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    Florence Nightingale’s Childhood Home Just Listed for $4.8 Million

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    Florence Nightingale famously wrote, “It breaks my heart to leave Lea Hurst.” Now, the same country estate in the U.K. where the nurse and statistician grew up is looking for its next owner.

    Lea Hurst, a Grade II-listed home in Derbyshire, has hit the market for £3.75 million (or roughly $4.8 million) with England’s Blue Book Agency. According to the listing, Nightingale’s wealthy father, William Nightingale (née Shore), inherited the historic property from his great-uncle in 1815. At the time, the property had a 17th-century farmhouse, which was transformed into the grandiose Elizabethan-style dwelling seen today. 

    When the Nightingales relocated to Embley Park in Hampshire in 1825, they kept Lea Hurst as a summer house, and the estate remained in the family until 1946. Beginning in the mid-1950s, the estate served as a residence for retired nurses and later operated as a nursing home under the Royal Surgical Society until 2004. Nightingale, who died in 1910 at the age of 90, is best remembered for founding the world’s first professional nursing school in London. 

    The drawing room at Lea Hurst, the historic county estate where Florence Nightingale lived as a child.

    Blue Book Agency

    RELATED: Cara Delevingne’s Childhood Home in London Lists for Nearly $30 Million 

    The current owner, Peter Kay, snagged the property in 2011 and spent the next three years restoring the place to its former glory, including recreating the original Victorian gardens. The Kay family has even gathered historic letters written by Nightingale, along with old photographs, drawings, and furniture connected to the house and the Nightingale clan. 

    “It has been a great pleasure and privilege to have owned the Lea Hurst estate, in Derbyshire’s beautiful Peak District, for the past 13 years,” Kay said in a statement. “We were drawn to Lea Hurst by its grand early Victorian gothic architectural styling and its stunning position overlooking the Derwent Valley. But it was the fact that this house was once the beloved home of one of our most important historical figures, Florence Nightingale, that made this an irresistible purchase for me.” 

    The formal dining room features a stone fireplace and original wood floors.

    Blue Book Agency

    The 13-bed abode sits on over 19 picturesque acres, with Derwent Valley on one side and mature parkland on the other. The home itself is entered via a gothic arched front door, which opens up to a grand reception hall decked out with high ceilings and flagstone flooring. Some of the standout spaces include a formal drawing room with original wooden floorboards, a wood-burning carved chimney, antique mirrored glass, and lots of bookshelves. The ground floor also holds a formal dining room, a butler’s pantry with built-in glazed cabinets, and a library where Nightingale was formerly homeschooled by her father. 

    The home has 13 total bedrooms.

    Blue Book Agency

    RELATED: Tom Ford Pays $52 Million for Jackie Kennedy’s Childhood Home in the Hamptons 

    Elsewhere, you’ll find a revamped chef’s kitchen with limestone flooring, a large island, granite counters, and a breakfast area. From here, you can access an outdoor dining terrace or scope out the game room, which has been kitted out with a billiards table. The upstairs holds all the bedrooms, including the primary, which features an original stone fireplace, an adjoining dressing room, and an ensuite bath. Interestingly, the double bedroom was personally used by Nightingale when she returned from caring for the British soldiers during the Crimean War.  

    “The most satisfying thing for us has been turning the house back into a family home for the first time since Florence and her sister Parthenope were running around here in the 1820s,” added Kay. “Our youngest two children were born in the house. It has been a wonderful place for our children to grow up in.” 

    Click here to see more photos of Lea Hurst.  

    Blue Book Agency

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    Abby Montanez

    Abigail Montanez is a staff writer at Robb Report. She has worked in both print and digital publishing for over half a decade, covering everything from real estate, entertainment, dining, travel to…

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      Inside the $3 Million L.A. Home of Late Game Show Icon Bob Barker

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      The first house in what is known today as L.A.’s Outpost Estates neighborhood, which winds up into the mountains north of Hollywood, was built in the 1850s by Don Tómas Urquidez in the middle of a sycamore grove near what is today the intersection of Outpost Drive and Hillside Avenue. The three-room adobe structure was later owned by Gen. Harrison Gray Otis, the first publisher of the Los Angeles Times, who dubbed it the Outpost.

      The land around Otis’s Outpost was eventually acquired by developer Charles E. Toberman, who erected a 30-foot red neon sign that read “Outpost” to promote the upscale development that he called Outpost Estates. Early residents of the hillside enclave included silver screen superstars like Bela Lugosi and Dolores Del Rio, and current showbiz residents include Charlize Theron and David Lynch.

      The living room is ample with a fireplace, stained glass, and French doors to the yard.

      Sam Ghazi

      In 1929, a spacious new house was completed on the site of the original adobe cottage, and six decades later, in 1969, the Spanish-Revival-style home was acquired by 19-time Emmy-winning game show host and dedicated animal rights advocate Bob Barker. The beloved host of The Price Is Right occupied the vintage residence for more than 50 years before he died in August 2023, just a few months shy of his 100th birthday. 

      Today, Barker’s home is listed for sale for $2.988 million with Robert Valandra of The Flying V Realty Investment Company. Valandra is one of Barker’s nephews and the executor of the trust that owns and is selling the property.

      Original elements are present throughout the circa 1929 Spanish Revival-style home.

      Sam Ghazi

      In need of a restoration and update, the nearly 5,000-square-foot fixer-upper is still in possession of much enviable original detail, including stained-glass windows, wrought-iron detailing, antique light fixtures, and, on the wood-beamed ceiling over the switchback staircase, a delicate fresco. In the 28-foot-long living room, a fireplace is surrounded by the original wood paneling and arched French doors open to the backyard, while the library includes an original walk-in wet bar. Elsewhere are a dining room, a separate breakfast room, a kitchen with a butler’s pantry, a large laundry room, and a couple of powder rooms.

      There are four bedrooms and three bathrooms on the upper floor. Two bedrooms share a Jack and Jill bath; another has a private bath; and the primary suite includes a bathroom of its own, along with a walk-in closet and a dressing room.

      The backyard and swimming pool are hedged for privacy and gated for security.

      Sam Ghazi

      There’s an almost 400-square-foot garage at the end of a gated driveway and a 600-square-foot basement level that could be used for additional bedrooms, a screening room, or a home office. 

      The slightly more than quarter-acre parcel is privatized by tall and thick hedging. Several rooms on the ground floor spill out to the backyard, and stairs provide access to a long balcony on the upper level. Stepping stones across a tree-shaded lawn connect the house to the swimming pool, which is surrounded by flagstone terracing.

      The property is number 673 on the L.A.’s list of historical and cultural monuments and, as marketing material states, offers a preservation-minded buyer the opportunity to “bring this sleeping beauty back to life.”

      Click here for more photos of Bob Barker’s home.

      Sam Ghazi; CBS Photo Archive/Getty Images More

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      Bob Barker’s House in Photos

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      Just curious why this is a fixer upper when Bob Barker’s net worth when he died was $70 million dollars. The exterior brickwork is broken up, and the floor tile in the main bathroom looks old and terrible, as does the shower tile. No offense, but had Barker abandoned this home to live elsewhere, or was he just extremely thrifty? There’s just a disconnect here. Thanks. More

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      in Luxury

      A Fashion Designer Seeks to Sew Up a $6 Million Deal for a 19th-Century Townhouse in Brooklyn

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      Darryl Kerrigan, more familiarly known to the sartorially inclined as Daryl K, helped to define the lower Manhattan fashion scene during much of the 1990s with her effortless, rock-and-roll-inspired looks and signature stretch leather leggings that she first hawked from a tiny shop on East Sixth Street and then, until 2012, from a larger Bond Street boutique. 

      Like droves of downtown hipsters in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Kerrigan and her partner Paul Leonard, both born and raised in Ireland, decamped their “unfancy East Village loft” and moved to Brooklyn, where records show Kerrigan acquired a 19th-century townhouse in the Boerum Hill neighborhood in 2000. The townhouse is now on the market for $6 million, down from the $6.5 million that was initially asked for. Terry Naini and Emila Sultan of Brown Harris Stevens hold the listing.

      The State Street townhouse is fronted by a classic raised-stoop entrance.

      Stefano Ukmar for Brown Harris Stevens

      The handsome brick townhouse, part of the State Street Houses National Register Historic District, dates to the late 1800s and stands four stories atop a full basement with an embellished metal cornice and a classic raised-stoop entrance. Easily used as a single-family home, the property is zoned as a two-family residence, with a garden-level apartment below a spacious three-bedroom and two-and-a-half-bath triplex. (The upper-level triplex was available for rent last year, first at $22,500 per month and then later at $18,500 per month.)

      The upper three floors feature tons of period details, including the original staircase, crown moldings, and wood floors, with parquet throughout the parlor floor and wide planks on the upper levels. There are six vintage marble mantels, two of which can be wood burning. The classic raised-stoop entrance leads to a lengthy foyer, a 25-foot-long living room, and an eat-in kitchen.

      There are three bedrooms, plus a small study with a bay window; the primary suite occupies the entire top floor and stretches more than 42 feet end to end with numerous closets and a vintage-style updated bathroom. 

      The eat-in kitchen features original parquet flooring and a view into the rear garden.

      Stefano Ukmar for Brown Harris Stevens

      The garden-level apartment can be accessed from within the triplex unit but can also operate as an independent two-bedroom and one-bath rental or guest apartment with a private outside entrance, an open-plan great room and kitchen, and French doors to a 40-foot-deep garden.

      Kerrigan moved to New York in the mid-1980s and soon began designing costumes for Jim Jarmusch’s films, including “My Cousin Vinny,” starring Marisa Tomei. Though she closed her boutique back in 2012, she has collaborated with mainstream brands like Urban Outfitters, Calvin Klein, and Madewell. She also continues to sell her own designs through her Daryl K website.

      Click here for more photos of 324 State Street.

      Stefano Ukmar for Brown Harris Stevens More

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      Marilyn Monroe Once Stayed in This Windmill in the Hamptons. Now You Can Buy It for $12 Million.

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      Like a lot of artists, literary figures and actors in the 1950s, including Edward Albee, Jackson Pollock and Truman Capote, newlyweds Marilyn Monroe and Arthur Miller headed to the Hamptons in the summer of 1957.

      The couple reportedly shacked up in a humble cottage at the historic Stony Hill Farm in Amagansett, part of which is nowadays owned by Alec and Hilaria Baldwin. However, so the story goes, to thwart the press, the frequently paparazzi-tracked pair would also stay at another place on nearby Quail Hill, in an old windmill that was invisible from the road and that had been converted into a unique and simply appointed residence. It was only five years later that Monroe died in her home in the Brentwood area of Los Angeles that was recently purchased by a neighbor who initially wanted to tear the house down.

      Monroe and Miller’s funky, romantic hideaway in the Hamptons, not quite two miles inland from popular Atlantic Avenue Beach and appropriately known as The Windmill House, has recently popped up for sale for $12 million. The almost 5.5-acre, mostly wooded property offers total privacy thanks to it being bordered on two sides by protected land owned by the Peconic Land Trust.

      The 19th-century windmill was expanded and converted into a rustic residence in the 1950s.

      The windmill sits on the high point of Quail Hill and was built in the mid-1800s. It pumped water for the farm on which it sat for about 100 years, but sometime around 1950, Samuel Rubin, the founder of Fabergé Perfumes, converted the three-story windmill into a rustic guest house. It was around this time that a structure was added to the back of the windmill to house a kitchen, along with a bedroom and a bathroom. 

      The property was acquired in 1967 by Deborah Ann Light, a philanthropic heiress to the Upjohn pharmaceutical fortune (and a Wiccan priestess!), who donated the adjacent 20 acres to the Peconic Land Trust, a Southampton-based land preservation nonprofit organization for which she was a founding member. Tax records indicate the seller has owned the property for at least a dozen years.

      The kitchen has all that is necessary for whipping up simple summer meals.

      Today, the approximately 1,300-square-foot home remains an unpretentious getaway in one of the most exclusive and expensive resort enclaves in the United States. It has a cozy sitting room, a pint-sized kitchen with a tiny built-in table for two, a couple of bedrooms, one of them an octagonal space on the second floor, and a single bathroom. The unfinished third floor, a one-of-a-kind walk-in closet or storage space, still has the windmill’s mechanical equipment; a metal brake holds the blades of the windmill in place.

      Just outside the windmill’s front door is a large brick patio for enjoying sea breezes, and elsewhere there’s a detached two-car garage and a small accessory building that has previously been used as an art studio.

      The original mechanical equipment remains in place; a metal brake keeps the windmill from turning.

      Besides Monroe and Miller, The Windmill House has been a temporary refuge for several decorators and designers over the years, along with English actor Terence Stamp (The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert) and satirical novelist Kurt Vonnegut (Slaughterhouse-Five).

      Listing agent Bobby Rosenbaum of Douglas Elliman has also stayed at The Windmill House over the years and told Robb Report, “You can really sense the awesome power of Mother Nature in the beauty that surrounds this special home, from the aroma of fresh, clean, salty air blowing gently over Quail Hill, to the musical sounds of the gusts of wind that kiss the trees and rustle their branches.”

      Still, this is the Hamptons, the summertime playground of the world’s richest and most famous. And so, the value of this property may not be so much in its literary and show business provenance but rather its potential to build, according to marketing material, a residence of up to 20,000 square feet with distant views of the Atlantic Ocean and the Montauk/Napeague Bay. 

      Click here for more photos of The Windmill House. More

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      in Luxury

      This Cozy Montecito Cottage Once Owned by Larry David Can Be Yours for $7.5 Million

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      In the fall of 2021, “Curbed Your Enthusiasm” creator and star Larry David plunked down $5.7 million for a historic home in the Hedgerow neighborhood in the celeb-packed seaside community of Montecito, California, that he lickety-split sold just eight months later for $6.9 million. 

      Like David, the buyer appears to have also caught a case of the real estate fickle because the property popped up for sale earlier this year for $8 million and has since had the asking price reduced to $7.5 million. The listing is held by Tyler Kallenbach at Compass.

      Designed and built in 1929 in a French Normandy style by celebrated high-society architect George Washington Smith—a departure from the Spanish Colonial Revival-style homes for which he is most widely known—the stately if modestly proportioned home measures less than 2,900 square feet with four bedrooms and four and a half bathrooms.

      The $7.5 million cottage faces a slender, hedge-lined lane.

      Blake Bronstad Photography

      Situated just a mile from the coastal village’s downtown district, the entrance to the home is along a narrow one-way lane. Vintage character abounds outside and inside, and beyond the simple, unassuming slate-blue front door, interiors bend toward elegant and cozy rather than grand. Bespoke finishes and expert craftsmanship work together with delicately patterned wallpaper and floral-patterned curtains to create a sophisticated yet comfortable and casual environment.

      The living room’s soaring, wood-beamed ceiling is anchored by a stone fireplace; chunky exposed wood adds rusticity to the adjacent dining room; and a spacious butler’s pantry connects the dining room to the kitchen. Guest bedrooms are ample, and guest baths are updated with vintage charm, while the primary bedroom offers a fitted dressing room and an unexpectedly large bathroom with a chrome-sided soaking tub.

      The updated kitchen is complemented by a spacious butler’s pantry.

      Blake Bronstad Photography

      The back of the house is encrusted in vines, and the one-fifth-acre spread’s various gardens include brick terraces and pathways, a built-in potting bench, numerous citrus trees, and a metal tea house.

      Tax records indicate the seller has already purchased another larger and no less charming house in the same neighborhood, while David went on to buy another, substantially larger Montecito home last year for $7.6 million. He also maintains residences in L.A.’s Pacific Palisades and on Martha’s Vineyard.

      Click here for more photos of 175 Miramar Avenue.

      Blake Bronstad Photography More

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      Alfred Hitchcock’s Former L.A. Home Has Been Sold for $8.8 Million to a Dutch Media Mogul

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      When English filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock moved to Los Angeles to conquer Hollywood in 1939—he made “Rebecca” the following year, which earned him the first of his five Oscar nominations—he and his wife, Alma, and daughter, Pat, initially made their home in a spacious rented apartment on Wilshire Boulevard. 

      Several years later, after acquiring a 200-acre getaway near Scotts Valley in the Santa Cruz Mountains, the family set down permanent roots in Los Angeles with the purchase of an English-Country-inspired home just up from the West Gate entrance to the tony Bel Air neighborhood.

      The Bel Air home, where the “Psycho” filmmaker lived until his death at age 80 in 1980, came up for sale earlier this year for $8.25 million, and though out of step with current decorative trends, the immaculately maintained home drew multiple offers that drove the recorded sale price up to just over $8.8 million.

      Tax records show the home had long been owned by a local businessman who made his fortune in the lumber and building supply industries and list the buyer as a foreign corporate entity linked to Dutch media mogul Reinout Oerlemans, founder of the TV production company Eyeworks.

      The loggia overlooks the swimming pool and lushly planted grounds.

      Mary E. Nichols

      Originally created by Carlton Burgess, who also designed and built Jack Benny’s Beverly Hills home, Hitchcock’s former sanctuary was extensively renovated and expanded in 1983. Concealed behind a dense wall of trees and vegetation and situated on almost two-thirds of an acre, the primarily single-story home measures somewhat more than 7,500 square feet and has two (and potentially four) bedrooms and five bathrooms.

      Beyond the fountained front entry, the living room features an oversized fireplace and vaulted wood-beamed ceilings; the dining room overlooks flowering gardens; and the eat-in kitchen showcases hand-painted tiles and blue Brazilian granite counters. There are two substantial bedroom suites, one for guests with a white marble bath and the other for the homeowner with dual dressing areas and baths.

      There are two more rooms that can be converted to additional bedrooms, according to marketing material, as well as a “hidden upstairs office/guest room with plumbing in place” to add another bathroom.

      The grounds offer a gated entry, mature trees and flowering gardens, a spacious courtyard, and a huge loggia with an outdoor fireplace alongside a turquoise swimming pool. There’s also garaging for three cars and parking for many more, as well as a couple of storage buildings.

      Snapdragons add color to the edge of the swimming pool.

      Mary E. Nichols

      Steeped in Hollywood lore and ready for its next close-up, the property was listed with Ginger Glass at Compass, while Oerlemans was represented in the transaction by Rayni Williams and Branden Williams at The Beverly Hills Estates.

      If their former homes in Los Angeles are any indication, Oerlemans and his wife Danielle will likely embark on an extensive re-make of the property. The couple previously owned a spectacular, 33,000-square-foot Bel Air mansion—perhaps not coincidentally, it’s directly across the 15th fairway from their new property—that they sold in 2021 for $70 million to The Weeknd, who used the home as the set for his HBO series “The Idol.”

      Click here for all the photos of Alfred Hitchcock’s former home at 10957 Bellagio Road.

      Mary E. Nichols More