Currently on the market: the mansion of Mayfair stepmother of Princess Diana, Lady Barbara Cartland
By Sara Bright
At 28 South Street, Mayfair, Grade II listed walls hold a peculiar collision of British history. Built in 1902 for stockbroker and Liberal politician Sir Cuthbert Quilter, this five-storey Edwardian mansion was the birthplace of Prime Minister Sir Alec Douglas-Home in 1903. It became the London residence of romance novelist Dame Barbara Cartland in 1936. It raised her daughter Raine McCorquodale, who would later become the stepmother of Diana, Princess of Wales. And it sits, as of its most recent listing at £35 million, awaiting its next custodian.
The property is currently marketed by Wetherell and Rokstone, positioned to attract dollar buyers drawn to British aristocratic provenance. The guide price reflects both the address – between Park Lane and Grosvenor Square – and the layered biography embedded in its rooms.
The Cartland acquisition
Barbara Cartland purchased 28 South Street in 1936 with her second husband, Hugh McCorquodale. The couple had married that same year, after her divorce from Alexander McCorquodale – Hugh’s cousin and Raine’s father – in 1933. The Arts & Crafts façade, designed by architect Detmar Blow, offered Cartland the setting her social ambitions required. The five-bedroom, ten-bathroom mansion spanned 8,513 square feet of living space, with principal reception rooms capable of accommodating over one hundred guests.
During the war years and after, Cartland used the house to entertain extensively. Guests included the Duchess of Argyll, Lord Mountbatten, and the Duke of Edinburgh. In 1947, the ground and first floors hosted Raine’s debutante ball, following which she was named debutante of the year. The young woman married Humphrey Legge, later the 9th Earl of Dartmouth, in 1948.
The marriage produced four children before ending in divorce in 1976 – the same year Raine married John Spencer, Viscount Althorp, the father of Diana and Charles Spencer. It was Raine’s colleague role on an architectural heritage committee that brought her into contact with the widowed Viscount. The Spencer children, still raw from their parents’ acrimonious separation in 1969, were hostile. Diana and Charles reportedly told their father they would “wash their hands” of him if he married her. They called her “Acid Raine.”
Camfield Place and the Hertfordshire estate
Cartland sold 28 South Street in late 1950 and used the proceeds to purchase Camfield Place, a Victorian Italianate country house near Hatfield, Hertfordshire. The estate encompassed 400 acres, and the house itself had been rebuilt in 1867 by Edmund Potter, grandfather of Beatrix Potter. The author had spent childhood summers at Camfield, calling it the place she “loved best,” and wrote The Tale of Peter Rabbit there.
Cartland occupied Camfield for fifty years, until her death in 2000 at age 98. The house remains in the McCorquodale family; her granddaughter Tara Parker leads tours through the property, which retains interiors designed by Cartland herself and a complete collection of art from her literary career. She is buried near the Deer Oak, an ancient tree associated with Elizabeth I.
The Camfield Estate Company Limited, incorporated in 1964, continues to manage the property. Barbara Cartland Productions Ltd and Barbara Cartland Dot Com Limited operate from the same Hatfield address, managing the estate of her intellectual property – including 160 unpublished manuscripts released posthumously as the Pink Collection.
The Spencer connection
The genealogical link between Cartland and the Spencer family runs through multiple marriages. Frances Shand Kydd, born Frances Roche, married John Spencer, Viscount Althorp, in 1954 at Westminster Abbey, with the Queen in attendance. The couple had five children: Sarah, Jane, John (who died within ten hours of birth), Diana, and Charles. Frances left John in 1967 for Peter Shand Kydd, an Australian wallpaper heir, triggering a custody battle in which Frances’s own mother, Lady Fermoy, testified against her. John Spencer gained custody of the children.
When John inherited the earldom in 1975, he married Raine Cartland – Barbara’s daughter – in 1976. Thus Barbara Cartland became step-grandmother to Diana, who had been an avid reader of Cartland’s novels as a child. “The only books Diana ever read were mine,” Cartland once remarked, “and they weren’t terribly good for her.”
Cartland was not invited to Diana’s wedding to Prince Charles in 1981, though the reason remains disputed. Some accounts cite concerns about her appearance – the bouffant blonde hair, pink chiffon, heavy makeup – as an embarrassment to the Establishment. Others suggest she was simply considered too eccentric for the occasion. Cartland was reportedly humiliated, and the rift between the two women persisted for years, reopening when Cartland publicly criticised Diana’s divorce from Charles in 1996.
The relationship mended before Diana’s death in Paris in August 1997. Raine’s relationship with Diana underwent a more dramatic transformation. After years of hostility – Diana once pushed Raine down the stairs at Althorp – the two reconciled during Diana’s divorce proceedings. They lunched together regularly, spoke almost daily, and Diana reportedly told Raine: “I’d rather speak to Raine than to my mother. She is the mother I never had.” At Diana’s inquest in 2007, Raine gave evidence, describing how the Princess had confided in her. “Diana always said I had no hidden agenda,” she testified.
The property today
28 South Street retains its Edwardian character with diamond limestone flagstones in the entrance hall, a wide central timber staircase, decorative ceilings, and a Regency-era Robert Adam marble fireplace installed during a 1990s renovation. The lower ground floor, designed by architect Nicholas Rakic, houses a wellness suite with swimming pool, sauna, bar, and a double bed suspended over one end of the pool.
Three terraces provide outdoor space: a planted first-floor terrace, a curved second-floor terrace opening from the master suite, and a roof terrace with views across Mayfair. The property has had only three owners since Quilter’s commission.
Cartland sold the house because, as one account puts it, she preferred the country. She converted Camfield into a social hub, planting commemorative trees with distinguished guests and writing at a rate of one novel every fortnight. By the time of her death, she had published 723 books, translated into 38 languages, with worldwide sales exceeding one billion copies. She held the Guinness World Record for the most novels written in a single year – 23 in 1976 – and her entry in Who’s Who was the longest in the publication’s history, comprised almost entirely of her book titles.
The mansion at 28 South Street stands as a physical record of these intersecting lives. A prime minister’s birthplace. A novelist’s London base. A debutante’s ballroom. A step-grandmother’s address. The asking price of £35 million reflects not merely square footage and postcode, but a century of documented provenance.
Related: The complete guide to Barbara Cartland’s literary estate | Camfield Place: the country house that sheltered two great writers
