sexy and emotionally complicated 1,100+ year old vampire Eric Northman on the boob-toob hit series True Blood. Since he arrived in Tinseltown in the early Aughts, the versatile actor has also appeared in a variety of projects including the eye-crossingly stoopid male-model spoof Zoolander, the Emmy-winning mini-series Generation Kill, the recent—and not-particularly-successful—remake of Straw Dogs, and Lars van Trier's psyche-disrupting bone-rattler Melancholia. Several years ago he shook his comely money maker as Lady Gaga's elegant and scrumptiously scruffy man-friend in her music video for Paparazzi. Remember that, kids?

Mister Skarsgård—in case you didn't know—comes from high-profile (if intellectually-minded) Showbiz roots in his native Sweden. His father, Stellan Skarsgård, well-known as a nuanced actor in Sweden and beyond. In addition to the scads of European movies Your Mama has never heard of because, well, we don't follow Swedish cinema very closely the elder Mister Skarsgård has also had notable parts in any number of movies likely to be well known by the average American movie goer (Good Will Hunting, The Avengers and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) as well as his fair share of roles in haute-indie films such as the upcoming, two-part Lars van Trier-directed soft-porn psychodrama Nymphomaniac. At the age of 61—and apropos of absolutely nothing pertinent to the real estate related matter at hand—the vigorous and virile elder Mister Skarsgåed recently sired is eighth child with his significantly younger second wife. Imagine for a moment, butter beans, having a (half-)sibling 36 years your junior, as does the younger Mister Skarsgård.

Anyhoo, for the record, Mister Skarsgård's name does not appear on any of the property records Your Mama peeped —it was officially purchased with a generically-named trust—but our mysteriously but always impeccably and accurately well-informed friend and informant, Lucy Spillerguts, seconded Fatima's well-researched celebrity real estate scuttlebutt. None-the-less, puppies, let's use them noggins: This ain't, technically, nuthin' but some silly rumor and gossip.

Listing information from the time of the purchase that Your Mama located on the internets shows the single-story contemporary was designed by modernist-minded architect Phil Brown and built in 1963—for his parents, our research reveals—with 2-3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms in 2,479 square feet of sun-flooded, steel-framed and glass-walled interior spaces that are dominated by satisfying, gasp-worthy views that stretch over a wide swathe of Los Angeles.

The front door, discreetly set into a deep recess out of view from the street, opens into a roomy front entry space that melts effortlessly into a buoyant, 30+ foot long living/dining combination space with yellow blond wood floors, lofty ceilings with clerestory windows, an open-sided gas fireplace with floating hearth, and thrilling expanses of paneless windows and glass sliders that peel back to an eave-shaded wrap around terrace that hovers over the hillside with toe-tingling city vistas.

At the time it the property was purchased, the kitchen, easily accessible to but separate from the living/dining area, had a spacious and sleek, and very expensive Euro-brand kitchen. An adjoining breakfast area with corner windows and glass sliders connects to the cantilevered deck that girdles two sides of the living/dining area. Just off the kitchen a flexi-purpose room with scintillating city view could be used as a third bedroom, home office, Pilates studio or t.v. watching lounge.

On the other side of the house a master bedroom has two, not-very-big closets and a through-the-pine-trees view of the city as well as a slightly obstructed city view across a semi-enclosed atrium and clear through the living/dining room. The attached master bathroom has a long, floating double vanity, a two-person soaking tub set into a glass-tiled platform, a separate stall shower partially enclosed by a transparent sheet of glass, and a separate cubby from the crapper.

At the time of the purchase, the second bedroom had almost an entire wall of windows shielded by plantation shutters, a privacy-ensuring but somewhat out of context decorative decision Your Mama would not have recommended or installed in a house with this sort of quintessentially mid-century modern architectural integrity.

The hillside lot is a decent-size quarter acre but usable outdoor space is—or was at the time of the purchase—limited to the wrap around deck on the backside of the house. However, should Mister Skarsgård—or whomever—desire more space in the future, marketing materials Your Mama dug up out of the murky morass of the interweb show a significant extension was designed with additional living space that juts out like a broken bone from the original structure, an ample roof deck and a lap-length swimming pool.

**Settle down, Angelenos, we're not hatin'. We love us some Los Feliz. Child, Your Mama and our oldest lesbo gal-pal The Chicken were hanging out at The Dresden back before sequined-slathered singers Marty and Elayne ever put on their first body-shaping undergarments. Even though it is desperately compact and, well, a little dingy, the Vintage on Vermont is a goddamn indie film oasis in blockbuster-driven L.A. and all of y'all who frequent the 'hood ought to buy books on a regular basis at Skylight Books, also on Vermont. Okay? We j'adore Los Feliz. It wasn't so long ago the still pretty low-profile 'hood was a little down on its heels  but—let's get real, gurl—the area has gotten markedly upscale over the last decade in that liberally tattooed, Audi- or Prius-driving, Open Ceremony-shopping, I-only-look-like-I-haven't-showered-in-three-days sort of way.

listing photos: Michael Andrew McNamara Photography for Sotheby's International Realty

Mark Zuckerberg (Allegedly) Buys San Fran Pied-à-Terre

For years, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg was one of the Bay Area's wealthiest renters who, until last year, leased an ordinary if heavily fortified and not exactly cheap house in the College Terrace neighborhood in Palo Alto, CA.

That changed last March (2011) when he coughed up $7,000,000 for a gated and fully renovated five bedroom residence in Palo Alto's Crescent Park neighborhood where he and long-time gal pal Priscilla Chan legally hitched their love wagons in a small ceremony earlier this year.

For months now the baby-faced billionaire has been regularly spotted—with security detail in tow—walking his dog near the once drug infested but recently refurbished and downright spectacular Dolores Park, standing in line like everybody else at Wise Sons Jewish Delicatessen, and downing a few beers at local dive bars like Phone Booth fueling internet scuttlebutt that Mister and Missus Z. recently added to their slender but high-end property portfolio with a pricey pied-à-terre in San Francisco's once gritty and edgy now almost ludicrously gentrified and hipster filled Mission District neighborhood.

However, thanks to a little neighborhood gossip tattled by our S.F.-based bestie Fiona Trambeau who has lived in a second floor walk up two blocks from Dolores Park since the dawn of time, a little reading around on some of the San Francisco property blogs and a deep dive into a multitude of property records data bases Your Mama surmises that Mister and Missus Z. did not purchase a multi-million dollar pied-a-terre in the Mission District but rather a multi-million dollar pied-a-terre in the quiet, affluent and more tech tycoon-ish Liberty Heights 'hood that clings gloriously to the steep hillsides that rise above the southwest corner of Dolores Park.

There has been some speculation amongst readers of the always informative and always well-informed San Francisco-based property blog Socketsite that Mister and Missus Z. may have purchased a fully-renovated contemporary crib on Liberty Street between Church and Sanchez streets. They didn't.

Now children, keep in mind we can't directly connect neither Mister Z.'s nor Missus Z.'s name to the property in question—making this all just a juicy tidbit of real estate rumor and gossip—but our research indicates that, back in April (2012), a generically-named corporate entity that links directly back to the same tax consulting firm in Palo Alto as Mister and Missus Z.'s primary residence in Palo Alto (CA) paid exactly $3,000,000 for privately situated house on a double-wide lot on a fairly steep street with panoramic views over Dolores Park towards the compact but dynamic downtown skyline. The property was not, as far as we can tell, on the open market so there aren't any listing photos to share with the children.

Ol' Fiona called to tell us rolled by several times this morning in her banged up Subaru hoping to catch of glimpse of Mister Z. or—better yet—get stopped and forcibly frisked by one or more of Mister and Missus Z.'s burly security men but alas...all was whisper quiet.

Steven Gottlieb Gives it Another Go

SELLER: Steven Gottlieb
LOCATION: New York City, NY
PRICE: $35,000,000
SIZE: (approx.) 5,000 square feet

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Your Mama thought it might be a nice change of pace to start the week off with a little New York City fabulosity in the form of a unfinished duplex penthouse set high atop a particularly stunning and iconic park-fronting Art Deco building on the Upper West Side that's popped up the open market with a knee-knocking $35,000,000 price tag.




As was recounted in a deliciously detailed article in New York magazine in 2005, again in 2008 in the New York Observer and, finally, a couple days ago in The New York Times, the two-unit combination cooperative penthouse has a rather illustrious chain of ownership that goes back to the 1970s when two-time Tony award winning Broadway composer and lyricist Jerry Herman (Hello, Dolly!, Mame, La Cage au Folles) paid $160,000 for the sun-splashed 19th and 20th floor duplex.

Mister Herman, who reportedly tore down some walls and mirrored others, occupied the terraced aerie until fashion tycoon Calvin Klein came for a visit in 1983 and, on the spot, offered Mister Herman a million bucks for the penthouse.

Not long after Mister Klein moved in he got into a kerfuffle with building's board after he illegally installed a hot tub on the rooftop terrace. We're not sure if the hot tub brouhaha had anything to do with Mister Klein's desire to dump the penthouse but in 1989 he agreed to sell to movie producer and Planet Hollywood co-founder Keith Barish for $3,900,000. Alas, Mister Barish caught a case of The Real Estate Fickle, backed out of the purchase and, as a result, lost his $390,000 deposit.

Mister Klein quickly shifted real estate gears and sold the penthouse for $4.3 million to music and media mogul David Geffen, a well-known trophy property collector who—the children surely recall—recently dropped $54,000,000 on socialite songwriter Denise Rich's woefully dated 12,000-ish square foot duplex penthouse across the park on Fifth Avenue. Anyhoo, Mister Geffen clearly caught a case of The Real Estate Fickle too because he never moved in and flipped the penthouse a little over a year later for $4,600,000 to—are you ready for this?—Keith Barish who—so the story goes—used a Jasper Johns painting as partial payment.

Like Mister Geffen, Mister Barish never moved in to the penthouse but did quickly cough up another two (or so) million bucks for an adjacent 19th floor apartment owned by four-time Oscar-nominated actress Marsha Mason (Only When I Laugh, The Goodbye Girl). When his planned combination and renovation become more cumbersome than he could stomach he sold both the still-uncombined units in 1993 or '94 for $6,000,000 to—buckle your real estate safety belts—Calvin Klein. Such are the wacky real estate ways of the rich and famous, right?

The second time around, Mister Klein didn't move in to the penthouse but did once again run afoul of the board when he removed all non-structural walls in anticipation of a major overhaul. Again we're not sure if his battles with the board had anything to do with his decision to unload the penthouse a second time but in 1998 Oscar-winning movie maker Mike Nichols and his Peabody Award-winning Broadcast journalist wife Diane Sawyer agreed to to pay Mister Klein $7.5 million for the now combined but gutted penthouse.

When Mister Nichols and Miz Sawyer realized their sales contract omitted ownership of the sprawling second floor terrace they queried the board who—dontcha know?—told them they would need to cough up another million dollars to buy the outdoor space. They agreed to the board's monetary demands but, before they knew it, were were outbid by the penthouse's current owner, music industry bigwig turned social networking entrepreneur Steven Gottlieb who already owned an18th floor apartment in the building and who scooped up the unfinished penthouse in 1999 for $8,600,000.

Like the penthouse's previous owners, Mister Gottlieb planned an extensive and expensive renovation but, after a dozen years planning—and no doubt millions in various upgrades and improvements—has chosen to sell.

As it turns out, this isn't the first time at the real estate rodeo for Mister Gottlieb who very briefly had the duplex penthouse on the market in February 2008 with a $36,000,000 price tag. The Street Easy website shows the penthouse was re-listed (at an undisclosed price) and put into contract in June of 2008 but, for reason to which we're not privy, the sale was never completed.

At the time Mister Gottlieb first and unsuccessfully attempted to sell the cooperative penthouse it carried with it monthly maintenance fees of $10,691. Current listing information shows the monthlies have increased to $11,632.

Current listing information includes a floor plan that depicts a proposed built-out that would transform the approximately 5,000 square foot unfinished space into a lavish and lofty park side perch with three bedrooms, 4.5 bathrooms, three fireplaces, a capacious 1000-square foot living/dining room, a slender wrap around terrace on the lower floor and, on the upper level, a double-height library and a contiguous glass-walled pavilion and glass-roofed conservatory that both open to an approximately 1,000 square foot wrap around terrace with heart stopping park and city views.

Given that New York City is flooded with buyers willing to pay almost any price for prime residential real estate now may be the perfect time for Mister Gottlieb to finally unload the penthouse. Given the plethora of deep-pocket buyers willing to spend vast and shocking sums of money on prime residential properties in Manhattan do any of the children think this place just might go for more than the asking price?

exterior photo: Kate Leonova for Property Shark
interior renderings and floor plan: Brown Harris Stevens

Chipper Jones Buys Suburban Bachelor Pad

BUYER: Larry "Chipper" Jones
LOCATION: Roswell, GA
PRICE: $1,220,000
SIZE: 6 bedrooms, 6 full and 2 half bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: It's been an goddamn ice age time since Your Mama has turned our celebrity real estate attentions to the peachy state of Georgia where, thanks to a fine, southern gentleman informant we call Chatty Charlie, we've learned that newly retired and recently divorced professional baseballer Larry "Chipper" Jones dropped $1,220,000 on a big new bachelor pad in the affluent Atlanta suburb of Roswell.

Of course, Your Mama does not know a baseball from a floor tile and had no idea who this optimistically nick-named Chipper person is. So, we did what we always do when tipped off to the real estate activities of a professional baseball player we've never heard of before: We picked up our bedazzled but woefully bedraggled, slim-line princess phone for an early morning consult with our booze-fueled and baseball-crazy b.f.f. Fiona Trambeau up in San Francisco. Not surprisingly, we caught dear ol' Fiona on her Old-School flip phone at about 8:30 am as she chomped on a powdered jelly donut and did the infamous walk of shame up Market Street. We didn't ask but Your Mama would bet both our long-bodied bitches, Linda and Beverly, that Fiona was clad in her usual uniform of a loosely fitted head scarf and a spandex unitard that leaves nothing to the imagination.

Anyhoo, the first thing scandal-obsessed Fiona gleefully told us about Mister Chipper Jones is that back in the late 1990s he got a Hooters waitress preggers while he was still married to his first wife who stood by him publicly before she dumped his extra marital baby making ass. To his credit, he owned up to the ugly business and, by all accounts, supports the child. Mister Jones went on to marry another lady with whom he made three more children and from whom he was recently divorced.

While his personal life has certainly had its tawdry and turbulent twists and turns—and whose hasn't, really?—Mister Chipper Jones's life on the diamond as a switch-hitting third basemen has been the very picture of professional consistency. He played 19 consecutive seasons with the Atlanta Braves, was instrumental in helping the team to nab a World Series win in 1996 and retired this year with 468 home runs and a lifetime batting average just above .300. (Your Mama had no idea if a .300+ lifetime batting average is a good thing or a bad thing but Fiona assured us it is absolutely impressive.)

Until he moved out—we're not really sure when that was—Mister Chipper Jones (et famille) lived luxuriously in a baronial, approximately 14,000 square foot brick-built Roswell mansion with 5 bedrooms and 6 bathrooms on 2.52 landscaped acres in a small, gated enclave. According to Chatty Charlie, second ex-Missus Chipper Jones got the family homestead. Given that a similarly-sized mansion just a few doors down is currently listed at $1,995,000, it would appear that second ex-Missus Chipper Jones may have to hang on to the property for quite some time before she can even think about selling it for anywhere near the $4,330,000 she and her ex mister paid for the place in August 2005. But we digress...

According to Fulton County property records and listing information kindly forwarded by Chatty Charlie, Mister Chipper Jones's new bachelor pad—conveniently just about six miles from his old family house—sits on 3,85 partly wooded and partly landscaped acres, stands two stories at the front and three at the back, measures around 4,538 square feet and contains a total of 5-6 bedrooms and six full and two half bathrooms.

A long driveway cuts through a thick stand of trees that nearly but not quite completely obscures the privately situated and custom-built residence from the road. A circular motor court makes a stately statement in front of the many-gabled and quintessentially American suburban mini-mansion that listing information described as a "European Traditional." We're not sure if that's an actual category recognized by the American Institute of Architects, but there you have it.

Eight foot wood, glass and iron front doors open into a double-height foyer with limestone floors that makes a single half-step down though a trio of shallow arches into a voluminous, semi-formal family room with hardwood floors, a towering vaulted and beamed ceiling, and substantial stone fireplace flanked by built-in bookcases and board game storage cabinets. Inexplicably, the floor takes another half-step up to a raised section of the room in front of a monumentally-scaled arched window.

Somewhere there's a formal dining room that seats 12 or more, according to listing information, and the semi-formal family room opens directly into the newly renovated, faux-rustic-style center island kitchen complete with rough-hewn wood beams across the ceiling, heavily ornamented glazed and stained cabinetry, slab stone counter tops and top grade appliances that include a 48-inch integrated Sub-Zero and 48-inch commercial-style cook top with griddle. A peninsula snack bar separates the kitchen from the breakfast area with vaulted cypress wood ceiling.

The service areas off the kitchen include a walk-in pantry and a laundry/mud room with built-in housekeeping desk, laundry sink, half pooper and direct access to the attached three-car garage. A fourth garage bay is accessible from the lower level living area. Both the kitchen area and semi-formal family room open to a deep covered dining and lounging porch with a sweeping view over the tree-ringed backyard.

The main floor master suite, according to listing information, offers his and her closets and a roomy restroom outfitted in high-suburban style with high-gloss raised panel taupe cabinetry, speckled granite counter tops, double sinks and a separate a built-in make-up vanity, a glass-doored stall shower and separate spa tub set into a platform between a pair of decorative columns intended—Your Mama imagines—to give the bathroom an element of architectural grandeur. Four bedrooms on the second floor—one for each of his children—each have their own bathroom and share a central den/office/homework lounge.

Down in the daylight basement—listing information calls it the "terrace level"—there are unusually high 10- and 12-foot ceilings, a full bathroom with steam shower, an exercise room with mirrored wall, a fully paneled office—or sixth bedroom—with built-in cabinetry and stained glass details and a a gift wrapping room hidden behind a moving bookcase. There's also a game room with tray ceiling and full bar complete with built-in dishwasher and ice maker and an adjoining media lounge with coffered beam ceiling and built-in entertainment center set into a trio of arched in a brick-faced accent.

Various room on the lower level entertainment spill out to a deep covered and ceramic tiled terrace with built in bar area that overlooks the landscaped backyard with rolling lawns, flagstone pathways, free-form swimming pool and elevated sunken spa.

Other notable features of Mister Chipper Jone's new digs include a driveway alarm that alerts those in the house when a car makes its way down the long driveway, a complete irrigation system outside, central vacuum and surround sound systems inside, high-tech security and pre-wiring for an intercom system that would allow inhabitants and guests the ability to communicate with (and listen in on) other inhabitants and guests located in distant parts of the house.

Your Mama isn't sure what Mister Chipper Jones's post-retirement plans may be but they might involve a whole lotta cook-outs with the year's supply of sausage given to him by the Milwaukee Brewers as a retirement gift. Now children—we have to ask—how much, exactly, is a year's supply of sausage?

listing photos: Atlanta Realty Group

Liz Hurley and Shane Warne Snatch Up Country Spread

BUYER: Elizabeth Hurley and Shane Warne
LOCATION: Donnington, Ledbury, Herefordshire (U.K.)
PRICE: £6,000,000 (list price)
SIZE: 13,445 square feet, 12 bedrooms, 4 full and 2 half bathrooms (plus additional guest and staff quarters)

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: The newest celebrity real estate scuttlebutt out of the pastoral countryside in the U.K. is that stunningly beautiful English "actress" and spokesmodel Elizabeth Hurley and her blond, beefy and beau-hunky retired Australian cricket player fiancée Shane Warne have scooped up Donnington Hall, an historic, 187-ish-acre country estate 50-some miles southwest of Birmingham near the scenic and literary-minded town of Ledbury. We can't pinpoint their exact purchase price but our research reveals the stately and august estate was last listed on the open market earlier this year (2012) with a £6,000,000 guide price; That's a listing price in British real estate speak. A few quick clickety-clacks on Your Mama's currency conversion contraption shows the last asking price translates, at today's rates, to a $9,684,900.

Miz Hurley, according to her resume on the Internet Movie Data Base, has been shaking her svelte yet magnificently curvaceous Showbiz money maker on both t.v. and the big screen since the late 1980s. She didn't really get her big break—if it can be called that—until 1994 when she showed up the premiere of the sappy, silly and screamingly successful romantic comedy Four Weddings and a Funeral with her then-boyfriend Hugh Grant wearing a slinky black Versace dress dangerously held together by a series of very strategically placed, over-sized gold safety pins. It wasn't long after that foxy Miz Hurley was hired as a spokesmodel by cosmetics colossus Estée Lauder—a long-standing and no-doubt lucrative professional relationship that continues today—and was cast as the gun-toting sex kitten Vanessa Kensington in the Austin Powers movies. Since her silver screen salad days in the mid- to late-1990s she's appeared in a number of other movies too terrible to mention and currently—and kind of randomly—designs a line of high-end swim- and beachwear.

Your Mama knows next to nothing about cricket except that it's a beloved and hotly contested athletic activity in places other than the United States. Our brief online research did reveal that the sometimes-controversial and ill-behaved Mister Warne—he's (allegedly) had a lurid thing in the (recent) past for sexting women who are not his wife or girlfriend—is widely regarded as on of the best bowlers to have ever strapped on the pads and swung the cricket bat. Post retirement he's played some more professional cricket, worked as a cricket commentator, played some professional poker and focused on his eponymous philanthropic foundation.

Until recently both Miz Hurley and Mister Warne were married—she to Indian textile heir and software entrepreneur Arun Nayar—but were both quickly divorced when a minor scandal erupted in tabloids after the the two of them were photographed in late 2010 at a London hotel engaged in what appeared to be a little extra-marital canoodling. Oh, what a tangled web some people weave. For the record, both claim their marriages were kaput months before they hooked up and started macking on each other in public places.

Their rather scandalous romantic entanglement aside, the comely and recently engaged couple have—so the gossip goes—spent some seriously big bucks to acquire the very serious and high-maintenance Donnington Hall where they'll bunk down in baronial splendor with their newly blended family that includes three children from Mister Warne's previous marriage and Miz Hurley's one boy-child sired—in case anyone cares—by progressively politicked real estate heir, business tycoon and movie producer Steve Bing who denied paternity until a DNA test proved otherwise. How very Jerry Springer! Anyhoodles, poodles, we digress...

Donnington Hall dates back to the late 17th century, according to marketing materials with pinched from the interweb, but the existing residence, an imposing if slightly squat-looking Grade II-listed Georgian-style pile with 13,455 square feet, was designed in 1909 by quad-monikered architect Gilbert Francis Molyneux Ogilvy for its then-owner, the gloriously-named Admiral Sir Arthur Dalrymple Fanshawe who commanded the Royal Navy Fleet from 1910 to 1913.

By our assessment of the floor plan, the massive, lilac wisteria-draped main house, accessed by an exceptionally long driveway that winds through the sprawling estate's parklands before it arrives at a parking lot-sized gravel forecourt, has 12 bedrooms and 4 full and 2 half bathrooms divided into four large principal bedrooms and five smaller secondary bedrooms on the second floor that share three hall bathrooms, a separate second floor guest suite with sitting room, bedroom and bathroom, and two additional bedrooms and a single shared bathroom on the third floor.

Guests have access to a compartmentalized half bathroom and cloak room discreetly situated just outside the library and live-out staff have access to a tiny water closet nestled into a quiet corner of the service area.

Staff quarters are notably generous with a one bedrooms housekeeper's suite with separate kitchen and private loo near the kitchen on the main floor and a two room nanny suite with separate sitting room and private loo tucked up under the eaves on the third floor.

The capacious public rooms, according to the floor plan included with online marketing materials for the estate, include an immense, 35-foot long reception hall with beautifully worn polished oak floors, a wood-burning fireplace, heavy-duty plaster moldings, paneled walls lined with sturdy carved pilasters and inset window seats. There's also a 750-plus square foot formal drawing room with oak parquet floors, a fireplace with ornate, carved marble mantelpiece, a formal dining room that easily seats 16 and is located a sufficiently long distance from the kitchen that ensures the waitstaff will mentally curse formal diners even as they smile and set down a perfectly cooked plate of roasted rabbit. A gorgeous, groin-vaulted hall leads back from the reception room and main stair hall to a nearly 30-foot long library with fireplace and original built-in Georgian-style display cases.

A more intimately-scaled sitting room off the kitchen has glass doors that connect to the east-side gardens would make a cozy family room or sun-lit morning room. The adjacent, 400-plus square foot farmhouse-style kitchen, according to marketing materials, is expensively equipped with an Aga-brand range and a pair of built-in ovens and complimented by a nearby larder/pantry and walk-in freezer room.

The service areas of the house are completed by a mud-room entrance with back staircase and, just off the reception all a couple of connected vestibules off of which open a small office and—this being hunting country—a walk-in gun cupboard.

There are a two staircases that ascend to the upper levels. The main, double-wide stair case climbs to an extra-wide landing that's more than 40 feet long and a back staircase that connect the ground level service areas to a back landing and a warren of corridors off of which open three small bedrooms, a two-room guest suite with private bathroom and the somewhat petite laundry room.

There are also two separate staircases that climb from the second to the third floor, both of which are located off the second floor back landing and zig-zagging corridor. One staircase switches back and provides access to the aforementioned nanny suite. The other makes a sharp right turn as is joins to a long, narrow passageway that passes a pair of attic storage rooms before it descends a few steps and makes a hard left turn into an even longer hallway off of which open a nursery/playroom/potential bedroom with fireplace, two good-sized bedrooms, also with fireplaces and, at the far end, a substantial, bifurcated bathroom.

The numerous outbuildings include an L-shaped, Edwardian-era equestrian barn, a number of garden maintenance storage buildings and potting sheds, a 16th-century coach house and tithe barn with automobile storage capability, a pair of historical staff cottages and four tenant-occupied cottages. At least one report in the British media says the new owners—that would be Miz Hurley and Mister Warne—have no plans to toss the current tenants.

In addition to thick coppices, expansive pasture lands that explode with wild daffodils in the spring and pristine park lands dotted with mature specimen trees, Donnington Hall's 187-ish acre grounds include broad flagstone terraces, various gardens (formal, sunken, walled, vegetable and etc.) and greenhouses connected by gravel foot paths, a variety of fruit trees, vast lawns that tumble down to a one-acre, carp-stocked spring-fed lake, a full-sized tennis court and—as all great country houses in Britain probably should—a croquet lawn. There is not, as far as we can tell from a perusal of the marketing materials available online, a swimming pool, spa or cricket pitch, the latter of which Your Mama fully expects will be installed tout de suite.

In addition to their fab new country estate Mister Warne owns a major house in the exclusive Melbourne suburb of Brighton—that's Australia, puppies—that he may or may not have quietly on the market for $15-20,000,000 and Miz Hurley maintains a townhouse-type residence on a cherry tree-lined street in southwest London as well a 72-acre Cotswald farm in the hamlet of Ampney Knowle new Barnsley.

listing photos and floor plan: Hayes

Britney Spears (Finally) Buys Again

BUYER: Britney Spears
LOCATION: Thousand Oaks, CA
PRICE: $8,500,000 (listing price)
SIZE: 8,456 square feet, 5 bedrooms, 7 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Hold on to your britches, y'all, because Your Mama has recently and repeatedly had scuttlebutt slip down the celebrity real estate gossip grapevine that still-conserved international pop star and twang-talking X Factor judge Britney Spears has done bought herself a new mansion. And it's not, not surprisingly, that bluff-top, ocean-view spread in Malibu (CA) those wily X Factor people tried to pass off as her house last week when small groups of the show's hopeful contestants were invited to belt their wannabe pop star hearts out at one of the four judge's homes.

Property records don't yet reflect a transfer of ownership—which makes this all just a juicy little tidbit of celebrity real estate rumor and gossip for now—but all signs and several unsolicited sources point Your Mama towards Miz Spears purchasing a sprawling, Hacienda-style casa in sleepy and upscale Thousand Oaks, CA that was last listed on the open market in April (2012) with an asking price of $8,500,000.

Listing information we managed to brutishly inveigle out of the internets shows the multi-winged, single-story red tile-roofed residence in question, located behind the 24-hour guarded gates of the prosperously peopled Sherwood Country Club, was completed in 2010 and measures 8,456 square feet with five bedrooms and 7 bathrooms.

The unfortunately tennis-court-free mini-estate comprises two separate and slightly elevated parcels that total more than 1.4 mostly flat acres and allow for long, unobstructed views over the mansion-dotted hills and painstakingly manicured Jack Nicklaus-designed 18-hole golf course that weaves and winds its way through the super-swank ex-urban development like the tentacles of an unnaturally green octopus.

An arched, wood front door set deeply into an also-arched portico opens into a tremendous center hall entry that will certainly impress guests and the pizza delivery person too with its soaring ceiling, sumptuous limestone tile flooring and high-arched window that mirrors the arched front door and perfectly frames a distant, craggy outline of the surrounding mountains against the almost always clear blue southern California sky.

An architecturally thrilling and vaguely ecclesiastical parabolic colonnade runs alongside the airy formal dining room that's expensively outfitted in with wide plank oak floor and a high wood-beamed ceiling. An adjoining semi-circular wet bar with enough seating for at least six bleary-eyed booze hounds to sidle up to the thick slab marble counter top—or maybe it's granite—and get a good, glassy-eyed look into the also semi-circular, glass-fronted and temperature-controlled walk-in wine room.

The luscious custom oak floors extend into the immense, L-shaped open-plan family living space that includes a double-island chef-friendly kitchen with gray-veined white marble counter tops, top grade appliances and adjacent butler's pantry that we imagine is probably far larger and better equipped than most kitchens. A dizzying but sturdily impressive system of exposed beams and trusses stretch across the almost ludicrously lofty great room that's decoratively divided into a large breakfast area and even roomier family room space with fireplace and giant glass pocket-doors that glide open and disappear into the walls, allowing for an all-but-seamless merging between indoor and outdoor living areas.

Other public and semi-private rooms, according to online listings we dug up, include a library—that Your Mama is cynical enough to think will always suffer from a dearth of actual books, a pair of separate offices and a home theater/bonus room.

Listing information isn't specific as to whether each of the guest/family/domestic bedrooms have access to a private john or not but does state the spacious master suite is complete with two massive walk-in closets and a pair of bathrooms, one for the lady of the house and one for her live-in manager/mister/co-conservator.

The vast limestone tiled outdoor living spaces encompass a lounge area with fireplace, separate dining area and, in between, a semi-circular built-in barbecue center. The deep, covered verandas that extend off the back of the house give way to a (mostly) flat and fully-landscaped backyard with liberally watered and perfectly clipped lawns, rose gardens and ample sunbathing terraces on the long sides of the infinity-edged swimming pool and spa. Listing information goes on to declare the house has a five car garage plus a separate bay for golf cart storage accessible through a porte-cochère that connects the driveway at the front of the house through to an nearly enclosed rear motor court.

Miz Spears has a long, long, loooong history of house hopping—see next paragraph—and it remains to be seen how long she'll stay put in the Thousand Oaks mansion she's (allegedly) just acquired. Given that she's now living a much more stable—if still conserved—life with Mister Trawick, Your Mama hopes—selfishly, for our own sanity, natch—this is the last move for the (in)famously peripatetic Miz Spears for a very long time.

Shortly after she dumped Kevin Federwhatever, her free-loading second husband and father of her two children, Miz Spears fled the couple's marital mansion in the guard-garted Serra Retreat in Malibu (CA) and bounced around to several high end rentals in The Bu including—so the celebrity property gossip goes—a land-side cottage situated behind the illustrious gates of Malibu's Colony that Shabby Chic high priestess Rachel Ashwell sold to sitcom star Peri Gilpin in the summer of 2010 for $3,550,000.

In January 2007, well into the all-to-public unraveling during which she fraternized with some pretty unsavory sorts, repeatedly flashed her pudenda for the paps, shaved her hair off in a random beauty parlor in the San Fernando Valley and wound up being involuntarily committed the mental ward and Cedar Sinai, Miz Spears impulsively shelled out $6,750,000 for a fully-furnished 7,400+ square foot mock-Tuscan-style mansion in the guard-gated Summit community just off Mulholland Drive on the ridge between Beverly Hills and Studio City.

Sometime in late 2008 or early 2009, on the mental mend and beyond ready to leave the house in the Summit where she lived during much of her jaw-dropping and—let's be honest—downright sad downward spiral, Miss Spears decamped to the so-called Chateau Suenos, an approximately 10,000 square foot Macmansion in The Estates section of The Oaks community in Calabasas, the same neck of L.A.'s proto-suburban woods where the slickly produced tweenage heart throb bubble gum pop star Justin Beiber now lives in an almost-as-large Spanish-style mansion he bought in April 2012 for six-and-a-half million smackers.

In early 2011 by then romantically attached to her current fiancé, Tinseltown bigwig talent agent Jason Trawick, Miz Spears and clan high-tailed it to the guard-gated, celebrity-choked and equestrian-oriented Hidden Hills enclave where she rented a ginormous, 19,107 square foot multi-winged pseudo-Tudor mansion/compound with a total of 10 bedrooms and 13 bathrooms on 3.39 landscaped acres.

Hidden Hills is, of course, the same community where Jennifer Lopez owns a home as do Melissa Etheridge, Nicolette Sheridan and Sharon and Ozzy Osbourne who have become so desperate to unload their Hidden Hills house they put it out for lease earlier this year at fifty grand a month and moved it to a plush, rented hacienda-style casa located on a wide, tree-lined street in the flats of Beverly Hills.

Apparently Miz Spears didn't cotton much to the Tudor-style pile in horsey Hidden Hills because by the end of 2011 she'd once again packed up her two tots and collection of Daisy Dukes and settled into yet another rented mansion, this time a 10,567 square foot architectural ugly duckling inside the 24-hour guarded gates of the hoity-toity Sherwood Country Club where initiation fee were reported last year by the folks at The Hollywood Reporter to be around $160,000 and some of the deep pocked members are said to include Mel Gibson, Will Smith, Kevin James and Justin Timberlake.

Located far far far from the maddening crowds and ever-present paps in Tinseltown, the Sherwood Country Club is none-the-less a coveted location with all sorts of celebs and other high-profile peeps looking for a luxurious suburban country club sort of lifestyle. Disgraced former Countrywide CEO Angelo Mozilo recently sold a red brick Georgian-Colonial mini-manse that backs up to the community's 2nd fairway and Hollywood scion turned reality t.v. star turned baby factory Tori Spelling and her actor husband Dean McDermott leased a 2.45 acre estate with an approximately 9,000 square foot main house inside the Sherwood Country Club gates in April (2012). To be honest, chickens, we're not sure if they remain in residence.

Avid celebrity real estate watchers will recall the verdant and affluent Sherwood Country Club is the same golf-centric community where financially-embattled former professional baseball player Lenny Dykstra lost the 6.6+ acre estate and neo-Georgian mansion he bought from former professional puck pusher Wayne Gretzky to the salivating maw of foreclosure in the fall of 2010 and it's also the same gated enclave where tennis titan Pete Sampras custom built a hulking, 13,000-ish square foot contemporary with a separate 1,200 square foot guest house and 2,000 square foot fitness facility and, even before the paint was dry, caught a classic case of The Celebrity Real Estate Fickle and flipped it on the market in March 2010 with a $25,000,000 price tag. The sprawling Sampras estate, pretty much right next door the Brit and Jase's new digs, is still for sale with a reduced asking price of $19,950,000.

listing photos: Re/Max Olson via Zillow

TV Producer Alan Poul Lists Hollywood Hills House

SELLER: Alan Poul
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $989,000
SIZE: 1,784 square feet, 3 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: As we sipped on a tall gin & tonic and perused some of the less expensive listings in the Los Angeles area the other day Your Mama ran across a low-slung 1964 contemporary in the Hollywood Hills renovated in 2002, listed at $989,000—downright cheap by Showbiz real estate standards—and owned, according to property records, by out, proud and community-minded television producer/director Alan Poul.

Mister Poul's resume on the Internet Movie Data Base shows he's toiled in Tinseltown as a producer since at least the mid-1980s with a respectable list of credits that include the mid-90s teen drama My So-Called Life, all three of the separate mini series cycles based on Armistead Maupin's eight Tales of the City novels, the super-hit dark comedy Six Feet Under in the early to mid-2000s and the only season of Swingtown, a 2008 t.v. turkey about a group of affluent Chicago suburbanites grappling with the 1970s sexual revolution.

Mister Poul, always the bridesmaid but never the bride when it comes to the Emmys, has been nominated seven times—for both Tales of the City and Six Feet Under—but has yet to bring one home. Some of his more recent credits include directing a couple of episodes of the The Big C (in 2010) with the always phenomenal Laura Linney and he currently executive produces the The Newsroom, an Aaron Sorkin-created drama that Your Mama tried to watch and quickly found well-intentioned and smartly produced but self-righteously high-minded and tiresomely melodramatic.

Anyhoodles poodles...property records show Mister Poul picked up his hillside home near the tippy-top of the Hollywood Hills a decade ago, in May 2002, for $750,000 from a fella named Mark Werts whose name vintage- and fashion-minded Angelenos may recognize as the founder behind the perennially popular apparel and lifestyle shopping emporium American Rag Cie.

Current listing information shows the two-story residence spans a modest 1,784 square feet with three bedrooms and three bathrooms and like many houses in the Hollywood Hills—including the one Your Mama and The Doctor Cooter just sold for a bit over the asking price—Mister Poul's pad sits almost right up on the narrow and little-trafficked street with only a sliver of what might generously be called a front yard.

A slender porch hugs the front facade and connects the barely-there driveway to the front door that opens directly into the upper level main living space outfitted with maple wood floors, a gas fireplace and custom-built floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, some with actual books in them. Two wide banks of wood-framed glass doors swing open to a balcony deck that runs almost the entire width of the back of the house and from which there are expansive views down the rugged canyon and over the flat and vast expanse of the San Fernando Valley.

The dining area of the living/dining room area blurs to a not-optimally compact, u-shaped kitchen that's nicely if fairly ordinarily finished with cherry—or mahogany—stained cabinetry and a full suite of higher-grade stainless steel appliances that include a six-burner range, convection oven, built-in microwave, silent running dishwasher and under-counter wine refrigerator.

Just off the living room area there's a guest bathroom with stall shower and the neighboring bedroom has direct balcony access through more wood-framed glass doors and—in lieu of, it seems, a proper closet—a built-in entertainment center with flat-screen t.v. that allows the room to easily convert to a den or media lounge.

Downstairs, a desirable-sized second guest/family bedroom has built-in cabinetry and easy access to an adjacent, windowless hall bathroom with two-person steam shower. The children will note on the floor plan included with online marketing materials that the stacked washer/and dryer are tucked into a squeezy closet in the lower level guest bedroom. This isn't the best scenario, obviously, particularly when you have a house guest and need to launder your underthings. However, according to Your Mama and The Doctor Cooters' imperious house gurl Svetlana, it's still far batter than the clothes cleaning machines being wedged into the attached but tight two-car garage just off the kitchen.

Anyhoo, the hotel suite-style master bedroom stretches more than 28-feet long with fireplace, separate sitting area, fitted walk-in closet and private—if windowless—facility with spa tub, separate fully-tiled stall shower, crapper cubbie and an space-efficient but stylistically puzzling twin sink vanity situation.

Both of the lower level bedrooms open to a large deck that's cantilevered over the hillside and  conveniently accessible from the upper level balcony by a sturdy-looking outdoor stair case. Mister Poul—or maybe it's Staging Lady in a Pink Toyota—did up the deck as a party-encouraging outdoor living and dining space with a suite of matching slip-covered slipper-style sofas and chairs arranged around a concrete and glass coffee table. A rectangular glass-topped and steel-legged dining table surrounded by six, white, molded plastic Panton chairs was tucked into the intimate niche formed by the staircase.

Dog walkers and urban hiking enthusiasts will take note that the house is just a few minutes walk from the upper, Mulholland Drive entrance to Runyon Canyon where oodles and caboodles of famous folks of all stripes and regular people alike hike and walk their dogs.

A quick spin through property records does not immediately turn up any other property in Los Angeles—or anywhere else—owned by Mister Poul.

listing photos and floor plan: Keller Williams Beverly Hills