David Attenborough has lived in the same house in Richmond, south-west London, for about seventy-five years. He bought it around 1950, raised his family in it, was widowed in it, and turned 100 there in May 2026. In a genre full of people who move every five years, that is close to unique.
He has made exactly one notable property transaction in all that time, and it is characteristic: in 2001 he bought the pub next door for around £1 million, not to expand his house for its own sake, but because he feared it would be demolished for flats, and because he wanted the land for an orchard, a glasshouse and a bog garden for marsh plants. This guide covers the house, the pub, and why almost nothing else about it is documented.
Who is David Attenborough?
Sir David Attenborough is a British broadcaster, naturalist and writer, born on 8 May 1926. He joined the BBC in the early 1950s, later ran BBC Two as its controller, and then spent more than half a century making the natural history series that defined the form, from Life on Earth through The Blue Planet, Planet Earth and their successors. He narrated Blue Planet III in his late nineties.
His wife Jane died in 1997. They had two children, Robert and Susan. He has spoken publicly in recent years about approaching the end of his life, and has continued working throughout.
He is also, relevantly here, a man whose entire professional subject is habitat, which is not incidental to what he did with the land next door.
The house in Richmond
The house is an Edwardian property in Richmond, close to Richmond Park, in a part of south-west London that is leafy, expensive and quiet without being remote from the city.
Sources disagree about exactly when he bought it. Dates from 1949 through to the early 1950s appear in different accounts, and no authoritative record settles it. The disagreement hardly matters against the underlying fact: he has lived in the same house for roughly three quarters of a century, through the whole of his broadcasting career.
He has been unusually warm about the area in public, describing Richmond as his favourite place on earth and, when pressed, his favourite place by a mile. For a man who has filmed on every continent, that is a striking thing to say about a London suburb, and it appears to be meant literally rather than as politeness.
The pub he bought next door
In 2001 the pub adjoining his property, the Hole in the Wall, which dated back to 1868, became available. Attenborough bought it, reportedly for around £1 million.
His stated reason was defensive. He was concerned that if he did not, the site would be redeveloped as a block of flats next to his home. That is a familiar motivation for anyone who has watched a neighbouring plot come up for sale.
What he did with it is the part that distinguishes this from an ordinary land grab. The plan reported at the time involved extending his house into part of the site and turning the rest into a wildlife-friendly outdoor space, with an orchard, a glasshouse, and a bog garden planted for marsh species.
A bog garden is not a decorative feature. It is a deliberately waterlogged planting area that supports amphibians, invertebrates and wetland plants, and it is one of the more effective things a private garden can contain for biodiversity. A naturalist buying a Victorian pub in order to make marshland out of part of it is about as consistent a life as it is possible to lead.
What is not documented
Almost everything a celebrity property article would normally supply is absent, and for once the reason is not aggregation failure but jurisdiction and temperament.
There is no published purchase price for the house, because it was bought around 1950, long before any modern record-keeping that a journalist could consult. There is no square footage, no bedroom count, no valuation, no listing history and no interior photography released through any property channel. He has never sold it, never marketed it and never given a house tour.
England and Wales do not produce the kind of routinely reported property journalism that American counties do, which is why British subjects on this site are consistently less documented than American ones. The pattern is the same for Robert Smith of The Cure, who has lived quietly in Sussex for decades with no property record to speak of.
Where does David Attenborough live now?
Richmond, in south-west London, in the same house.
This is as well established as anything on this site. He has lived there for around seventy-five years, has spoken about the area repeatedly and by name, bought the adjoining property in 2001 rather than move, and has been reported as spending more time at home as he has slowed down. He turned 100 there in 2026.
There is no reporting of a second home, a country house or a property abroad, and given how much of his life has been spent filming in remote places, the absence of a retreat is itself telling. The house in Richmond is the retreat.
It is worth setting that against the other London property covered on this site. The Holland Park mansion described in the account of David Beckham’s homes cost £31.5 million and is one of four properties across two countries. Attenborough has one house in a suburb, bought before most of his audience was born, and a bog garden where the pub used to be.
Sources
- GB News on his Edwardian Richmond house, his description of the area, and the 2001 purchase of the neighbouring pub and his plans for the site.
- Hello! on his long residence in Richmond and his recent comments about slowing down.
- CAMRA for the Hole in the Wall pub and its history.
- Wikipedia for his date of birth, career, family and his home near Richmond Park.
