OK, I confess. There’s nothing I like better than having a good look around other people’s homes, especially when that home costs millions and belongs to someone famous, which is why this property caught my eye.
It’s a polo ranch belonging to Hollywood star, Tommy Lee Jones and on the market for a mere $19.9million (£12.8million) – that’s a bargain as it previously had a price tag of $26.5million.
Tommy Lee Jones isn’t just another handsome actor who made it good and gets to run in popular Hollywood circles.
An eighth-generation Texan from oil country, Jones had an eye for getting a good education. He worked hard, was accepted for a scholarship to a nearby prep school and from there a Rhodes Scholarship to Harvard where his room mate was future vice president, Al Gore.
After graduating, his career took off immediately and in 1980 he won his first Golden Globe for his role as Loretta Lynn’s husband in, Coal Miner’s Daughter.
Since then, he’s had some coveted roles ranging from The Fugitive (he won an Academy Award for the role of US Marshal Samuel Gerard) to the comedy Men in Black films.
Away from the bright lights of Hollywood Jones, who is fluent in Spanish, is a champion polo player, and has immersed himself in the sport with his own stables, ranches and polo fields in North and South America.
His permanent residence is in Terrell, Texas, just outside of San Antonio, but he also has a house at a polo country club in Buenos Aires, a 3,000-acre cattle ranch in Texas and another ranch near Van Horn, Texas.
He also has a polo farm, known as the San Saba Polo Ranch, in the upscale polo community of Wellington, Florida which he’s owned since 2002 and which he’s now selling.
The ranch has 55 acres or land, 48 horse stalls, its own regulation size irrigated polo field, an exercise track, seven tack rooms, laundry, wash racks and separate equipment building.
The house at the heart of the ranch is a fairly modest affair with just four bedrooms and two bathrooms but it is surrounded by a lake with a waterfall and more than 180 rare plants and a five-acre nature preserve.
Wellington, just outside Palm Beach is well known as the North American hot spot in the polo world with more than 60 full-size polo fields. Both Bruce Springsteen and Bill Gates have polo-playing daughters and homes in Wellington.
