Pippa Middleton and her husband James Matthews are starting 2023 by giving their grand Berkshire house an equally grand makeover, complete with a ginormous outdoor swimming pool and tennis court.
The couple and their three children moved into the impressive 32-room Georgian mansion set on 150 acres towards the end of last year.
Their plans mean digging up the massive walled garden where the previous owner cultivated fruit and vegetables. According to planning permission requests shared by Richard Eden at Daily Mail, they need to ask for permission because the walled garden and main house are Grade II-listed and lie in an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and near ancient woodland.
They hope to replace it with a large 82 ft x 19 ft swimming pool, which Richard dubs ‘more than twice the size of a typical private pool’ and which he says would be ‘more than twice the size of a typical private pool’ and the ‘same size as those at her two local leisure centres in the Royal County of Berkshire’.
Next to their pool, the lawn will be dug up and replaced with a tennis court. Where Richard says Pippa plans to install AstroTurf fake grass, ‘to enable safe playing conditions all year round’. The kitchen garden’s potting shed will be converted into changing rooms.
The house, which was the subject of a painstaking multi-million-pound restoration by its previous owner, is a short drive from the home of Pippa’s parents, Michael and Carole Middleton, in Bucklebury. It’s also pretty close to Kate Middleton and Prince William’s new home – Adelaide Cottage.
‘Ownership of [the house] has recently changed hands and the new owner is seeking to evolve and identify a new use for the expansive walled garden site,’ their planning agent said in documents submitted to the local council just before Christmas.
Before they lived with their partners, Pippa and Kate Middleton had lived together in a rather nice Chelsea flat owned by their parents.
Spread over three floors, the flat had quite a bit of space to relax in (though considerably smaller than the pair of current residents), with three bedrooms, two bathrooms, and a lovely light-filled reception room.
The dominant note of the interior design is ‘neutral’, with a strong line in beige carpets, magnolia walls, and traditional furniture. It was sold in 2018, for £1.88 million.
