Arsenal FC legend Thierry Henry opts for more va va room with four-storey fish tank in new home

Feb. 23, 2012 - PRLog -- FORMER Arsenal goal ace Thierry Henry may have left the club last week to resume his career at the New York Red Bulls, but eventually he plans to settle back in Hampstead and bring up his young family.

The French international has applied to the Town Hall for permission to knock down his London home and replace it with a mansion boasting a giant fish tank stretching vertically up through four storeys and said to hold 5,500 gallons of water and cost about £250,000.

In his application posted at Camden Council’s planning department, he has said he hopes to build something more in  keeping with his taste. Mr Henry’s designers say the home – built for somebody else in 1997 – has aged badly.

Their statement adds: “Its interior spaces are cramped, deteriorated and commercial in feel, with low ceilings, narrow rooms and poor daylight. The client purchased the property in 2001 but, having recently started a family that they hope to expand, they feel it is not fit as a family home.” He has asked for “good spaces for entertaining guests”, a personal gym and an improved swimming pool to keep in shape.

Mr Henry, 34, says he does not like the current front door, accessed through a garage. According to the planning application, this leads to “an unfriendly and generally unused entrance floor”.

The replacement building will involve digging a basement, which in previous, similar applications in Hampstead has prompted objections. It will stretch beneath the front courtyard and back garden, connecting to an existing basement.

Architect Sir Richard MacCormac, who design­ed the original home, said: “If this project claims to be in support of sustainability, it is pretty strange to demolish a house only 13 years old. We were very careful to fit in with the street and have an inward-looking house, one that did not offend other people’s privacy or the scale of other people’s houses.” No date has been set for the application to be considered.

by Dan Carrier
Published: 23rd February 2012