Completed in 1742, Wolterton Hall in North Norfolk, England was commissioned by the first Baron Walpole and designed by his protégé, architect Thomas Ripley. Faced with Portland stone on its ground floor and with red brick on its upper stories, the hall’s main entrance is flanked on either side by Tuscan columns and headed with a stone cornice and pediment.
The Wolterton family remained in residence at the hall, with a few gaps, until 1950, when the 7th Baron made the house available to the public.
However, tragedy struck in 1952 when a fire broke out in one of the bedrooms and tore through the floor, causing extensive damage to the second storey, as well as water damage to the rooms below.
While many of the hall’s furnishings, works of art and antiques were rescued by the fire brigade and a group of volunteers, the damage to the structure took three full years to repair.
Sadly, after many years of struggle to maintain the property and several attempts to shore up the family finances by selling off parcels of the surrounding estate, the 9th Baron put Wolterton Hall on the market in 2015.
And in April 2016, the house and remaining parkland were bought by designers Peter Sheppard and Keith Day. Having been closed for 30 years, the house was “perfectly preserved and ripe for restoration,” Sheppard told Mansion Global. "There was nothing that needed ripping out, as so many houses of this age do."
So began an intensive seven-year project which earned the business partners – and real-life couple – recognition from the UK’s Historic Houses Association, which gave Shepperd and Day the 2022 Restoration Award.
Architecture conservation campaigners, The Georgian Group also honoured them with its gong for Restoration of a Georgian Country House that same year, and the pair have been featured in countless magazine features for Tatler, Homes and Gardens, World of Interiors and more.
The restored hall features ornate cornices and plastering, intricately carved fireplaces, tapestried and wood-panelled walls, marble floors, double-height windows, and even a secret door or two. The home also boasts extravagant features including a library, a 'flower and china' room, a home cinema and a secret tunnel which leads from the house out to the stable block.
Post-renovation, the home was placed on the open market for the first time in history for £25 million ($31.5m), and it now functions as a hotel and event space.
Located on a golf course in Summerlin, an exclusive master-planned community in Las Vegas, this six-bedroom, 11-bathroom Tuscan-style mansion is simply divine.
According to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, the former owner spent just shy of an incredible £16 million ($20m) fixing up the trophy home, sparing zero expense on all manner of high-end fixtures and fittings.
The grand foyer is a real showstopper with a hand-carved travertine stone floor, soaring cathedral ceiling and galleried landing and staircase accented by exquisite wrought iron railings. Not to mention the Venetian plaster walls and stunning £32,000 ($40k) chandelier – the entrance hall has got to be the most impressive for miles around.
The former owner worked on the swish facelift for years, hiring the best artisans to make his vision a reality. The open-concept living area, for instance, is decked out with a Carrera marble fireplace, marble and hardwood flooring of the finest quality and a beautiful wood coffered ceiling. It leads into a kitchen with fine marble countertops, Wolf appliances and handcrafted cabinets.
The library is equally upscale. A ravishingly sophisticated space, it wows with gilded wall panelling, bespoke cabinetry, antique crystal chandeliers and a fireplace that wouldn't look out of place in the Palace of Versailles.
Other highlights include a dining room with a vast £65,000 (£82k) table, an office, home cinema, gym, smart home automation and a state-of-the-art security system.
A primary bedroom suite fit for Marie Antoinette is the cherry on the cake. Sadly, despite ploughing almost £16 million ($20m) into the property, the former owner struggled to sell it.
Originally listing the house in 2015 for £17.4 million (£22m), the homeowner ended up putting it into a closed auction earlier this year. It reportedly sold for around £6.3 million ($7.9m) to a very smart buyer.
Disaster befell the Texas Governor's Mansion in Austin one fateful morning in June 2008, when an arsonist threw a Molotov cocktail on the front porch, setting fire to the historic building and almost razing it to the ground.
The perpetrator has never been found, leading the local fire department to describe the blaze as one of the greatest unsolved crimes in the history of the Lone Star State.
The mansion, which dates from 1854, was in an appalling condition following the fire, but Governor Rick Perry and First Lady Anita Perry vowed to restore the residence to its former glory.
The project was overseen by the State Preservation Board and Texas Historical Commission and funded by a £17 million ($21m) grant provided by the legislature, as well as £3 million ($3.5m) from corporate donors and members of the public.
Fortunately, the mansion was undergoing a refurbishment at the time of the fire, meaning many of its treasures, including a desk that belonged to 'Father of Texas' Stephen F Austin, were in storage and therefore undamaged by the inferno.
In an incredible effort, each of the historic rooms in the mansion was recreated exactly as it was before the blaze. In addition, the building was fitted with new electrical wiring and a fire suppression system, plus made accessible to people with disabilities.
In total, the restoration was four years in the making with Perry and his family finally moving back into the mansion in July 2012. Shown here is the elegant front parlour post-renovation, the room in which the Governor and First Lady welcome guests.
Building on the property's legacy, the addition of a greenhouse on the north lawn was completed in May 2023. The space serves as the kitchen garden where numerous flowers, fruits, vegetables and fresh herbs are grown, including mint used for a 'Mansion Tea' that guests can enjoy.
German Catholic Bishop Franz-Peter Tebartz-van Elst earned the moniker 'the Bishop of Bling' and got into some hot water with the local diocese and the Vatican in 2013 when he spent a staggering £27 million ($34m) on a luxurious revamp of his official residence and office.
It's this extraordinary building in the town of Limburg in Hesse, Germany, and it's just as impressive inside.
Costing more than six times the original estimate, the final bill for the makeover wasn't initially disclosed by the bishop to the diocese, who were up in arms over its indefensible extravagance.
In sole control of the cash flow, Tebartz-van Elst secretly dished out millions of euros to architects and contractors, who certainly didn't hold back in their vision to reimagine this historic structure.
A slick minimalist building was constructed behind the original 16th-century presbytery, packed with every mod con imaginable and jaw-dropping luxury extras.
Among the refurb's many super-luxe features are a private chapel costing £2.7 million ($3.4m) and a Japanese koi carp breeding pond, which ended up setting back the diocese a cool £199,000 ($250k).
The bishop's bathroom, seen here, is equally slick with its £14,000 ($18k) freestanding spa bathtub and wellness shower.
When the profligate expenditure finally came to light, Tebartz-van Elst was banished from the diocese, resigned from his position and quietly assumed a low-profile administrative role in the Vatican City.
The conference room was decked out with a table worth £23,000 ($29k) and iPads were fitted to many of the walls to operate the building's various smart automation features, which include closing the curtains remotely and even calling up a prayer!
One of England's grandest stately homes, Chatsworth House in Derbyshire is, as you might have expected, exceedingly expensive to maintain.
The seat of the Cavendish family since the mid-15th century, the storied stately home recently underwent a renovation costing more than £33 million ($42m).
The most comprehensive upgrade of the 300-room house for two centuries, the refurb took almost 10 years to complete. Everything from the roofing and the turrets to the masonry was reconstructed.
Around 1,500 sheets of gold leaf were used to re-gild the window frames, while a plethora of priceless antiques and artworks were meticulously restored by Britain's foremost conservators.
Overseen by the current custodian, Peregrine Cavendish, 12th Duke of Devonshire together with his wife Amanda Cavendish, 12th Duchess of Devonshire, the makeover was prompted by a major survey conducted in 2004 that identified myriad structural problems that were in dire need of being rectified.
Shown here is the magnificent Painted Hall's ceiling restored to its former glory.
Among the artworks restored is Maria Cosway's celebrated painting of Georgiana Cavendish, 5th Duchess of Devonshire, which was covered in layers of grime that had accumulated over the centuries. The work revived the picture's vivid colours and luminosity.
Elsewhere, The Chatsworth House Trust also renovated the Minerva statue, which stands triumphantly atop the roof. The windows were also given an update, with gilders seen here working on just one of the 180 windows on the property.
The Cavendish family isn't resting on its laurels however and is planning to spend a further £50 million ($63m) restoring properties and land on the wider Chatsworth Estate during the coming decade according to local reports.
One of the many lowlights of Queen Elizabeth II's infamous 'annus horribilis' ('horrible year' in Latin), a devastating fire swept through Windsor Castle in Berkshire on 22 November 1992.
Sparked by a faulty spotlight in Queen Victoria's Private Chapel, the blaze destroyed a total of 115 rooms, including nine State Rooms, before it was extinguished by firefighters, who discharged 1.5 million gallons of water to quell the flames.
The damage to one of the Queen's favourite residences was extensive as you can see from this photo of the medieval St. George's Hall taken not long after the blaze.
Astonishingly, only two works of art were destroyed in the fire: a painting of Sir William Beechey and a rosewood sideboard. Heroic staff had managed to save most of the castle's treasures, which were carried out before the inferno had really taken hold.
The royal family wasted no time restoring the damaged castle. Regarded as the greatest historic renovation conducted in the UK during the 20th century, the restoration arguably improved some of the rooms.
St. George's Hall, for instance, seen here, was recreated to a design more in keeping with its original 14th-century appearance. However, controversy surrounded who would cover the cost of the renovation...
It was decided the Queen would pay 70% of the final bill by opening Buckingham Palace to the public for the first time in its long history to raise the funds.
This photo shows the Queen visiting St. George's Hall shortly after the flames had died down. Like the Grand Reception Room, it too was virtually gutted in the catastrophic blaze.
The Grand Reception Room is seen here post-renovation in 2019 during an exhibition, with its sumptuous, gilded decoration impeccably recreated. All in all, the restoration of Windsor Castle, which took five years to finish, set back the Queen more than £26 million ($33m) with UK taxpayers covering the remaining £10 million ($13m).
A spectacular Gilded Age mansion located in the ritzy summer resort town of Newport, Rhode Island, Beechwood was originally built between 1852 and 1853 by architects Andrew Jackson Downing and Calvert Vaux.
Following a fire in 1855, the Italianate-style home was reconstructed to modified plans. However, it was not until 1881 that the house came under its most famous ownership, that of William Backhouse Astor, Jr., who commissioned famed architect Richard Morris Hunt to renovate the mansion.
It was really Astor’s new bride, Caroline Webster Schermerhorn, who would later be known as “the Mrs. Astor", who directed Hunt’s work on the home.
She wanted the house to serve as a showplace in which she could host her many celebrated parties for New York’s high society and insisted on the addition of a ballroom large enough to hold the infamous 'four hundred', a phrase reportedly coined by Ward McAllister to mean the only people in fashionable New York Society worth inviting to parties.
After Mrs. Astor’s death in 1908, Beechwood was inherited by William Backhouse Astor's son, John Jacob Astor IV, who married his scandalously young wife Madeleine in the ballroom. Tragically, he died aboard the ill-fated Titanic in 1912, though his new wife made it to safety.
After Madeleine Astor's death, Beechwood was sold to a theatre company, which turned the property into an immersive recreation of Gilded Age Newport, with costumed actors portraying the Astors and their staff.
However, the small company could scarcely keep up with the expense of maintaining such an expansive property and in 2010 the 39-room mansion was purchased for £8.3 million ($10.4m) by tech billionaire Larry Ellison.
The software mogul reportedly invested over £79 million ($100m) into restoring the mansion, renovating it into an art museum where he could house his permanent collection of 18th and 19th-century art.
The gorgeous mansion, which boasts a formal dining room, library, music room and countless lounges and salons, is also packed with fine architectural details including parquet floors, marble columns, numerous frescoes and even wallpaper imported from Paris.
Ellison’s reported goal was to restore Beechwood to Hunt’s 1881 creation and, with a budget of that scale, we imagine he was successful.
Like Mayfair House, Wentworth Woodhouse in South Yorkshire is big on superlatives. Built between 1724 and 1750 by the Marquesses of Rockingham, the sprawling Grade I-listed stately home hides many secrets; it has five miles of corridors, a room for every day of the year and the longest façade of any country house in Europe.
The imposing property was passed to the Earls Fitzwilliam in 1782 and remained in the family until the late 20th century, though from 1948 to 1988 it was rented out to the local council, which used the country house as a teacher training college and student accommodation and teaching facilities for Sheffield City Polytechnic.
Sadly, by the late 1980s, Wentworth Woodhouse was in an atrocious state of disrepair.
The country house was sold in 1988 to a local businessman and subsequently bought by London architect Clifford Newbold. While both owners carried out renovation work, they failed to restore the property to its former glory.
The stately home was eventually acquired in 2017 for £7 million ($9m) by the Wentworth Woodhouse Preservation Trust, which is seeking to fully revive the landmark estate. Shown here is the remarkable Marble Saloon, once regarded as the finest Georgian room in England.
The trust most definitely has its work cut out. Its chief executive Sarah McLeod has estimated the final cost of restoring the country house could be as high as £200 million ($252m).
Preliminary work fixing the leaking roof has cost £7.2 million ($9m) alone. This particular project has been funded by the UK government.
The estate's gardens have also been restored, but much work is needed to renovate the facade and interiors. The revamp of Wentworth Woodhouse is expected to take more than 20 years.
Once all is said and done, the country pile will serve as a mixed-used visitor attraction, events venue, business centre and possibly housing, subject to a public consultation.
While Wentworth Woodhouse has a longer façade, London's Buckingham Palace beats it in many other respects. The iconic royal palace and official London residence of the late Queen Elizabeth II boasts 775 rooms, 760 windows and 1,514 doors, as well as the largest garden in the capital.
Unsurprisingly, any extensive renovation of a property this size was always going to cost a fortune.
The restoration of the building – or 'reservicing' as the Palace calls it – is expected to cost more than £369 million ($466m) with UK taxpayers footing the bill through the Sovereign Grant.
The project is focused on the 200-room East Wing, which hasn't been refurbished since the Second World War, while its outdated electrics, heating and plumbing date from the 1950s.
The rooms and corridors, including the Principal Corridor which is pictured here, have been stripped of their contents, many of which have been moved (or 'decanted' in Palace-speak) to the Royal Pavilion in Brighton and put on display to the public.
The antique wallpaper in some of the rooms has been carefully removed and will be preserved for posterity.
All in all, the reservicing project involves the replacement of 100 miles of electrical cables, 6,500 electric sockets, 5,000 light fittings, 20 miles of heating pipework, 10 miles of hot and cold-water pipework, 2,500 radiators and 20 miles of skirting board.
In total, an extraordinary 323,000 square feet of floorboards are being taken up, the equivalent of three-and-a-half soccer pitches.
The old electrics, heating and plumbing are being replaced by modern eco-friendly alternatives, which should reduce the palace's carbon footprint by 40% and slash utility bills by £5 million ($4m) per year.
Other advantages of the Buckingham Palace renovation project include longer summer opening hours and additional private tours.
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