The London home where crime novelist Dorothy L Sayers lived and wrote her first murder mystery novel is on sale for £10 million.
Sayers was one of the early 20th century’s leading mystery authors, alongside Agatha Christie, in the golden age of detective fiction.
She worked on the manuscript of what would become her first crime novel, Whose Body?, published in 1923, during her time at St George’s Square in Pimlico.
The novel featured the fictional sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey, who featured in 21 short stories and 11 novels Sayers wrote between 1926 and 1939.
During her time in St George’s Square and her later move to Bloomsbury, Sayers worked as a copywriter for S.H. Benson, a London advertising agency.
While studying for her Masters she rented a sparsely furnished top floor bed-sitting room with kitchenette and balcony, where she is thought to have smoked her favourite cigars.
Author Nancy-Lou Patterson, who has written about Sayers’ life, believes that the novelist’s stay in Pimlico and subsequent move are echoed in her crime novel Strong Poison, published in 1930, where the character Harriet Vane stays at first in a bedsit with Sybil Marriott and Eiluned Price, until she “left Miss Marriot’s house and took a small flat of her own in Doughty Street”.
The six-storey, seven-bedroom town house provides 6,559 sq ft (609.4 sqm) with high ceilings, large reception rooms, a gym, two large terraces, balconies, passenger lift and a garden patio.
The recently refurbished town house was originally designed and built in 1843 by Grosvenor estate and Royal architect Thomas Cubitt, fronting on to a central garden square.
Today, the top floor bedsit still features the step out balcony, but is now a club lounge and games room.
Jeremy Gee, managing director of Beauchamp Estates, said: “Offering an abundance of luxurious inside and outside living space this magnificent Pimlico residence is one of just a few town houses in St George’s Square which is still configured as a grand single family house. The town houses in the square are exceptionally large, so many are now converted into lateral and duplex residences.”
Vlad Viaryshka, senior sales negotiator at Beauchamp Estates, said: “St George’s Square is the most sought after address in Pimlico, with the largest garden square in the district. The address is the closest garden square to the Houses of Parliament and fronts directly on to the River Thames.”
