IF YOU MOVE to one of the A-list roads in the Surrey commuter town of Esher, don’t ask the neighbours for a kickabout in the street. For a start, the residents’ association would not allow it, and secondly you might find youself, like Peter Kay in the beer adverts, knocking the ball about with men well above your league. Men such as John Terry and Frank Lampard, for instance.
Chelsea footballers have been buying homes in Esher at the rate of one a month this year. At least ten of the club’s stars are either owners or tenants of properties in the town. The latest to sign up for life in what used to be known as the stockbroker belt are Didier Drogba, one of Chelsea’s new strikers, and Petr Cech, the new goalkeeper, both of whom have decided to rent.
When Roman Abramovich started his football spending spree much was made of the likely impact on the property market in Chelsea itself. A couple of players bought large flats in the King’s development next to the club’s Stamford Bridge ground.
But footballers spend more of their lives on the golf course and at the training ground than on their club’s hallowed turf and Esher scores on both counts. The town lies in a stretch of Surrey interwoven with some of the smartest golf clubs in England. Moore Place, where Gordon Ramsay went a shade of purple to match the clubhouse when he inspected the catering operation for his television programme Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares, is one club on a long list topped by mighty Wentworth. From November Chelsea will be training in Cobham, another link in the necklace of wealthy Surrey towns threaded along one of the best commuter routes out of London.
Cobham, Esher, Wentworth, St George’s Hill and the like have gone through an American-style transition. An influx of sports and entertainment stars is transforming them from solid stockbroker towns to ritzy, manicured enclaves. You see it on the high street, but more particularly in the architecture of the very best streets.
In Blackhills, Esher’s Beverly Hills, older, traditional houses peep out from between their increasingly giant neighbours. Should their owners move on — or pass on, as is often the case — then the builders will be circling, ready to wipe out the four-bedroom family home and replace it with a five-bedroom, five-bathroom, high-ceilinged, comfort-cooled mini-mansion. The demolition men drive Jaguars in Esher.
It takes a rare combination of precise location, high land values and loaded buyers to make this happen in a country where old is still considered best in 99 per cent of cases. The only comparable locations are The Bishop’s Avenue, north of Hampstead Heath in London, where global billionaires buy up real mansions, and the footballing villages south of Manchester, where developers have built their most prestigious new homes.
Property offers one of the most graphic illustrations of the transformation of football in the past 30 years. In his new autobiography, the football, drinking and gambling legend Stan Bowles recalls how grateful he was to be given a three-bedroom house in Neasden by his club chairman.
This was the mid-1970s, when Bowles was a top scorer with Queens Park Rangers and England. Neasden was — and still is — a back-of-the-railway-line suburb in northwest London. Bowles had the option to buy the house for £12,500 but didn’t take it. He says that it would probably be worth £200,000 today.
Contrast this with the domestic situation of Glen Johnson. Having just turned 20, the Chelsea defender and recent England debutant has just sold his first house in Esher and is looking for a new one in the £3 million range. At that price he will get the kind of huge family home that his teammates John Terry and Scott Parker enjoy at the age of 23.
Esher has had its sports stars before. None other than the great Geoff Hurst, the 1966 World Cup hero, lived here until recently, as did Ray Wilkins. The broadcaster Chris Tarrant still lives the old Esher lifestyle despite his meteoric rise up the wealth and fame league.
Richard Winter runs the FPDSavills office in the town. His father was a doctor here and he is woven into the fabric of Esher society, new and old. Of the past 35 properties that he has sold, 17 have gone to buyers moving out of southwest London. It’s not just footballers who migrate down the A3.
Old and new alike all choose the town for sound reasons. Beyond the golf, Esher has top schools — state and private — expansive tennis clubs, leafy lanes and excellent links to London and Heathrow. It would be a very American family offering, even without the two American schools near by. What’s not to like, as they would say. Except that many young footballers do not live a classic family life, as we know only too well. Some of those Chelsea homes are being let while their owners scuttle back to the brighter lights of London, having banked some money in Esher.
As the very top of the property market in the South East goes through one of its dips in confidence, the residents of Esher must be grateful for Chelsea’s spending spree. Footballers are not the only buyers in town: Richard Winter had one house sell within a week recently to a man who viewed it via the web on holiday. But he has also asked some of his clients whose properties have been on the market more than three months to reduce their asking prices. This autumn will not be a season of record transfers in the property market.
