After being sold last year for £32million, the biggest private house in London bar Buckingham Palace has just been bought for £50million - a 56 per cent rise in 12 months.
Witanhurst, a 90-room Grade II Queen Anne listed mansion in Highgate, is the latest investment by the Mayor of Moscow's wife Elena Baturina.
She is the richest woman in Russia in her own right with a fortune of £1.3billion.
The property has been used for the BBC's Fame Academy in the past and the Queen even played tennis there as a girl at a pre-Wimbledon party hosted by a former owner.
It is in a dilapidated state, with holes in the ceilings and crumbling cornices, and no work has been done on it since it was bought from an Arab family by property developer Marcus Cooper last July.
But with her company, Inteco, said to be the most successful building conglomerate of the post-Soviet era, 45-year-old Miss Baturina should have no problem restoring Witanhurst to its former glory.
Something of a controversial figure in Russia, Miss Baturina is said to have her pick of many of the more lucrative construction contracts in Moscow.
