The actual life Willy Wonka Angus Thirlwell has put the six-bedroom dwelling the place he created treats for Hotel Chocolat up on the market for £2.85million.
Thirlwell, 60, the co-founder of Hotel Chocolat, first got here up with the thought for his empire at his household’s gorgeous grade II listed home on the outskirts of Barley village, on the Hertfordshire-Cambridgeshire border.
He is now promoting Old Manor House for practically £3million after residing within the property together with his spouse Libby for 30 years.
Speaking to The Times, Thirlwell mentioned: ‘I whip up a few of the recipes within the kitchen right here – in spite of everything, though in fact we do have an elite staff of chocolate makers, there isn’t any substitute typically for simply getting caught in and experimenting your self.’
The chocolate fanatic co-founded his firm by rebranding his enterprise Choc Express in 2003.
Now Hotel Chocolat has turn into widespread on the excessive streets, with 130 shops opened throughout the UK.
Angus Thirlwell has put the home (pictured) the place he created treats for Hotel Chocolat up on the market for £2.85million
Angus Thirlwell, 60, (pictured) first got here up with the thought for his candy empire at his household’s gorgeous grade II listed home
The home is full of character, together with tall home windows and gorgeous picket beams
Thirlwell is obsessive about chocolate and makes a few of it within the gorgeous dwelling
He is promoting Old Manor House, which he and his spouse Libby have owned for 30 years
The home comes with gorgeous open air grounds with bushes and statues
Thirlwell and Libby at the moment are relocating to Chicago having agreed to promote Hotel Chocolat to Mars in a £534million money deal in November 2023.
The gorgeous dwelling, which boasts six bedrooms and three loos, has Elizabethan origins and is full of conventional options, corresponding to picket beams and oak flooring.
Thirlwell mentioned: ‘Pre-2003, we had a chocolate model that fast-delivered chocolate items and relied on the brand new invention of the web.
‘But as our new enterprise developed, we realised we wished to speak extra concerning the high quality of the chocolate – and what we stood for as a model reasonably than solely speak about a service.
‘So I holed myself up within the research of the Old Manor. As my spouse will inform you, I used to be closed to the skin world and was simply very, very introspective, pondering and researching. And out of that got here the model identify Hotel Chocolat.’
Thirlwell, who based the posh British chocolate model twenty years in the past, beforehand admitted he had at all times been a ‘chocolate fiend’ since he was a baby and to this present day he stays a chocaholic.
Over the years Thirlwell has provided excursions round his sprawling Saint Lucia cacao plantation
The home has Elizabethan origins and is full of interval options, corresponding to beams
The front room comes with gorgeous home windows and trendy picket flooring
The co-founder of Hotel Chocolat is so obsessive about the candy deal with that he makes it himself at dwelling
The surrounding space of the posh property is gorgeous, with massive areas of greenery
The home comes with a big health club space with patio doorways and trendy picket flooring
Each morning Thirlwell sprinkles cocoa beans on his poached eggs, washed down with water infused with the beans and ‘at all times’ has chocolate each night
The chocolate fanatic co-founded his firm by rebranding his fledgling mail-order enterprise Choc Express in 2003
Each morning he sprinkles cocoa beans on his poached eggs, washed down with water infused with the beans and ‘at all times’ has chocolate each night.
And through the years, identical to Wonka, Thirlwell has provided excursions round his sprawling Saint Lucia cacao plantation.
The Newcastle-born exec, who adopted within the footsteps of his father Edwin Thirlwell, creator of Mr Whippy, even provided 5 years of free chocolate to the hero who discovered a totally stocked ‘Chocmobile’ that was stolen from exterior the places of work of Hotel Chocolat.
Over the years, Hotel Chocolat has turn into an everyday function on UK excessive streets, with 130 shops opened throughout the nation.