The stately homes going to the Arabs

Press, 8 July 1976, Page 21

The stately homes going to the Arabs

By

SUE ARNOLD,

of the Ixjndon

“Observer''

The buck — or rather the riyal — does not stop at the Dorchester, the posh London hotel which has fallen to the Arabs About "5.000 houses tn Britain were bought by Arabs last year. These included Mereworth Castle, near Tunbridge Wells, and Clive of India's old pad in Berkeley Square. Estate agents now complain that they cannot get their hands on enough property in the £lOO.OOO - plus ($200,000) range to satisfy their Middle Eastern clients. But fears that the Arabs might get their hands on the site of the Battle of Hastings have been allayed — with help from across the Atlantic. The

Government has just paid £690,000 (about $1,400,000) to save Battle Abbey, founded by William the Conqueror after his 1066 victory over King Harold. A goodwill cheque from an anonymous American institution made this possible after reports that Arab investors had their eyes on the battleground and its abbey. Impatient oil sheikhs sometimes by-pass property agents and go househunting on spec. A housewife in Sunningdale, up the Thames past Windsor, was alarmed to see a helicopter land on her lawn. Out stepped a white-robed gentleman who bowed perfunctorily and then made a substantial offer for her entire estate. She said she thought she had better ask her husband first. All over England impoverished owners of Tudor mansions are doubtless waiting for the summons. Presumably Lord Butler could not hold out any longer: he sold Gatcombe Park, deep in the Cotswolds. for £500.000 ($1 million) to the Queen, who will give it to Princess Anne and Captain Mark Phillips.

With the hotel business so becalmed, many owners must be wishing that it had been for them, instead of the Dorchester, that Sheikh Nujib Alamuddin chairman of Middle East Airlines, wrote his cheque for £8 million ($l6 million). The Savoy Group, who own Claridges, the Connaught, and the Berkeley. as well as the Savoy, are having to make subtle little economies they hope the customers will not notice. All the cutlery is being standardised: in the good old days there were at least 11 different sizes of fork, and the new bath towels are to be four inches smaller all round. Still, for most people

who do not frequent fivestar London hotels, it is in little ways that one realises the' Arabs are in town. Two prohibitivelyexpensive private clinics in St Johns Wood have "No Parking” signs in English and Arabic. A city businessman complains that you cannot get a seat in the gent's hairdressers at the Carlton Tower Hotel because of all the petro clients queuing up for trims — not surprising since one hotel guest from Jeddah takes up 47 rooms for his entourage. And just around the comer, in a Knightsbridge stationer’s window, the old sample visiting cards engraved with such headings as The Countess of B, Cheyne Walk, have been nudged out by new gold-edged cards headed Mohammed Al Rashid, Palace of the Blue Flamingoes, Rabat. Last year, it was said to be the Japanese who were shipping all the best claret out of the country. This year, though officially it is against the Muslim religion, vintners (if pressed) will admit that a great deal of the better wtnes are heading for the Desert kingdoms.