A mansion in London once owned by Freddie Mercury
Courtesy Knight Frank.
If you’ve got $38 million to spare, you can own a piece of rock ‘n’ roll history. A central London mansion once owned by Queen frontman Freddie Mercury is on the market, with an asking price in excess of £30 million ($38 million). The singer visited Garden Lodge, in the posh Kensington district, in 1980 and made an offer on the spot, said Knight Frank, which is handling the sale.
It’s not exactly “easy come, easy go” for the owner. When the singer died in 1991 at the age of 45, the home and everything in it went to his former fiancée, Mary Austin, and she has been living there ever since.
“This house has been the most glorious memory box, because it has such love and warmth in every room,” Austin said. “It has been a joy to live in and I have many wonderful memories here. Now that it is empty, I’m transported back to the first time we viewed it.”
oven to be auction catnip. A white-glove sale of his personal effects at Sotheby’s London last year hit $15.4 million on just the first day, with every item selling out, including a very worn-in pair of Adidas high-tops. Over the course of six auctions, bidders from nearly 60 countries vied for Mercury’s treasures.
Possibly increasing the mansion’s appeal to artistically inclined house hunters, the Neo-Georgian style 1907 structure has an artistic provenance from its very beginnings. It was designed by architect Ernest Marshall for a pair of painters, Cecil Rea and Constance Halford. Later owners include Peter Wilson, a former Sotheby’s chair.
After buying the home, Mercury asked interior architect and designer Robin Moore Ede to redesign it. Their renovations, following Mercury’s own ideas and using high-grade marble, wood, and similar materials, lasted over a decade, and turned the home into a showcase for the musician’s continually growing holdings of art and other fine objects. Mercury also designed the garden, which features large magnolia trees that bloom in spring, Asian-inspired water features, and an extensive selection of topiary.
The interior of the residence features a double-height drawing room, designed as a studio for the original owners, with a two-story window allowing abundant light. Mercury installed his grand piano there, which he had used to write songs including the band’s 1975 mega-hit “Bohemian Rhapsody.” The dining room is painted a citrusy yellow, his favorite color according to Knight Frank.
Queen was one of the most successful bands in rock history; NME estimated that the group had sold 300 million records—and that was in 2012. Forbes, meanwhile, reported in 2022 that “Bohemian Rhapsody” was the most-streamed 20th-century song, surpassing 1.6 billion streams globally across all services. The band’s history was adapted to a critically acclaimed feature film in 2018, featuring Rami Malek as Mercury.
