Regular readers will know that we have recently been house hunting back in the UK and I thought we’d found just the thing. However, after the weekend’s road trip up the Pacific Coast Highway I might be having a re-think.
We came across this quaint little place, perched on top of a hill, great views of the ocean, landscaped gardens, off street parking for several vehicles, indoor and outdoor pools – it ticked a lot of our wish-list boxes. Dining room that seats 40, 56 bedrooms, 61 bathrooms – okay it was just a tad on the big side but it had some nice European features, a stone fireplace imported from a French Chateau, carved wooden ceiling from some Italian monastery, a few old 16th century tapestries hung on the wall. Perhaps not quite to my taste but nothing I couldn’t learn to live with. Probably the downside was the long commute but there is a private airstrip and a jetty for anyone arriving by sea, and of course the million tourists who visit the spot every year.
Yes we had found Hearst Castle – a totally fantastic OTT example of how to spend your money when you have way too much of it. Hearst Castle is the magnificent opulent home of multi-millionaire newspaper and media magnet William Randolph Hearst and is one of the US’s most visited tourist attractions. Building work commenced in 1919 and was never finished in Hearst’s lifetime. It was only when his descendents handed the estate over to the State of California as a national monument that work was finally completed.
Apparently Mr Hearst’s original plan was for a modest bungalow at the family’s 250,000 acre ranch but he obviously got a bit carried away. This man didn’t just go around the auction houses of Europe buying up antiquities to furnish his home – he bought up enormous architectural features and subsequently designed his “castle” around them.
The house is a personal pleasure dome – built during Hollywood’s heyday most of Mr Hearst’s invited guests were in the movie business and were left to amuse themselves during the day whilst he beavered away upstairs in his study increasing his fortune. As a Hearst house guest you would have complete run of the ranch with its two pools, tennis courts, billiard room, music room and private cinema at your disposal, as well as America’s largest private zoo. Descendants of Mr Hearst’s zebra collection still roam the working ranch –luckily for the local population it was the zebras that escaped during the dismantling of the zoo and not the tigers or polar bears, whose concrete enclosures are still visible just a few yards from the house.
It was very easy to imagine sipping an early evening cocktail with a dashing young Clark Gable by the huge Romanesque outdoor heated pool, with its view across the rolling Californian countryside to the Pacific Ocean.
Hearst Castle is a fine example of how the other half lived – very nicely thank you.
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