British government to sell historic Vaucluse house for $10 million

The grand Vaucluse residence long held by the British Foreign Office as the official residence of its consul-general is for sale for $10 million to $11 million.

The sale comes almost a decade after former British prime minister David Cameron issued a directive for the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office to sell its lavish Sydney and Melbourne residences and replace them with properties “more fit for purpose”.

Despite the former diplomatic residence in Melbourne’s well-heeled Toorak being sold in 2013 for $11.8 million to the family of billionaire Solomon Lew, the Sydney residence never hit the market. Until now.

The Vaucluse property — home to British consul-general and Asia Pacific deputy trade commissioner Michael Ward— was built in 1937 across a double block of 1500 square metres for then-NSW Chief Justice Sir Frederick Jordan and his wife Lady Jordan to a design by architect John Drummond Moore, of the Wardell Moore and Dowling architecture firm.

Sir Frederick, who was later Lieutenant-Governor of NSW, died in 1949 and it was sold the following year to surgeon John Stephen MacMahon.

Following MacMahon’s death in 1968 his widow Marie MacMahon sold it in 1970 to property developer Norman Skolnik and his wife Marika, who sold it to the British Government in 1972 for $405,000.

The five-bedroom residence with heated swimming pool, formal living and dining rooms, cellar and triple garage, is listed with Savills International’s Martin Schiller.

Governments worldwide have been cashing in their stately Australian residences in the past decade; the next is expected to be the Woollahra estate owned by the German Government.

A handful of eastern suburbs agents have already been approached to appraise the more than 2000-square-metre estate in Woollahra’s consular belt, with preliminary hopes pegged between $16 million and $20 million.

Records show Woollahra’s historic three-level mansion was last traded in 1974 by the late entrepreneur and patron Erich Glowatzky, a chairman of now defunct heavy engineering group Eglo Engineering.

In 2009 the French Government set a record high auction result of $23 million when it sold its trade commissioner’s residence Le Manoir in Bellevue Hill to Lachlan and Sarah Murdoch.

In 2015 the Canadian Government’s landmark Vaucluse property, Kainga, (set directly behind the British consul-general’s residence) bought in the mid-1960s for £35,000, was sold to heiress Mertsi Louise Spencer, daughter of the late Kiwi magnate John Spencer, for $10,575,000.

It is unclear where the British Government plans to house its consul-general once the Vaucluse residence is sold.