At the height of the Swinging Sixties, the decade’s biggest names – Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Terence Stamp, Peter Sellers and Greek tycoon Aristotle Onassis – enjoyed an enviable existence, partying the nights away in Chelsea, sunbathing in Mexican resorts and cruising the Mediterranean on luxury yachts, while hordes of paparazzi pursued them, intent on immortalising their every moment.
Little did the packs of photographers know that their illustrious prey often escaped to a secret hideaway: a single-storey house on Sydenham Hill in South-East London.
It was owned by the late writer Peter Evans, their friend and confidant who chronicled them all in Goodbye, Baby & Amen, the book he and legendary photographer David Bailey published.
Humble facade: The home of late writer Peter Evans where he entertained the stars of the Sixties has been put on the market by his widow Pamela for £1million
Today Peter’s widow Pamela has decided to downsize and sell the four-bedroom house that was once a mecca for the glitterati. She has put it on the market for £1 million and will be moving to Oxted in Surrey to be nearer her daughter.
Originally, her husband worked as a showbusiness correspondent in America but returned to England in 1965. His Malibu beach house had been the ultimate Hollywood party palace despite appearing small and garage-like from the outside, and Peter decided to recreate this in London.
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Pamela recalls: ‘We were in love with the idea of walking through a discreet front door into a beautiful, spacious, glamorous house – something unexpected, and almost magical.
So we worked with architect Louis Erdi and had the house built for £30,000. Then we began giving parties and intimate dinners for our celebrity friends.
So many came here that Peter Sellers once announced, ‘‘A blue plaque should be put up outside the house saying: This is where swinging London really started.” ’
Where they sat: The living room which has been graced by celebrities such as Liz Taylor and Richard Burton and Peter Sellers
Wine and dine: The house was built especially for Peter and Pamela Evans for £30,000 in the Sixties
Space to socialise: The kitchen in the four-bedroom home in Sydenham Hill, south London
Sellers – whose authorised biography The Mask Behind The Mask was written by Evans – was virulently opposed to him moving to South-East London.
‘He tried really hard to talk us out of it and kept saying we should only live in North London,’ Pamela explains. ‘Then he came to see the house, fell in love with it and used to call it “My safe house”.
‘He was paranoid and insisted on a secret phone line being installed. A ‘‘phone expert’’ came to set it up, but it ended up knocking out all the phones in the neighbourhood.’
In those days there were only six houses in the area. Today, given its proximity to Dulwich College and the fact that the journey from Sydenham Hill station to Victoria is only 12 minutes, the neighbourhood has expanded considerably.
The 4,000 sq ft cedar-wood house, set in a third of an acre, is surrounded by a white ranch-board fence, behind which is a brick patio. Three stone steps lead to double oak doors that open on to the entrance hall.
Guest: Elizabeth Taylor
Another door at the house – a 13th Century Welsh monastery door, which Pamela and Peter used as a headboard – caught the eye of one of their most illustrious visitors, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.
‘She came to our house with Ari soon after their wedding. She told me she loved my old Welsh door. I should have given it to her,’ Pamela says, ‘because it was later stolen.’
From the entrance hall, double doors lead to the vast living room – the site of the celebrity parties – which has maple floors, French windows and a stone fireplace.
To the right of the living room is the library, complete with a Turkish carpet from Onassis’s yacht Christina. Onassis, late one evening, turned up with it over his shoulder.
The grand piano is a focal point of the living room. Pamela remembers: ‘Dudley Moore often played it.
One night, Peter Cook got very drunk and spilled red wine on the carpet, but instantly got salt, threw it on the wine and declared, “Hoover it up in the morning, and the stain will be gone.” It was.’
At the height of their romance, Jean Shrimpton and Terence Stamp played backgammon on the living-room floor. Richard Burton took refuge in the house after many of his fights with Elizabeth Taylor and was once found in the Evanses’ sauna, sleeping off a hangover.
Burton adored the garden and once said: ‘Staying here is like waking up in a Manhattan penthouse and then being able to step straight into an English garden.’
Another Hollywood icon to enjoy the garden was Ava Gardner, on whose autobiography Peter collaborated. Before his death last year, Peter remembered: ‘She said it reminded her of New England. But she was becoming increasingly frail, and I was worried about her.
‘She smiled her mysterious smile and said, “If anything bad happens to me, I’ll let you know. I’m a witch and I’ll send you a message.”
‘In 1990 there was a violent storm and an oak in the garden, which Ava had always loved, crashed through the window into my study at the very moment she died. I believe Ava sent me that message, just as she’d promised.’
The property is for sale with pedderproperty.com, 020 8299 0922, and themodernhouse.net, 020 7704 3504.