Some savvy poker abilities led to a significant return on funding for the household of Percy Allen. In 1915, the Englishman took £500 that he received from a poker recreation and used it to buy a crimson brick vacation house in Sandbanks, Dorset, England.
While the world was largely populated with picket shacks on the time, Sandbanks has since develop into an prosperous space alongside England’s southern coast and has even been known as “Britain’s Palm Beach.”
More than 100 years later, the house continues to be within the possession of the household regardless of quite a few multi-million presents for the property. That £500 in poker winnings resulted in a house that’s now valued at £5 million.
No Plans To Sell
The beachside house is called East Looe and is still used for some vacation getaways by Allen’s grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and great-great-grandchildren.
“They’re now into their sixth generation and they just enjoy it as a holiday home for the two branches of the family,” native historian Jeremy Water instructed the Daily Mail. “The house itself is not particularly photogenic, it’s just a square, pebble-dash box, but it would have been very grand for the area when it was built.”
Born in 1876, Allen and his spouse Isabelle lived in Westbury-on-Trym in Bristol, the place he labored because the director of a printing firm. However, the Daily Mail notes that a lot of his earnings apparently got here from poker. He typically headed off to London for some classes on the felt. In immediately’s {dollars}, that £500 used to buy the house could be value greater than $15,000.
The house sits close to the Sandbanks harbor in an space prized by builders. Despite receiving quite a few presents by the years, the household has chosen to maintain the property obtainable for the entire poker participant’s heirs.
“The Allens love the house and all the family enjoy going there,” Waters mentioned. “They’ve got a lovely bit of beach by their house where because of the construction of the groynes (shore protection structures built perpendicular to the shoreline) they’ve got their own little bay.”
This isn’t the one historic property received through poker that has made headlines in current months. A 118-acre ranch In Jackson, Wyoming, went on sale in September for $58 million. The property is believed to have been received in a 1944 poker recreation.
*Photo by Max Wilcock / BNPS
