Once you've bought your £100,000 Jaguar XKR-S, paid off Dad's mortgage and given your best friend more than £1 million, how do you start wasting spending the rest of a £45 million lottery win?
The answer for Matt and Cassey Topham, a former decorator and supermarket worker from Nottingham who scooped the EuroMillions jackpot last year, is to erect a futuristic mansion on a suburban avenue with all the trappings of a James Bond villain's lair.
The couple on Thursday submitted a planning application for a sinuous solar panel-clad home in Nottinghamshire which will be 16 times larger than the average three-bedroom family house. The project is likely to be one of the most ambitious new homes to be built in the UK — if planners grant consent. It will feature a garage screened by a waterfall, a botanical garden and a grotto swimming pool as well as eight bedrooms, all at a estimated cost of £5 million. Until recently, the Tophams lived in an £90,000 ex-council house in Stapleford.
Matt and Cassey, 24 and 23, have had their lives turned upside down by the huge win in February 2012 and are understood to have told the designers they wanted to create a private bolt hole away from unwanted attention. They were victims of a break-in shortly after their win, and have been pursued by photographers.
The result is a ground-hugging structure dubbed Serenity that snakes around a courtyard formed by accommodation, leisure and entertainment pods. Inside are the paraphernalia of a lottery winner's life: a snooker room, swimming pool, whirlpool bath, cinema, music pod and staff quarters. There is also an underground garage for up to 10 cars to be glimpsed through a waterfall contrived from a pair of pools allowing water to tumble through the courtyard from one storey to the next.
"Must-haves included five bedrooms, a dramatic sweeping staircase, a large garage and a grotto-style pool," the couple said. "We also spent a lot of time debating with the architect how the rooms would be used and the split between open plan and entertaining spaces versus cosy, snug rooms. We were very clear we didn't want to live in a glass box. At the very top of our wish list was a strong desire to keep the design contemporary yet familiar, and flexible enough to accommodate a future family."
The Tophams are reported to have already paid off the mortgage of Matt's father and given £1.3 million to a close friend, as well as paying for holidays for friends and family in Spain, New York and Amsterdam.
The project involves demolishing a £1.2 million 1930s mansion they bought which overlooks a country park. They hired London-based Baca Architects, after seeing them present a seminar at a Grand Designs Live exhibition, a spin-off from the TV show in which Kevin McCloud looks on with a mixture of sympathy and disbelief as people struggle to build their dream homes. The Tophams were careful not to let on they were lottery winners and Richard Coutts, a Baca partner, admitted he was not sure they were serious at first. But the young firm, sensing a dream commission, grasped the opportunity.
Early inspirations for the couple came from films such as Iron Man, with its underground car park, and TV series such as Dynasty for its staircase. As the design progressed the architects took them to Eltham Palace, a medieval royal palace with an art deco interior, to the Marni fashion store on Sloane Street, with its space-age staircase designed by Future Systems, and to the Victoria and Albert Museum to look at materials and furniture.
Coutts said the house was organised into "clusters of activity", like country house wings. "Visitors arrive via a grand hall where a majestic staircase sweeps up to a cinema room and study, contained in two acoustically sealed pods hovering above a drawing room," he said. "In the drawing room a large picture window, set on an axis with the neighbouring country park, offers views over the maze." Not all lottery winners have found moving a smooth process. Neil and Kate Chester, who won £8.5 million in 2007, bought the £1.8 million Semple House in Hampshire, only to move out because it was too large: "We don't even watch TV together as we are all in different rooms."
The family hub in "Serenity" sets out to counter such a problem by creating almost a house within a house with conventional-sized bedrooms, bathrooms and a living room. A decision from planners on whether the Tophams' house will go ahead is expected this summer.
(Click to display full-size in gallery)
(Click to display full-size in gallery)
Thanks to myturn for the tip.
I'm betting they'll be broke in less than 5 years!
thar's to blow and I like thar idea of a place to live
and when my turn to win comes ..... I hope to find a nice streach of land to build my dream
but a garage for up to 10 cars is a streaching it a wee bit
ok reading about it, seem alright
just people living the dream
makin the perfact house for them....
but then i seen the artist take of house
ugly and wtf is what "i" think
but some will like it, great for them.
and then i noticed, a river/stream on top right
they buildin this thing in a freaking FLOOD zone
ya it "could" be rated one of them only floods 1 time in a 1000 year flood zones"
however i know whatever experts say, i lived thro nashvile great flood, they said it was 1000 year flood event, rofl. trust me folks, don't live in any kind of flood zone, period, your just setting your self up for a beating in far future.
"i lived in hills, i really was not effected other then people by me"
any moron that builds a house in a flood zone, has got to be stupid.......
flood zones deserve to be farmland/parks/etc, never homes, but humans as a whole are retarded,and refuse commen sense where to build a living space......................
so am going to call it. if not this family, some family in future going to be flooded, all thx to morons above picking worst possible place to build it in.
human race as majority has always been stupid, its been few smart engineers/inventers etc, that have driven race human up form stone age living to have , what we all have today,and then majority think there"all that" and more smart. then humans living 1000 years ago
rofl.
these people are just proving what side of human race there on. stupid side.
who knows maybe they upload a video of it to youtube/or some place when its done built,and it look great, i may change my mind when its done
however i know that place is doomed if they got a large body of running water that freaking close to home.
why do people set them selfs up for failers so large
for lottery winners they already showing there 1 large weakness, they cant understand or care or just give a darn for the risks they put them selfs and there money in.
this home in a flood zone, proves my point
u want a beach home, be ready for it get flatted by a hurricane
u want to live in LA/San f, be ready to have ever thing shake like crazy and watch whatever not will built fall down........
u want to live by moving water, not far above it
be ready to have water show up inside your home.
sense when large amount of water falls to ground, thro a large storm, will all that water got to go somewhere,and i give u hint"its very near where current water all goes by"
for rich people they sure as hell picked a poor person's area to have a home.........................
I am all for originality but does anyone really need underground parking for 10 cars? They could have scaled this down and still been quite original. I hope they have money left in 5 years.
If they are broke in 5 years someone will be able to pick it up for half what they spent on it.
Well when I win Im going to need a big azz garage LOL but never one with a waterfall in the back
any moron that builds a house in a flood zone, has got to be stupid.......
I would settle for a 6 car.
Although It appears its a flood zone, the house has some new interesting modification underway. It will be designed like an ark.
So it will float.
The current picture just looks like a dead War of the World alien monster.
What happened to just a little cute buckyball?
Is this a cute buckyball?
http://www.google.bs/imgres?imgurl=http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qT6dkMZNvcA/S7-v0_s-tVI/AAAAAAAAAJ8/L8NUrOjbVFA/s1600/buckyball%2Bpool.jpg&imgrefurl=http://popeyjaykr.blogspot.com/&h=768&w=1024&sz=251&tbnid=yf_Qr1HXWGsR7M:&tbnh=101&tbnw=135&zoom=1&usg=__i-qU09ayaU0Y0uv6nRZOE1UEu_E=&docid=VN9h_A56oCKaeM&hl=en&sa=X&ei=VjBzUamVJoS08QT004CQAg&sqi=2&ved=0CEAQ9QEwBA&dur=49
Now thats a cool looking cute bucky.