Colin Tennant, 3rd Baron Glenconner, left behind a complicated legacy on his death in 2010. Now, his last Caribbean home is on the market for $23 million (approximately £19 million), as reported by Richard Eden in the Daily Mail.
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A close confidant of Princess Margaret’s (his wife, Lady Anne Glenconner, was her lady-in-waiting), Lord Glenconner is perhaps best known for buying Mustique in 1958, turning the private island in St Vincent and the Grenadines into an exclusive paradise for aristocrats, bohemians and rock stars. He was also infamous for his explosive temper, with Baroness Glenconner detailing his violent outbursts in her recent memoir, Whatever Next.
Changing fortunes led Lord Glenconner to leave Mustique, selling up to move 100 miles away with his pet elephant, Bupa, in tow. Writing in Whatever Next, as extracted in the Daily Mail, his widow recalled: ‘In 1987, Colin moved to St Lucia, where he invested in an undeveloped 480-acre estate. He wanted to create somewhere as spectacular as Mustique, but this time his venture failed. He ended up living alone, tended to by Kent [Adonai, his estate manager].’
On his death in 2010, it emerged that Lord Glenconner had made a new will, leaving all his assets to Adonai. Lady Anne Glenconner wrote in her book: ‘I still don't know why he took the awful decision to leave everything to his valet but I experienced it as one last flourish of his sadistic side, the side that revelled in the distress of others and which at times had made any sort of marriage to him seem an impossible burden.’
His family contested the will and the estate was eventually divided between Adonai and Cody Tennant, 4th Lord Glenconner (Colin Tennant’s grandson), following a protracted legal battle. Eden writes that it is Cody who has put his late grandfather’s house up for sale, along with 95 acres of land, finally severing the family’s long-running ties to the West Indies. He adds that while the £19 million price tag is a significant one, it is a fraction of the sum that the island of Mustique, or indeed just Colin Tennant’s home there, The Great House, would be worth today.
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Beau House, the property he built in St Lucia, is set between two volcanic hills, the Pitons, with westerly views across the Caribbean. Penny Strawson, the luxury property consultant listing the estate, told Eden: ‘He really only finished the house very shortly before he died in 2010… Kent [Adonai] lived there with him, looking after him to the end.’ Glenconner had reportedly sold off a number of plots of land (to buyers he deemed ‘suitable’) by the time of his death aged 83, leaving Beau House itself and around 200 acres. Strawson added that the house has remained empty for over a decade, with even Glenconner’s clothes ‘still in the wardrobe’.
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Listed as three separate lots on pennystrawson.com, the sale is described as ‘an exceptional opportunity to acquire land rich in history and enjoying unsurpassed views… a Caribbean idyll in a spectacular setting.’ It includes an oceanfront stretch, with ‘wonderful views of the sea and the iconic Pitons, renowned as the most famous landmark on the island.’
