8:45am Monday 8th February 2010
By Chris Fay
A COUPLE who have bought the home of former prime minister Tony Blair had no idea of its illustrious past.
Mr Blair’s constituency home was placed on the market last year and has recently been sold, netting him and his wife, Cherie, a £245,000 profit.
Myrobella House has hosted statesmen including George W Bush, and was latterly the base for the Tony Blair Sports Foundation – but its new owners were seemingly unaware of its history.
Paul Enisz, 48, a scaffolder, and his wife, Tracey, 43, an occupational health therapist, paid £275,000 for the house in Trimdon Colliery, Sedgefield, County Durham.
The couple, who described themselves as “common as muck”, paid £25,000 less than the asking price.
Mr Enisz said: “We were looking for a house in the country, somewhere quiet, that we could do up. We looked at another house nearby and the estate agent mentioned this one. We’ve got a lot of work to do on it.”
The Blairs paid £30,000 for the house in 1983 when Mr Blair first entered Parliament as the MP for Sedgefield. The property was remortgaged for £297,000 in 2003, less than a year before the Blairs bought a £3.6m home in central London.
When Mr Blair stepped down as Prime Minister and MP for Sedgefield, in 2007, the property was used as the base for the Tony Blair Foundation.
The foundation, which aims to increase the number of qualified coaches and officials in grassroots sports, announced it was moving to larger premises, in Newcastle, last October, and the house was put up for sale.
Since moving into Myrobella House, Mr and Mrs Enisz have made some unusual discoveries.
The phone is linked directly to police and a small, modern brick building outside that looks like a garage is, in fact, a communications facility owned by the Home Office.
The couple do not know if it will be removed.
Mr Blair, who has earned an estimated £17m since leaving office in 2007, received tens of thousands of pounds in expenses to cover mortgage interest payments on Myrobella House over a 20-year period.
He also claimed for repairs, including nearly £6,990 for work on the roof which he submitted just two days before stepping down after ten years as Prime Minister.
Mr Blair’s former agent, John Burton, later said that the work had been carried out “six months or so” before the invoice arrived. The bill was rejected by the House of Commons Fees Office, which reduced the payout to £4,453.
A spokesman for Mr Blair said last year: “Mr Blair only claimed back the interest repayments on the portion of the mortgage which covered the purchase price and improvements to the house.
“There was no cost to the taxpayer in the rest of the money raised against the property.”
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