Twenty-two acres of suburban aristocratic "farm" with a seven-bed stone manor cries out for a seductive narrative, and this Barrington Hills estate has just that. The mansion and plot of rolling meadow, pond, tennis courts, pool, and pool house played crash pad to His Royal Highness Prince Charles and Princess Diana in 1985. And since Americans still carry the weight of Di's death and an all-around pitiful obsession with another country's royalty, it had to get mentioned in the listing copy. The photo tour doesn't take us inside the forbidding home, but the impression given is that it's short on livability before considerable TLC. In addition to the seven beds, there are nine-and-a-half baths and six fireplaces.
The estate borrows the name Cotswold Farm from the English, too. Sounds like someone had it in their head to bait-and-switch jet-lagged royalty. The property's other piece of historical trivia is that the late filmmaker John Hughes, always a champion of Chicagoland, used the manor as a filming location for 1991's Dutch. New to market, the initial asking price is $2.5M— almost one mil below the 2008 sale price.
·Listing: 122 W County Line Road, Barrington Hills [Coldwell Banker]
·John Hughes Coverage [Curbed Chicago]
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