Forte family's London residence for £40 million

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Lowndes House, an imposing double-fronted white stucco freehold house located in Belgravia, London has been listed at £40 million through Savills. This freehold SW1X property handy for Harvey Nicholls and Harrods sits on 815 square metres. Its two rear mews houses comprise 286 square metres.

Set on Lowndes Place, the seven-bedroom house has classical interior design decorated by Stephane Boudin, the Parisian interior designer. It was the home of Lord Forte, regarded as Britain's greatest hotelier, who started his career as the owner of a London milk bar to become the head of a worldwide empire of hotels and restaurants, Trusthouse Forte. He retired from the position of chairman of THF in 1992 to be succeeded by his only son, Rocco, with the company takeover by Granada in 1996.

Charles Forte was born in 1908 in the small hillside village of Monforte, near Rome, and died in 2007. He was 18 when he entered the family business, running a restaurant, progressing through a series of seaside resorts. At 21 he was put in charge of a run-down seafront cafe, the Venetian Lounge in Brighton. He next bought his own milk bar in Upper Regent Street and by 1938 Forte owned five milk bars in London. In 1943 he married Irene Chierico, a Venetian, and during the post-war years expanded into tea rooms. It was not until 1958 he bought his first hotel, the Waldorf, according to the Daily Mail.

It was listed last month as his widow, Irene, Lady Forte of Ripley, much loved mother, grandmother and great-grandmother, died peacefully at home on in September last year. Their first meeting before they married in 1943 was unpromising as he had come into the shop where she was working to ask for prosciutto and received the quick retort: “If I had any prosciutto I’d eat it myself! Don’t you know there is a war on?”