Ormeley Lodge, the breathtaking Georgian mansion where Imran Khan and Jemima Goldsmith lived, loved, and launched PTI’s earliest vision, has been listed for sale at £25 million — and every room holds a story.
By Imran Malik | Features Desk | MediaBites.com.pk
Once upon a time, in a magical corner of Surrey where ancient woodland meets a royal deer park, a Pakistani cricket hero fell deeply in love. The house that witnessed that love story is now for sale. And its price tag — £25 million — is as extraordinary as the history it holds within its walls.
Ormeley Lodge, Ham Common, Richmond, Surrey. Ten bedrooms. Seven bathrooms. 15,814 square feet of early Georgian elegance set between the untouched Ham Common Woods Nature Reserve and Richmond Park’s breathtaking 2,500 acres. A property so beautiful, so serene, so almost impossibly picturesque, that it feels less like a house and more like a chapter from a fairy tale.
It was. For a while.
Where a Love Story Was Born
The Goldsmith family has owned Ormeley Lodge for decades, and it was here that Jemima Goldsmith, daughter of the late billionaire Sir James Goldsmith, grew up surrounded by lush green gardens, woodland walks, and the quiet privilege of one of England’s most beautiful private estates.
When Imran Khan, Pakistan’s greatest cricketer and the most magnetic personality in South Asian public life, came into Jemima’s world in 1995, this house became the backdrop for one of cricket’s most romantic love stories. They married that year. And Ormeley Lodge became, in its own quiet way, one of the most consequential addresses in Pakistan’s modern political history.
The Annex Where History Was Made
Look carefully at the main photograph of Ormeley Lodge. In the extreme left of the image, a single window marks what was a private annex — a modest, intimate space within this grand estate. This was Imran Khan’s room. A single bed. Personal space. And, crucially, his meeting place.
From this small annex, conversations were held that would eventually shape the political destiny of a nation of 240 million people. Visitors came. Plans were made. A vision for Pakistan, a new kind of politics, a movement called Tehreek-e-Insaf, began to take its earliest recognizable shape here, in a corner of Surrey, surrounded by woodland and birdsong.
Among those who facilitated those early, history-shaping visits was Shahid Malik, a prominent Pakistani PR and real estate personality based in the UK, who played a quiet but significant role in the earliest days of PTI’s formation. Malik would bring people from different walks of life — businessmen, professionals, community leaders, diaspora voices — to meet Imran Khan during those formative years when the party was still more dream than reality.
He was a connector, a bridge between Imran Khan’s vision and the Pakistani community in Britain that would become some of PTI’s earliest and most passionate supporters.
It was Shahid Malik himself who shared the news of Ormeley Lodge’s listing — and, by his own admission, he did so with a heavy heart.
“I wish I could buy this house,” he said, the weight of sentiment unmistakable in every word. “But at £25 million, it is beyond even a dream for me.”
Yet the dream he carries is not a selfish one. Malik’s heartfelt wish is that somewhere among PTI’s global family of passionate supporters, a hardcore Khan lover with the means and the vision will step forward and purchase Ormeley Lodge — not as a private home, but as a living Imran Khan Museum, preserving for future generations the rooms, the grounds, the annex, and the memories of the place where Pakistan’s most consequential political movement first found its voice.
The mini cricket area in the grounds told its own story. Imran Khan, even in domestic bliss, never truly left the game that made him. The swimming pool caught the English summer light. The lush green views, impossibly beautiful, impossibly tranquil, felt like a world entirely removed from Lahore’s political heat and Islamabad’s power games.
Yet the heat and the games found their way here, too.
A Marriage, a Movement, and a Parting of Ways
Imran and Jemima’s marriage lasted nine years, ending in 2004. By all accounts, it was a relationship of genuine love complicated by the impossible demands of Imran’s political ambitions, the cultural distance between Pakistan and England, and the sheer relentlessness of a public life that left little room for private happiness.
They parted. But they parted with dignity. Jemima Goldsmith has consistently spoken of Imran with warmth and respect. She stood by him publicly even after their divorce, defending him against political persecution, condemning his imprisonment, and advocating for his release with a passion that speaks of bonds that outlast the legal architecture of marriage.
The children they share, Sulaiman and Kasim Khan, carry both worlds within them. Two cultures. Two legacies. One extraordinary story.
The House Now For Sale
With the Goldsmith family now dispersed across the world and the chapter that gave Ormeley Lodge its most dramatic pages firmly closed, the family has decided to sell.
The property details read like a dream. A beautiful early Georgian house set in a semi-rural pocket roughly ten miles from Hyde Park Corner. Richmond Golf Club and Sudbrook Park border the property to the north and east. The untouched Ham Common Woods Nature Reserve lies directly to the south, opening onto Richmond Park’s iconic landscape.
Ten bedrooms. Seven bathrooms. Balcony. Cottage. Garden. Freehold tenure. Council Tax Band H. EPC rating F.
And a guide price of £25,000,000.
Every corner of this house carries a memory. The drawing rooms where Pakistani political strategy met English country house elegance. The grounds where children played and a cricketer remembered what it felt like to win. The annex where a man who would become his country’s most beloved and most persecuted leader sat and dreamed of what Pakistan could become.
A Museum for the Movement?
Here is a thought worth entertaining seriously.
Imran Khan currently sits in a Pakistani prison cell, separated from everything this house represents. His movement, PTI, continues to fight for his release and for the democratic rights of Pakistan’s citizens. His supporters span the globe, from Lahore to London, from Karachi to California.
What if one of those supporters, one wealthy PTI lover with £25 million and a sense of history, were to purchase Ormeley Lodge not as a private residence but as something more permanent? A museum. A cultural centre. A living monument to the love story, the political vision, and the extraordinary human journey that this house silently witnessed.
The annex where Imran Khan slept, met, and planned. The cricket ground was where he never forgot who he was. The gardens where perhaps, on a quiet English evening, he allowed himself to believe that Pakistan could be different.
It would be the most romantic political gesture in the history of the Pakistani diaspora.
The Price of Memories
£25 million. At current exchange rates, approximately PKR 8.75 billion.
For that sum, you get 15,814 square feet of Georgian architectural beauty, ten bedrooms, seven bathrooms, grounds bordering a royal park and an ancient nature reserve, and something no estate agent’s listing can formally quantify.
You get the walls that heard Imran Khan’s plans. The floors that carried his footsteps. The windows that framed his view of an England that was his second home during the years when Pakistan felt most complicated.
You get the house where a love story began. Where a political movement was dreamed. Where two extraordinary people from opposite ends of the world found, for nine years, a life together.
Ormeley Lodge is for sale.
The memories are priceless.
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