A Gilded Age Playboy’s 1,100-Acre Polo Estate Is Up for Sale

(Bloomberg) -- Of the roughly 5 million acres in Virginia granted to the Fairfax family by the kings of England in the 17th century,  just a sliver—merely 600 acres or so—ended up in the hands of the Powell family by 1827. Politicians and gentleman merchants, the Powells built a lovely mansion they called Llangollen, which then passed from one illustrious owner to the next.  

When Donald Brennan, the former head of Morgan Stanley Capital Partners, saw the house at the start of the 21st century, it was one of the pre-eminent properties in blue blood American horse country. 

The acreage had been expanded—the plot had become 1,100 acres—and the house enlarged, most notably in the 1930s by John Hay “Jock” Whitney, a gilded age playboy-millionaire. 

“I’ve been in lots of places around the world, and I had never been overcome with the grandeur of what I was looking at in the same way,” Brennan recalls. The house, which is about an hour and a half’s drive from Washington, was for sale; Brennan bought it for what he says was $22 million, spending an additional $1.5 million for the home’s furnishings and the property’s heavy machinery and equipment. He and his family officially took ownership of Llangollen in 2006. 

Brennan is now putting the property back on the market, listing it with Engel and Voelkers for $34 million.

“I’ve gotten 13 years or so of enormous pleasure and joy watching it flourish,” he says. “Today, it’s in absolutely pristine condition. There’s four miles of stacked stone walls, and I don’t think there’s a crooked stone in any of them.”

Robber Barons

The estate, in its present form, is largely unaltered from when Jock Whitney and his wife Mary Elizabeth purchased it. Whitney inherited his wealth but did an excellent job putting it to good use. He financed Gone With The Wind, was a trustee of the Museum of Modern Art, bought the New York Herald Tribune, and served as ambassador to Great Britain. 

The Whitneys founded the Llangollen Race Meeting, a steeplechase that attracted 20,000 spectators, and built ancillary buildings on the property, including the now-famous “horseshoe stables” for their show-ponies. They added a polo field, nine houses for guests, a race track, a training track, and, most impressive of all, a hyper-sophisticated water system that remains to this day. 

“The property has about 400 acres of forest that sit on the east face of the Blue Ridge Mountains,” Brennan says. “In order to produce water for the property, there are springs whose water is pumped to the top of the mountain, at which point it comes down through streams that go into a large concrete cistern, which Whitney built into the side of the mountain above the house.”

There’s a distribution system that sends water to 120 points across the property—“the homes, the water troughs for horses, the stables, the polo facilities … it’s an incredible engineering feat,” Brennan explains. Should water levels run low, an electrical system sets off pumps in wells at ground level, sending water up to the cistern.

When the couple divorced, Mary Elizabeth Whitney kept the estate and lived there until her death in 1988. 

By that point, Brennan says, “the main house was in serious disrepair.” 

Restoration

Roy Ash, a California businessman who served in the Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford administrations in Washington, bought the land and set about restoring it, filling it with 19th century antiques, updating the electricity and plumbing, and modernizing it into a livable, modern residence. 

“That work continued right up until 2006,” Brennan says. 

When Brennan, who was also the onetime chairman of  crystal and fine china maker Waterford Wedgwood PLC, came to see the place, he had a farm about 10 miles away. His wife and daughter were already very involved in equestrian pursuits, including breeding and polo, and the property offered an opportunity he says was too good to pass up.

After buying the house, Brennan added three polo fields for a total of four, a polo arena, and more support structures. He also brought the main house’s restoration over the proverbial finish line, updating its paint, kitchen, and interiors. He stuccoed the entire house again (“like re-stuccoing a mountain,” he says), and updated all of the property’s guest houses from the Whitney era. All told, Brennan estimates that his family spent about $10 million on updates.

Today, he says, the house is in perfect condition.

The Manor House

The manor house measures roughly 12,500 square feet, with 24 rooms, 17 fireplaces, nine bedrooms, and eight full baths. There are now seven tenant houses and four buildings with apartments—and 17 bedrooms in total—plus four polo fields, one arena, eight ponds,  six miles of interior roads, and stables that can serve nearly 100 horses on the property.

To run this massive estate, a permanent staff of seven maintains the houses, gardens, and facilities; the polo staff, Brennan says, is separate.

Llangollen is on the National Register of Historic Places, and Brennan says that he considers himself just one steward among many. Now, he says, it becomes someone else’s job.

“I’m 78, and you can draw whatever conclusions you want,” he says. “I’m in fine shape. My responsibility is to manage this in a way that’s responsible.”

“It’s seen so much history from its front portico,” he continues. “From the Revolutionary War to the Civil War [the prelude to the Battle of Gettysburg took place on the property], to the golden era of the Whitneys and its restoration, started by Ash and completed by me—now it’s time for someone else to take over.”

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Justin Ocean at jocean1@bloomberg.net

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