One wonders if Proudhon could have ever conceived of one home costing the equivalent of 1000 years salary of a Police Sergeant? Clearly few people in any generation can live in places such as Belgravia and even fewer in an ‘Iceberg Home’ with around 7,000 square feet of living space at the same address as a previous Prime Minister. However £35M is the estimated sale price of a property on Chester Square, inhabited until recently by Margaret Thatcher. The blue plaque on the wall apparently will add a great deal to the value of the home.

I have never lived in a building with a Blue Plaque, but I was Trustee for over a decade of a charity that provided housing for young people in parts of Sussex. One of the homes we ran was based in the premises that had once been a School, and the School was attended by Winston Churchill. Needless to say the building (which was only leased to the charity) was no better than any of the other homes that we managed.

There must be many homes in the UK that are worth sums far in excess of this one Terrace House and no doubt some of the readers of todays Telegraph will not even blink at the price tag. Indeed perhaps some will wish they had tunnelled out their own basement to create a subterranean Palace. Of course none of them will have access to a Blue Plaque to top it all off. The rest of us might question if our values are really so corrupted that one home for one family can be worth more than a small town in some parts of the same country. The people who sold the house on behalf of the Thatcher family might also wonder if the value of their property, even allowing for the extensive development was fully realised, bearing in mind they sold it for a mere £4M.