When in January 1885, Oscar Wilde and his wife of only six months, Constance Lloyd, moved into a newly built home in the heart of London’s trendy Chelsea neighborhood, some of the visitors had noticed that there was some “bizarre” decorative work being done to the space. Apparently, the Wildes had requested that the front door, entrance hall, staircase, and dining room be painted in mostly white—a choice that was indeed a little too simplistic and bizarre compared to the highly decorative aesthetics of the mid-Victorian era popular at the time.
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But as time went by, and Oscar Wilde became more and more well known in London’s creative circles, the Wildes’s home on Tite Street became a gathering place where the writer and his wife entertained other prominent figures of that era (French actress Sarah Bernhardt, Sir Henry Irving, and poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti were some of them.) Wilde himself penned his most famous works, including The Picture of Dorian Gray and The Importance of Being Earnest, in the home’s library on the ground level.
Later the elegant red-bricked house was divided into separate apartments and now, one of them, on the ground floor is for sale for £1.695 million or about $2.18 million.
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The two-bedroom two-bathroom apartment has been remodeled with modern life in mind and an extension has been added to the back of the building where the contemporary furnished kitchen and dining room are now located. The open floor plan space has floor-to-ceiling windows and opens straight onto the patio, which is perfect for entertaining. The two bedrooms are located on the upper level. The bathrooms feature modern finishes, dark tiles, and wooden accents.
