“Money is something I’ve always liked,” said a 12-year-old Jacob Rees-Mogg in a 1982 interview. “I’ve always wanted to be rich.” Now a multi-millionaire, the former Tory MP, Brexiteer — and soon-to-be star of his own reality TV show, Meet The Rees-Moggs— has done just that.
In 2019, Spears Magazine put his net worth as “well over £100 million”, thanks in part to his fund management firm, Somerset Capital Management, and his extensive property portfolio.
In 2007, Rees-Mogg married into further money. His wife, Helena de Chair, is the daughter of the aristocrat Somerset de Chair and Lady Juliet Tadgell, who inherited the Fitzwilliam family’s £45 million fortune at age 13. De Chair stands to inherit everything.
As an MP, Rees-Mogg declared farmland and property in Somerset and London. But the former politician has other valuable assets. From his Grade II listed country estate to his Westminster townhouse, here’s a look at the properties Rees-Mogg has called home.
Mark Richards
In 2018, Rees-Mogg moved from Mayfair to a five-storey townhouse on Cowley Street, metres away from the House of Commons. Rees-Mogg told ITV he had moved “because Cowley Street is cheaper and I couldn’t afford a bigger property in Mayfair”
Still, the new property wasn’t exactly cheap. Rees-Mogg bought it from former Tory party deputy chairman and businessman Lord Michael Ashcroft for £5,625,000, according to the Land Registry.
Rees-Mogg renovated the house, coming under formal investigation for not declaring that he received £6 million in loans from Saliston, one of his companies, which were invested in the property. This was not upheld, with the inquiry concluding the loans did not need to be registered.
Saliston has owned the freehold of a building on Pall Mall since 2006, reported to be worth £4 million. According to the Land Registry, the building contains four flats and commercial premises, available under three separate leases. A rental listing from 2016 advertised the commercial space for a total of £172,000 per year. Saliston owns investment properties worth a total of £7.84 million, according to its most recent accounting.
Current: Gournay Court, West Harptree, Somerset
Handout
Cut from red sandstone, Rees-Moggs’s sprawling Grade II listed house is the family’s primary home, alongside Cowley Street. It is also where Meet the Rees-Moggs is filmed.
“In Somerset, we have a mansion,” explains one of his sons in the trailer. The clip also reveals original fireplaces, an arched Tudor entrance flanked by two Doric columns and a wood-panelled dining room. There are shots of the traditional interiors, enormous portraiture and of staff polishing silver candelabras.
Built about 1600, the property was part of the Duchy of Cornwall for more than two centuries. During the First World War, it was used as a Red Cross hospital, chosen in part because it had been newly renovated for Prince John, the epileptic son of Queen Mary and King George V, who had died before moving in. Rees-Mogg bought it for £2,911,000 in 2010.
Discovery+
Past: Underhill Farm, Orchard Vale, Somerset
Underhill Farm, north-west of Rees-Moggs’s former constituency, Midsomer Norton, is about 10 miles from Gournay Court.
Title documents show the land was once owned by Rees-Moggs’s parents, before passing to their son. Since 2014, though, the farm has been officially listed as owned by Thomas Meadows, a business manager with links to the family’s companies, and Richard Cussell, a solicitor specialising in tax and inheritance planning.
Past: The Old Rectory, Hinton Blewett, Somerset
No longer owned by the Rees-Mogg family, the Grade II listed Old Rectory was the former politician’s childhood home between 1978 and 2001.
The house has five reception rooms, six bathrooms , an indoor swimming pool, pastry kitchen, walled garden and gym. It was listed for sale for £2.75 million last year.