As you stroll through the grand hallway of The Chalet, the mansion surrounded by the Surrey Hills that for more than 30 years was the home of David Gold, one of the East End’s most successful wheeler-dealing multimillionaires, you are left in no doubt as to which football team was etched deep into his soul.
Carpets in claret, the colour of Gold’s beloved West Ham United, which he co-owned for 13 years until his death, stretch almost as far as the eye can see. As you reach stained-glass windows at the end, decorated with peacocks, an armchair has a single claret cushion which reads: “And on the eighth day, God created West Ham United FC.”
The same colour-coded devotion can be found in the grand reception rooms in this Victorian-era estate, just off the hallway. In the smartest of these — in which there is a huge mahogany table and imposing paintings of the first Duke of Wellington and Queen Victoria at her coronation — the claret carpets are bordered in blue, West Ham’s other club colour.
Gold’s 9,800 sq ft private palace, perched above the town of Caterham, represented a labour of love of one of Stepney’s most famous boys done good, who was born into abject poverty in 1936 and then built a fortune with daughters Jacqueline and Vanessa, bringing the family’s wealth to an estimated £460 million by the time he died in 2023.
David Gold with his daughters, Vanessa, left, and Jacqueline in 2012
TIM WHITBY/GETTY IMAGES
“He told us he was thinking of buying the house and he took my sister [Jacqueline] and me there. It was in a state of total disrepair,” recalls his daughter Vanessa, 58, of when they went to see it in 1990.
“We said to our father: ‘Don’t do this — this looks like hard work.’ But as we all drove away, he said, ‘Actually, I’ve already bought it.’”
The property features an outdoor tennis court below a terrace where guests can watch the game
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Gold’s accomplishments that financed the 1990 purchase aren’t necessarily for the prudish. By the time he bought The Chalet, he had long made his fortune through his Gold Star Publications media group, launching the Daily Sport and Sunday Sport tabloids with business partner and old adult-magazine rival David Sullivan in the 1980s, and publishing a fair few racy magazines.
Thanks in no small part to the vision of Jacqueline, Gold was also in the process of turning the once-seedy underwear chain Ann Summers, which he had bought with his brother Ralph in 1972, into Britain’s biggest mainstream name in lingerie and sex toys. Jacqueline then masterminded the purchase of Knickerbox in 2000, while Gold and Sullivan took over Birmingham City, buying the club for £1 in 1993 and owning it until 2009 and then, until Gold’s death, his beloved West Ham.
At his new home in Caterham, Gold launched into a lavish two-year renovation of the house, creating a striking country estate dedicated to his passions of football, flying and fun. After moving in, he entertained friends in sumptuous parties in the grand hall and reception rooms; landed his helicopter on a specially built helipad on a hill; built an outdoor tennis court below a terrace where guests could take in a drink while watching the game; and constructed his own golf course, with holes named after his businesses and publications.
Gold used to host lavish parties in the mansion’s grand hall and reception rooms
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“He loved entertaining,” Vanessa says, recalling soirées frequented by famous friends like the singer Adam Faith, the Italian lawyer Nancy Dell’Olio (England manager Sven-Goran Eriksson’s ex-girlfriend), television presenter Lizzie Cundy, and Barry Fry, the mercurial former football manager.
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He would open up the gardens each year to raise money for charity, she says. “He invested in preserving the ancient woodland; he loved the wild deer, and he once owned peacocks,” she adds. “He planted thousands and thousands of daffodil bulbs.”
Gold frequently landed his Cessna plane on a special area at the back of the garden near the golf course (naturally, making sure the coast was clear first). As his health faded, meanwhile, he landed his helicopter right by the house.
Ann Summers insignia can be found everywhere in the house. There is an indoor pool, complete with a giant Ann Summers logo of an apple with a bite taken out of it, leading straight onto that terrace overlooking the tennis court. The only problem, says Vanessa, is “he actually didn’t like swimming. So he didn’t go in very often”.
The indoor pool features a giant Ann Summers logo
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The landscaped gardens — frequently visited by deer — have been meticulously looked after, along with a koi pond at the end of the sweeping driveway, even though the property has sat empty for three years since Gold’s death. Jacqueline herself died two months later from breast cancer, leaving Vanessa to continue the family business as joint chair of West Ham and chair of Ann Summers.
The main house remains, like the leisure facilities and gardens, largely as Gold left it. An immaculate, vast kitchen has an Aga on which a tea towel still hangs. The units, updated around a decade ago, are in excellent condition. Striking portraits of an imperious-looking Gold with his fiancée, Lesley Manning, with whom he lived in the house from 2012 until his death, hang in the great hallway.
The kitchen comes with a grand island and an Aga
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The lower ground floor, which we reach through a black spiral metallic staircase, contains a huge games room (also decked out in West Ham-themed claret walls and blue carpets) with a pool table in the middle, plus another living room with huge blue armchairs as well as the swimming pool room. There’s a wine cellar with a gated entrance (again decorated with the Ann Summers apple and a Birmingham City welcome mat). A wood-panelled study leads to a panic room with a safe, a de rigueur feature for the very rich.
The five upstairs bedrooms are accessed via a huge ornamental staircase with decorative iron balustrading. Vanessa recalls the Covid pandemic, when her father — then in his early 80s — made the landing on top of the stairs an unlikely office and would hold in-person meetings with Jacqueline and Vanessa who were perched at the bottom of the stairs, shouting at each other from a safe distance. “My sister and I were so worried about him getting Covid that we encouraged him to go into lockdown quite quickly,” she says.
Five bedrooms are accessed via a huge ornamental staircase
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So why, three years after Gold’s death, does The Chalet remain unsold and, apparently, stuck in a time warp? The uncomfortable truth, accepted by his family, is that they initially overpriced it, putting it on for £6 million with Savills in 2024 but now reducing it by almost half, to £3.5 million, and relaunching it with agent-brokerage Moveli.
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“They [the previous agents] just got it wrong to be honest,” says Philip Knight of Moveli, a former Hamptons director. “It’s about how much Caterham can take rather than what the properties are worth,” he adds, pointing out that it could not command the same value as Esher, Cobham or Reigate.
A view of the house
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Vanessa takes partial responsibility, saying the family perhaps had their judgment clouded by their glorious memories. “Your heart says it’s worth a lot more,” she says.
Knight says Caterham is attractive for families because of Caterham School, a leading private school. It appeals to Londoners who want a “taste of the country” but also want to be close to a mainline station for city access, the M25 motorway and Gatwick airport. There are a large number of spacious family homes here, as Caterham was developed swiftly during the Victorian era to suit the new breed of prosperous and wealthy 19th-century commuters following the opening of the railway.
The property contains a koi carp pond at the end of a sweeping driveway
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Included with the property, plus 14 acres, is a multi-car garage and separate staff accommodation bringing the total built area to around 14,289 sq ft. Notably, it is not listed, which means a buyer has far greater scope to make changes.
Plus, a further 16 acres — land nestled behind the tennis court — is available through separate negotiation. Knight suggests a buyer might be inclined to protect against a developer in future, even though he thinks it unlikely because the house is surrounded by the Surrey Hills National Landscape.
Vanessa is realistic about all that Ann Summers and West Ham United branding, however beautiful the property is, along with its proportions. “I’m being open and I will say that I think it’s not to everyone’s taste,” she says.