Kate Bush's former Berkshire mansion for sale for £11.5 million

“This location is afloat of my mess/ This location is afloat of mistakes/ This location is afloat of madness / This location is afloat of fight,” sang Kate Bush successful “Get Out of My House”. Now, this location is for sale: the singer’s erstwhile Berkshire location has been listed with Strutt & Parker for £11.5 million.

Bush bought the Grade II-listed Georgian mansion successful the mid-1990s erstwhile she was large with her son, Bertie, and lived determination with her husband, the guitarist Danny McIntosh, until 2011.

Located connected the stream Kennet, adjacent the colony of Theale, the spot was built astir 1800 arsenic a miller’s location for the adjacent h2o mill. Standing successful 22.54 acres of grounds, Shenfield Mill, arsenic it is known, offered Bush the privateness she was looking for. “I’m truly rather a quiet, backstage person,” she said successful an interrogation for her biography, written by Rob Jovanovic. “It’s rather a astonishment to maine to deliberation I’m a celebrated person.”

After moving in, Bush converted 2 of the property’s outbuildings into a creation and signaling studio. It was present that she wrote and recorded Aerial —her archetypal medium successful 12 years erstwhile it was released successful 2005— and 50 Words for Snow. At the time, Bush said that she recorded birdsong from her plot astatine the house, which she reinterpreted successful her dependable and utilized successful Aerial. The screen depicts the soundwave of a blackbird song.

“I’ve ever been precise fortunate due to the fact that I’ve got a batch of originative state erstwhile I’m moving successful the studio. The albums don’t outgo a batch of money. It’s a precise tiny process,” Bush told the BBC successful 2011. “I’ve enactment a packet of bonemeal connected my piano. It seems to beryllium helping the blossoming of the songs.”

Bush sold the spot to its existent owners, Mike and Fran Taylor, successful 2011. “Mike is simply a precise keen fisherman,” says cause Tom Shuttleworth. “You’ve got the stream Kennet and the Avon Canal, but erstwhile helium saw the weir pool, helium said: ‘I’ve got to person it.’”

The Taylors undertook a four-year renovation of the location and grounds, which included reroofing and repointing the Georgian property, refurbishing the windows – and astir doubling the house’s footprint by adding a solid extension. Measuring astir 1,200 quadrate feet, the glass-walled hold —or orangery— overlooks the plot and river, and is connected to the location via a solid link.

“The owners virtually took the location backmost to ceramic internally,” says Shuttleworth. “It was a existent labour of love.”

Now, the Georgian main location measures a full of 7,384 quadrate feet with 4 bedrooms, the largest of which is astir 500 quadrate feet alone. Bush’s erstwhile creation workplace has been turned into a two-storey, self-contained cottage with 2 further bedrooms, portion her signaling workplace is present a three-bedroom bungalow.

Outside, the mates reshaped the property’s gardens, reinstating the eroding riverbanks and creating a walled plot from the historical mill, which had been damaged by a occurrence successful the precocious 1800s. “They enabled the h2o to travel done the mill erstwhile again, which helps the stream Kennet to travel smoothly done the grounds,” says Shuttleworth. “What you’ve got present is simply a bully operation of bid and nature.”

Leading from the location to the semi-formal gardens is simply a 75-foot alloy bridge, besides added by the Taylors. The existent showstopper, though, is the instauration of a three-metre diameter Archimedes screw: a instrumentality which harnesses the river’s hydro vigor to make 40 kilowatts of powerfulness per hour. This is capable to screen each the property’s powerfulness needs —including blistery water, underfloor heating, aerial conditioning and a accelerated electrical conveyance charging point— arsenic good arsenic a surplus which it exports backmost to the National Grid.

“I was wholly taken by the Archimedes screw. That’s not thing you spot each day. To supply each the energy for a location of this size is extraordinary,” says Shuttleworth. “The location and its further accommodation usage nary state oregon oil.”

The Taylors person utilized Shenfield Mill arsenic a household location since they bought it. But now, with their children having moved out, they are selling to beryllium person to them and their grandchildren.

Shuttleworth believes the spot is apt to suit radical similar the Taylors: “Someone who intelligibly likes privacy, and a spot of abstraction astir them. A keen fisherman, similar the existent owner, would beryllium a sensible fit,” helium says. “It could suit extended household arsenic well, with the cottage and the studio. What a amusive household home.”