Meet the Russian prince in Wilmslow

By Cheshire Life on April 17th 2010

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If a picture paints a thousand words, then the 18th Century view of the fabulous Oranienbaum Palace, hanging on the wall in the drawing room of a modern detached home in Wilmslow’s Fulshaw Park speaks volumes.
For the opulent 350-bedroom palace on the outskirts of St Petersburg is the ancestral home of the resident of the Wilmslow house. Understand that and it’s less of a surprise - though only marginally so - to encounter Prince Nicholas Galitzine in the leafy lanes of the Cheshire town.
The Galitzines are a remarkable clan, not least because around 20 members of the family, including Nicholas himself (622), his siblings, his children and grandchildren, occupy places between 600 and 630 in the list of heirs to the British crown. That comes from their descent from George II but Nicholas has traced his family back to the Vikings and, as one of the most powerful and influential families in Imperial Russia, the Galitzines put the Romanov dynasty on the Tsarist throne. Nicholas himself is the great ‘to the power of six’ grandson of Catherine the Great who ruled Russia in the 1790s.
Nicholas, 65, and his partner Suzie Bull, moved into the Wilmslow home around seven months ago and set about adding a light and airy conservatory extension to their stylish drawing room. At one end, Suzie, tall, elegant and blonde, keeps her collections of antique dolls, teddies and, reflecting her great enthusiasm for the sport, tennis rackets.
As it happened, it was tennis that brought the couple together almost four years ago, after Nicolas’s wife had died.
‘I have been a steward at Wimbledon for about 18 years and in 2006 I met Suzie when she came to the championships with her daughter Lucy, who is a tennis coach at the David Lloyd centre in Cheadle,’ said Nicholas. ‘I was running courts two and three at the time.’
Littleborough-born Suzie, herself a tennis coach at schools and private homes, added: ‘We actually had tickets for the centre court that day but we wanted to see Andy Roddick’s match and Nicholas managed to find us a couple of seats.’ Four weeks later he telephoned her, they went out to dinner in Chichester, where she was living at the time, and romance blossomed.
Though the Galitzines were leading members of the fabulously wealthy Russian aristocracy, their fortune was lost when they fled the Bolshevik revolution. The family had several estates including more than half a million acres in Ukraine where they abolished serfdom early and gave each of the peasants half and an acre of land to farm. When the revolution came, the local people showed their gratitude by helping Nicholas’s grandfather Prince Vladimir Galitzine, aide-de-camp to Duke Nikolai, commander of the Russian army confronting the Turks in the south, his grandmother and their three young sons to escape in 1919 by boarding a Royal Navy ship in the Crimea, then via Constantinople and Paris.
It was a close shave. They had packed their belongings in wicker laundry baskets, and were ready to leave, when Emanuel's mother realised that she had mislaid her wedding ring. Deciding that this was a bad omen, they postponed their departure - later learning that the train on which they would have travelled had been attacked by the Bolsheviks, and every passenger killed.
Settling in England, Prince Vladimir opened a shop in Berkeley Square, London, selling Russian objets d’arts and counted Queen Mary as a regular customer, while his eldest son Prince Emanuel Galitzine – Nicholas’s father – became one of the most famous, dashing and glamorous Russian aristocratic émigrés of his era. In 1940 Prince Emanuel decided to get his own back on the Communists who had dispossessed his family by joining the Finnish Air Force battling Stalin’s invasion. When his mother was tragically killed when a German bomb hit the bus on which she was travelling in London, Emanuel returned to Britain via America and was promptly arrested on suspicion of being a spy. Fortunately his father was working for British intelligence and cleared the way for him to become a renowned Spitfire pilot.
After the war Emanuel became an airline pilot before joining the Avro company and becoming one of the most successful salesmen of the Avro 748, built in Woodford, Cheshire, which saw the family living in Prestbury for a time.
‘He sold one to the Royal family – and he took me up in it before delivering it to the Queen’s Flight,’ said Nicholas with a smile.
In 1998 his father attended the reburial and funeral service of the murdered Tsar’s family at St Petersburg; Emanuel himself died, aged 84, in 2003.
Prince Nicholas has shared the Galitzine taste for adventure. While living in Canada he sold real estate, captained the chairman of Texaco’s yacht and worked as a model. Returning to the UK in 1973 he took over a small estate agency in Buckinghamshire and the acquisition, with a partner, of Grade II listed Oakley Court, saw the beginning of an accomplished career in property development. The mansion, used in several Hammer horror movies and as St Trinian’s School in the original films, is now an acclaimed luxury hotel. Among other notable projects in the home counties was the refurbishment of the Guildhall in Windsor, completed by Sir Christopher Wren and wedding venue for Prince Charles and Camilla Parker-Bowles.
Moving to Wilmslow represents a return ‘home’ both for Suzie, whose son, Manchester businessman Jonathan Bull and his wife Jill have just produced her first grandchild, Lucas Alexander, and for Nicholas who lived in Cheshire in the 1960s. He is launching a property consultancy, saying: ‘I’ve been in property for 41 years, building, management and development, so there’s not a lot I don’t know.’
The couple are completely at ease with the new surroundings they share with border Collie Jazz and Simba, their rescued cat, enjoying the countryside and local antiques fairs. And Nicholas, an enthusiastic player of real tennis – he regularly played Prince Edward at Holyport, near Windsor – intends to take up the sport again locally. 

For further information about Prince Nicholas Galitzine’s property company contact him on 01625 539980

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