Find a Pearl Lowe among the hockey sticks

By Jane Slade
Posted: 2010/05/12

JANE SLADE meets up with reformed wild-child Pearl Lowe, who is selling her home through a w ebsite that sells rabbit hutches and cricket bats

IN THE course of last month Pearl Lowe announced she was expecting her fifth child at the age of 40, learned that her model daughter Daisy was stepping out with Doctor Who's newest time lord Matt Smith, was informed that her drummer husband Danny Goffey was cutting loose from his rock band Supergrass after 17 years and heard that her 13-yearold son Alfie had won a scholarship to Wells Cathedral school.

"That was when I decided to advertise our house for sale on schoolstrader.com, " she says, a website that sells school uniforms, ponies and musical instruments.

"I know it sounds crazy but a friend of mine sold her house in Glastonbury on the site and saved herself thousands of pounds. If we sell ours we could save about £16,500 in estate agents' fees."

This is based on Pearl achieving the sale price of £795,000 for her seven-bedroomed, medieval-style home in Frome in Somerset with swimming pool, large family kitchen and generous garden.

"I want to move nearer to Wells so Alfie doesn't have to board, " she says.

"Even with the scholarship the fees are considerable."

Schoolstrader.com doesn't charge commission or fees for listings on its site. Since 2006, when co-founder Neil Clarke uploaded for business, he attracted parents advertising their children's hockey sticks and school blazers. Now it has shifted to them marketing their holiday homes and residential property.

"The original intention of the site w as for parents to buy and sell things like drum kits, cricket bats, bikes and rabbit hutches. However, it looks as if more people are happy to give us a try and bypass estate agents, " he says. "We have just seen a beautiful £2.5million Sussex farmhouse with six bedrooms, an oast house, barn, land and lake pop up; a threebedroomed flat in Buckinghamshire advertised for £199,000; a holiday home in Cornwall for £99,000; and a beach hut in Essex for £25,000."

Dress designer Pearl, whose baby is due in October, hopes that now the election is over the market will pick up and she can move her family to the house she has found with more land nearer to A lfie's school.

Pearl escaped to the country two-and-a-half y ears ago after her hectic London lifestyle of drug-taking, drinking and partying began to take its toll. "My life became unmanageable, " she admits."As much as I loved my social life it became too full-on. It also got expensive as I kept forgetting to pay my parking tickets and the congestion charge. My head was in the clouds."

Pearl, the former lead singer with Nineties band Powder, was nicknamed Dyson for her cocaine-snorting habit and became hooked on heroin after the birth of her third child.

Now all that is behind her. The former rock chick who had her first child, Daisy, at 19 has bought a dog and joined a country club.

The house is 10 minutes from Babbington House, a stately home and country club, which has been a lifesaver to Pearl and her children A lfie, 13, Frankie, 10, and Betty, four.

"There is something going on every day, " she says. "I am there most days because I can take my dog for a walk in the morning and have a swim and then drive to Cardiff [one hour 30 minutes away] to work on my fashion business." The country saved Pearl. "The country gave me space to create and time to work on my relationship with Danny and my children, " she says. "Life suddenly became amazingly fun and happy."

A friend introduced her to Frome where she bought a large farmhouse and created a bohemian roost full of antique furniture, scented candles and lace curtains. She even bought a caravan, dolled it up in floral wallpaper and goat skin rugs, and wrote her memoir All That Glitters: Living On The Dark Side Of Rock & Roll (Hodder & Stoughton).

However, it is time for the wheels to turn again. "We have found a house not as big as this one at the end of a long driveway, with lots of land by the river, " she says. "Even though there are quite a few of us our current home is colossal." Apart from the seven bedrooms, there are three family bathrooms, two reception rooms, a big kitchen, a playroom and even a laundry room.

"The rooms are huge with high ceilings, we get pretty lost in it. The boys live on the top floor and we live on the bottom but I will miss Frome, which is a beautiful village, especially the antique shops and monthly vintage market.

"Since moving to the country I am more chilled out. My London friends were a phase of my life but I have grown up at last and don't want to be out until six in the morning any more worrying about what the nanny is going to say when I walk through the door.

"I love having my family around me and even though Daisy is doing brilliantly with her modelling career she still has her own bedroom and loves coming home at weekends.

My godson was mugged and beaten up for his phone in West Hampstead recently. I don't miss London and don't think my children do."

Schoolstrader.com covers more than 30,000 school communities but does not replace the services of a good proactive estate agent. It does not value properties or arrange viewings but as Neil Clarke says: "You can place an ad across our network in a minute, all free.

"We offer a simple and useful service to anyone connected with a primary, secondary or independent school. We put buyers and sellers in touch with each other. We don't take any commission.

"The state of the housing market seems to be helping, as there is not much stock around and it seems relatively easy to sell prime property privately."