Captain Bligh's London house up for sale

If the famously fractious Captain William Bligh was to walk up the steps of his old London townhouse, and see what 21st-century owners have done with the place, there’d likely be a scene involving a lot of expletives from one of history’s most notable potty mouths.

He would probably be the one leading the mutiny against how Simon and Gayna – the current owners described as people “with a theatrical background” – have turned the captain’s home of the late 1700s into a flamboyant B&B.

Up for sale for the second time in a COVID-affected year for around £2.25 million ($4.25 million), the property with the blue plaque at 100 Lambeth Road is politely described by agents Foxtons as featuring “unique decoration throughout and full of character”.

They’re not kidding.

A five-level brick Georgian townhouse of five to six bedrooms, the home Bligh occupied between the mutiny on the Bounty (1789) – when he survived the legendary small-boat voyage from Tahiti to Timor – and his brief gig as NSW Governor (1806-1808), is a roomy house with what is a terrific back garden for inner London.

It’s also wonderfully positioned. It’s a short walk to Westminster and therefore the old Admiralty, and virtually opposite the Imperial War Museum.

Simon and Gayna have at least picked up the nautical theme at the Captain Bligh House B&B (currently not taking bookings) with the top-of-the-stair single room presented as “The Crows Nest”.

Banking on paying guests wanting further stimulation when they return to their self-catering digs from a busy day in London, the other suites in Captain Bligh’s house are variously staged as the London Room (hint: Union Jacks), the Royal Suite (purple to go) and the Film Studio (Elizabeth Taylor cushions, anyone?).

The seemingly circus-themed reception room leading into the disco-lit conservatory kitchen and then out to the back terrace – with what some property writers have termed “Soho meets beach chic” table installations – is, well, Moulin Rouge fancy.

The place has a music room/cinema (hint: a mauve piano and neon “Bligh Empire” sign, a gym and a staff bedroom down in the bilges below street level.

Of all the immoderately decorated spaces that would trigger Captain Bligh, it would probably be the bathroom staged as a library with a surround of bookshelves rendered in wallpaper.

Although from the age of seven he was away at sea an awful lot, variously serving with captains like Cook and Lords like Nelson, the shore-leave reunions of William and Mrs Betsey Bligh must have been joyful, for they had seven children. One of them, Mary, accompanied her father to Sydney to act as First Daughter during his unfortunate stint as the fourth Governor of NSW, where he clashed heads so badly with the intractable Rum Corp that they staged a coup and removed him after just two years.

Mrs Bligh hadn’t fancied the long sea voyage and, in retrospect, was wise to stay at home in London.

The Georgian London townhouse the couple once occupied was bombed and partially rebuilt after World War II and, from the outside, it does manage to look plausibly authentic: spare and symmetrical and stylistically refined, which is how the Georgians preferred to present their residences.

However, now Captain Bligh’s House might actually warrant another blue plaque on the front wall, noting it as “the most OTT house south of the Thames”.