I Was a Russian Oligarch for a Day

Our Albury tennis team’s “international tour” took more than twelve months in the planning. We finally decided on two summer grass-court tournaments in England, with a side-trip to Paris for a friendly hit on courts in the Luxembourg Gardens. Our arrival at Heathrow was where the adventures began. We had booked two vehicles, one a large people-mover to carry the team and our tennis gear to tournaments, and a smaller Vauxhall sedan so we weren’t restricted in shooting off to special places of interest.

The car-hire company apologised profusely. The people-mover was not available, so they were obliged to provide the next equivalent vehicle up the scale. They handed over the keys, and outside the front door was a brand-new, jet-black, gleaming stretch Mercedes saloon. We had no objection.

Two of the team leapt into the turbo-charged jet-black Mercedes with its free sat-nav, spacious leather seats and air-conditioned luxury and sped off, while the other two, struggling in their plodding Vauxhall, minus maps, navigation aids or air-conditioning, were suddenly abandoned. Had we prepared for mobile phone communication between us? No. Had we planned the road trip to our accommodation? No. Did the Mercedes people really care? No. They arrived in about thirty minutes. But it was only after scouring outer London suburbs for a newsagent with a London A-Z, and sending numerous text messages to the Mercedes via Australia at exorbitant cost, that the Vauxhall pair finally reached the same destination three hours later, exhausted, hot, peeved and very thirsty.

It was obvious we would choose the Anchor Hotel in Shepperton for our first lodging, because Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton had stayed in this same medieval pub while filming at nearby Pinewood Studios. But our rooms were not movie star suites; instead we discovered tiny doors inside quaint alcoves perched above impossible stairways, compact rooms squeezed behind tight landings, miniature ensuite bathrooms slotted into corner cupboards, and tiny windows opening onto a medieval square. Picturesque, cosy, clean, friendly, quirky, mock-medieval refurbished, and mercifully cold beer.

The next morning, a Sunday, we decided to take our Mercedes to check the route and location for our first tournament, as we would be travelling in peak-hour traffic to our destination in Weybridge, Surrey. Our sat-nav guided us effortlessly to our destination, St George’s Hill. Dressed in jeans, T-shirts and sneakers, we were not expecting a boom gate and security guard armed with a clipboard and questions, and a computer screen recording our number plate. After courteously inquiring about the purpose of our visit, the security guard raised the boom gate and directed us towards the tennis club.

What appeared before us was a row of two-storey luxury mansions surrounded by manicured lawns with immaculate hedges, nestled beside narrow roads reminiscent of quaint English country lanes. When we reached the tennis club, we gazed upon an enormous lake featuring two large fountains and several white swans. This was nothing like our little tennis club in Albury. This club boasted fifteen lawn courts, fifteen synthetic grass courts, two indoor tennis courts, four squash courts, a gym, a twenty-metre swimming pool, a steam room and sauna, a bar, restaurants and an air-conditioned studio. After looking over their well-maintained lawn courts and rather lavish clubhouse, we decided to give ourselves a tour around this remarkable gated estate.

The country-style laneways were lined with even more luxurious mansions surrounded by picture-perfect gardens, while the golf course had fairways that looked like greens and a clubhouse housed inside a small castle. The carpark was filled with hyper-luxury vehicles. We paused for a few photos in front of our black Mercedes and sauntered inside the clubhouse. No one asked why we were there. A few people looked in our direction but didn’t say anything.

What was St George’s Hill? Why did they want a group of Australian tennis players using their beautifully-maintained grass courts and wandering around their opulent golf club? We returned to the boom gate and politely thanked the security guard before heading back to our mini-medieval accommodation, still puzzling over the meaning of St George’s Hill.

Early Monday morning we loaded up the Mercedes for our first day of tennis, leaving the dowdy Vauxhall at the pub. During the day we met other players who had travelled to the tournament from the English countryside, and some mentioned that when they attempted to drive around St George’s Hill a security van had promptly appeared to politely redirect them towards the tennis club. We commented that we’d enjoyed a free-ranging tour the day before without any problems.

Over the next two days we enjoyed our tennis, and the locals enjoyed having us there because Australia was losing to England in the Ashes, a constant source of bemused comment and good-natured banter. The tennis club even had their own tennis balls emblazoned with St George and the Dragon—we quietly souvenired one each.

A brief online search uncovered interesting facts about this 964-acre private gated community surrounded by outer London suburbs. St George’s Hill was established in 1912 so celebrities, actors and wealthy business people from the City could enjoy a secure home and private leisure retreat just beyond central London. It has been the home of John Lennon, Ringo Starr, Cliff Richard, Tom Jones, Eric Sykes, Elton John, Nick Faldo, the Sultan of Brunei and Augusto Pinochet, and there was a private zoo in the grounds as well. The average sale price for a home is about £5,500,000 but some sell for more than £15,000,000 and a few up to £30,000,000. This makes St George’s Hill one of the world’s most expensive and exclusive communities.

There are about 420 houses, and the estate has its own local political party, called the St George’s Hill Independents. Each house is required by law to have at least one acre of land, and some have up to eight acres, but the house itself is restricted to no more than 20 per cent of the plot of land. The St George’s Hill Residents Association carefully maintains the private estate’s roads and verges in the style of meandering country lanes, and carefully guards the exclusivity of the estate for the global elite, as one real estate guide proclaims: 

St George’s Hill comprises mostly grand detached houses in traditional country house style. Think scaled-up Georgian manor houses with neoclassical pillared porticos and roof pediments. Plots range from one acre to eight acres and house sizes range from 3,000 square feet to 30,000 square feet.

These pleasure palaces have a host of state-of-the-art facilities including home audio systems, cinema rooms, indoor swimming pool, gyms and saunas, and feature primary bedroom suites with dressing rooms and double bathrooms, handcrafted kitchens and joinery, tennis courts, party rooms, wine rooms and cellars and more …

An amusing irony is that the original St George’s Hill common was occupied and settled on April 1, 1649, by a commune of Levellers, called the Diggers, who declared their belief in sharing the land and being self-sufficient:

In the beginning of Time, the great Creator Reason, made the Earth to be a Common Treasury, to preserve Beasts, Birds, Fishes, and Man, the lord that was to govern this Creation; for Man had Domination given to him, over the Beasts, Birds, and Fishes; but not one word was spoken in the beginning, That one branch of mankind should rule over another …

… we begin to Digge upon George-Hill, to eate our Bread together by righteous labour, and sweat of our browes, It was shewed us by Vision in Dreams, and out of Dreams, That that should be the Place we should begin upon; And though that Earth in view of Flesh, be very barren, yet we should trust the Spirit for a blessing. And that not only this Common, or Heath should be taken in and Manured by the People, but all the Commons and waste Ground in England, and in the whole World, shall be taken in by the People in righteousness, not owning any Propriety; but taking the Earth to be a Common Treasury, as it was first made for all.

But the Diggers were eventually forced off the land, and by the early twentieth century this area had become one of England’s most exclusive and expensive private estates. In recent years, however, an influx of money from overseas magnates has brought unexpected attention. In 2013 the Telegraph reported that St George’s Hill had seen a “wave of Russian plutocrats … The biggest buyers of property are those who made their money on the far side of the Urals and cannot afford or do not fancy the gazillion-pound mega mansions in Kensington.” Just one year before we arrived, a Russian “businessman”, Alexander Perepilichnyy, had been found dead in suspicious circumstances outside the house he was renting in St George’s Hill for £12,500 a month.

On the last day of the tournament, we asked why St George’s Hill would want a tennis tournament on their immaculate grass courts. “Ahh, you see, there are so few people who play tennis here anymore that we thought a veterans’ event would bring in players for an enjoyable and harmless social occasion.” But why are there so few players? “Well, over the past few years people have been arriving and asking to buy the houses in St George’s Hill. When they ask how much they are worth we tell them upwards of £5,000,000 but they are not for sale, so they offer £10,000,000 or more. They’re not tennis players, they’re Russian oligarchs. Vladimir Putin’s daughter lives here.”

Now it all made sense. On that Sunday, when a small group of middle-aged white men casually toured St George’s Hill in a brand-new gleaming black Mercedes saloon, confidently and cheerfully taking photos with their mobile phones, relaxed and comfortable in their casual clothes, they were assumed to be just another carload of Russians. No wonder we were allowed to roam unhindered. We were Russian oligarchs for a day.

Paul Grover is a lecturer in education and a former English teacher.