“It’s actually one of my favourite homes I’ve ever dealt with,” says estate agent Jeremy Fine on Channel 4’s Britain’s Most Expensive Houses. He is showing two prospective buyers around Brickfields, an eco mansion near Radlett.
“It’s been super popular with a huge amount of big names: footballers, A-list celebrities. Cheryl Cole was living here at the height of her fame, and it was an incredible hideaway for her because this house is so tucked away.”
The camera pans to a modern, two-storey building surrounded by Hertfordshire countryside. The house, with a tessellated red brick exterior, has two wings, with a cylindrical, turret-like structure adjoining it, called “the Kiln”.
The Girls Aloud singer and TV personality is reported to have lived here between 2015 and 2016 with her second husband, Jean-Bernard Fernandez-Versini.
The couple married in 2014 and are thought to have moved to Brickfields the following year. In 2017, after their split, Cheryl reverted back to her maiden name of Tweedy but tends to go by first name only.
While living at Brickfields, Cheryl was presenting The X Factor, and enjoying the success of her fourth studio album, Only Human, which earned her the record for the most UK number ones for a British female artist, before this was broken by Jess Glynne.
Built in 2014 by the high-end architectural firm Living in Space, Brickfields is an 8,500-square-foot luxury eco-mansion, which is named after the brickmakers that formerly stood on the site.
The six-bedroom property is orientated to maximise sunlight, with large, full-height windows.
Its eco credentials include its highly insulated roof and low heat loss windows, which keep the house warm in winter and reduce heating bills, as well as its ground source heat pump and solar panels, which have earned it Zero Carbon status.
There’s also a rainwater collection system on the roof which stores the water in an underground tank and recycles it in the house.
Its design, according to a previous listing for the house, makes it almost self-sufficient, with running costs estimated to be just 20 per cent of that of an equivalent property.
Brickfields’ ground floor is dedicated entirely to living space, with a formal lounge on one side of the entrance hall and a large, open plan kitchen and dining room to the other.
There’s an extra snug and lounge in the round “Kiln” part of the building, with large, curved windows which look out onto the garden.
Downstairs, on the lower ground floor, Cheryl will have enjoyed the wellness complex, with a heated pool, gym and steam room.
The hot tub, mind, is on the roof terrace. There’s also a wine cellar, bar and cinema room down there, housed inside the Kiln.
The first floor is perhaps the most unusual. The house’s two wings sit on either side of the roof terrace, with its jacuzzi, outdoor dining area and drinks bar. Both containing two bedrooms, they are linked by a futuristic glass walkway, which runs between them.
The Kiln’s top floor is also accessed by a glass-floored walkway, and contains the master bedroom suite, with a walk-in wardrobe, ensuite and a curved wall of windows overlooking the surrounding countryside.
As befits a celebrity like Cheryl, the house also has an advanced security system, with electric gates, CCTV —viewable on televisions throughout the house— and secure parking in a double garage.
When Cheryl made her relationship with the late One Direction singer Liam Payne public in 2016, she moved out of Brickfields and into Payne’s Surrey mansion.
Brickfields was put on the market for £5 million in 2017, as well as up for rent for £4,000 per week. Despite having been listed again in the years since, Brickfields appears not to have sold.
Instead, it has been hired out as an events and party venue, and has been listed on Airbnb for upwards of £1,360 per night.
Most recently, and at the time of filming episode seven of Britain’s Most Expensive Houses, the property was listed with Hamptons for £3,999,000. It was not sold, but has found a new tenant.
“It’s quite impressive knowing that Cheryl Cole lived here, slept in that bedroom over there; walked down this corridor,” says one of Fine’s prospective buyers in the programme, which airs on 8 October. “Has Simon Cowell sat on this sofa?”
