Ex-Melbourne Rebels Rugby Club Owner Puts 19th-Century Mansion Back up for Sale
The Italianate Victorian-era home, with six bedrooms and renovated interiors, is now asking A$13.5 million to A$14.3 million
3 min
Former Melbourne Rebels rugby club owner Andrew Cox has put his notable 19th-century house in the Australian city’s Brighton suburb back on the market with a multimillion-dollar price cut.
The grand dame, a rare Italianate mansion called Narellan, was last on the market in April 2021—amid Melbourne’s on again off again series of strict pandemic-induced lockdowns. At the time, the 1880s residence had an ambitious asking price of A$18 million to A$19 million (US$11.88 million to US$12.54 million) but failed to sell. Now, with new listing agents, Gowan Stubbings and Will Maxted of Kay & Burton Stonnington, the house has a revised price guide of A$13.5 million to A$14.3 million.
Stubbings said the expansive six-bedroom house on 1,389 square meters on Moule Avenue, just streets from Brighton Beach, is priced to sell.
Courtesy Kay & Burton Stonnington
“It’s certainly in very good company in the caliber of A$10 million up to A$50 million homes,” Stubbings said. “Brighton, like many of Melbourne’s elite suburbs, has seen several of its historic homes modernised and changed over the years, but Narellan is an icon for the area,”.
The home’s white Italianate Victorian facade is eye-catching, Stubbings said.
“It has such a majestic nature. You can see it being one of the original Brighton landmark homes,” he said. “When I walk up to the top of the turret and take in the views over Port Phillip Bay, it takes me back to another time and I can imagine the ships coming back towards the city.”
Cox, the former Melbourne Rebels Super Rugby club owner ,paid A$5.71 million for the estate in 2006, according to CoreLogic records.
New Zealand-born Cox now runs private equity fund Imperium Capital Group, a diversified investment company that acquires small and medium enterprises mainly in the tourism, hospitality and sports management sectors.
The house also belonged at one point to powerhouse employment website seek.com.au’s co-founder Andrew Bassat.
Cox declined to comment on the sale of the property, but it is understood that during his ownership the vast two-story house has been completely updated.“It’s been very sympathetically redone for its era,” Stubbings said. “People love the big ceiling heights, the large rooms and the natural light, but it’s the kitchens and bathrooms that give it a more modern feel. It all works incredibly well together, especially when you’ve got bathrooms spilling out onto the upstairs terrace, it’s just like a luxury hotel.”
“This home has been designed so that someone can just move in and enjoy it. There’s nothing more to do. They’ve modernised it beautifully to the way we live today. I just think they’ve nailed it,” Stubbings added.
The home features a long list of ground floor entertainment spaces including an elegant entry porch and foyer leading to a large study or library, a sitting room, formal dining room, an elaborate billiard room with bar, a combined living area and a contemporary kitchen. There is also a sunroom, gym, sauna and self-contained two-bedroom guest wing with a commercial-grade kitchen.
Upstairs are six spacious bedrooms, including a main suite with bay window, private balcony, walk-in wardrobe and ensuite plus access to the unique turret with sweeping views of Port Phillip Bay and city skyline. The upper floor also houses two additional living rooms and two more balconies.
Outdoors, the home is surrounded by landscaped grounds with manicured hedges, rose bushes, level lawns, an alfresco barbecue terrace with fireplace as well as a pool house with a bathroom and kitchen and pool.
The period home is a short walk from the beach with sought-after schools, popular boutiques and eateries nearby.
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A historic Barbados estate with a 300-year-old villa and 11 acres overlooking the Caribbean Sea is now for sale with a guide price of $22.5 million.
The seller is Kit Braden, chairman of the U.K. branch of French beauty empire L’Occitane Group, whose family has spent every winter for the last 13 years at the island property, known as Fustic Estate.
“It’s very much a family house,” Braden said. “We love having a lot of people there. It’s a collection point to keep everyone together.”
The main villa dates to 1712, though it’s been reimagined and expanded substantially over the years.
It spans 13,000 square feet and features seven en suite bedrooms across three wings, as well as expansive verandas, stone courtyards and rows of louvered doors in gay Caribbean pastels.
In the 1970s, when the home was owned by Charles Graves—brother of British poet Robert Graves—it was reimagined by stage designer Oliver Messel, one of the foremost theater designers of the last century. Messel expanded the home, added a lagoon pool with a natural waterfall and other theatrical features, according to Braden.
“The whole place is a little bit magical,” he said.
The home sits about 350 feet above the water, and surrounded by lush gardens that slope towards the water.
“We look down through our garden—which is about 12 acres of tropical gardens and palm trees and wonderful old mahogany trees—onto the Caribbean,” Braden said.
He and his wife first saw the property on New Year’s Eve 2013, during a quick trip from where they were staying in Grenada.
The couple spent an hour walking the perimeter, some of it still untouched jungle, in the pouring rain.
“By the time we got back, I had fallen in love with it,” Braden said.
His wife, however, wasn’t so sure. But in Braden’s telling, a second visit in sunnier weather with two of their children brought her around.
“She had to be talked into that it was a jolly good idea; now she absolutely loves it,” he said.
When they bought the property, the edge that runs along the waterfront was a jungle, so they cleared the ridge and transformed it into gardens.
They also bought an additional sea-level parcel with two beach cottages, giving the property direct access to the water and the town below via a five-minute walk.
The property also has a 15-person staff, a reflecting pond, an outdoor pavilion suitable for yoga and a commercial grade kitchen that can serve more than 100 guests, according to a brochure from Knight Frank, which posted the listing in March. They did not provide further comment.
For Braden, the property is special because of its natural beauty, its proximity to the town of Saint Lucy and its history—which dates way way back to when the island of Barbados was first formed via tectonic activity.
“It was basically tectonic plates that collided about a million years ago so the seabed is the top of the hill,” Braden said. “We’re on coral rock.”
As a result, Fustic Estate includes an extensive network of caves that were likely used by the Arawaks, a Venezuelan fishing tribe that followed the fish to these islands about a thousand years ago.
“If the fish were good they’d camp here,” Braden said. “There’s evidence that they stayed there in those caves, they lived there in good winters.”
Now it’s someone else’s turn to live on the land shared by Arawaks, the plantation owners of 1712, Charles Graves and the Braden brood.
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