For sale: £4m Hampshire home – comes with its own fighter jet
A retired mathematician has put his £3.95 million Hampshire home on the market and said his 46ft fighter jet “garden gnome” comes as part of the package.
Peter Robinson bought the rare Harrier II GR7 jump jet in 2015 for more than £100,000 owing to his lifelong obsession with the warplane.
The 46ft-by-29ft aircraft, which is powered by a Rolls-Royce Pegasus 105 turbofan engine and an inert sidewinder missile, now sits on a grass verge outside his six-bed countryside house. He refers to it as his “garden gnome”.
Mr Robinson, who claims he made his name professionally by “solving problems for the Ministry of Defence”, has decided to sell the decommissioned jet along with his Arts & Crafts property in South East England after 11 years living on the Durford Wood Estate.
The 56-year-old told The Times: “I thought, well, your average Joe, he likes a Harrier jump jet, he’s got a windowsill — he buys a Harrier model that is eight inches long and he puts it on his windowsill.
“I think, in many ways, this is no different. I’m just lucky enough to have a really big windowsill.”
Having bought the aircraft from a company in Ipswich, Suffolk, that was storing it after it was taken out of MoD service in 2008, Mr Robinson said fitting the plane in the grounds of his property was an issue.
He said: “It came on two articulated lorries — it was far more enormous than I had envisaged. The fuselage came in on one lorry, and when that came around the corner and turned into the estate I suddenly thought I’d bought a Concorde because it looked so big. I thought: ‘Oh my God, what have I done?’”
It later transpired that a panel of the jet had fallen off the delivery lorry on to the M25, causing two-hour long traffic jams in both directions.
Mr Robinson added: “Everyone [looking at the debris on the motorway] assumed it was an aircraft door, but they had no idea where it was from.
“I spoke to the people we bought the plane from, and they said: ‘Whatever you do, don’t say anything [to the police].’ But a couple of weeks later I phoned them and by that time they found it quite amusing — so they let me have [the panel]. I’m keeping it as a spare, as we’d already found a replacement from somewhere else.”
The gated 8,000sq ft home contains 10 acres of land, a man-made pond and a four-bedroom detached annexe.
If the prospective buyer finds the military warplane in the backyard offensive, Mr Robinson has promised to remove it. He said he would keep it for himself or donate it to a museum if necessary.
