To the Shires

Supermodel turned lingerie designer Elle Macpherson, below, is going rural. Macpherson, 45, whose Notting Hill home is still available for £9m, is looking for a country property – but has apparently yet to decide exactly where. According to my source, Macpherson has so far been looking in Hampshire, Wiltshire and Gloucestershire at properties priced at about the same amount as she is hoping to sell up for in the capital.

A capital move

Take That member Howard Donald is celebrating the success of the recently reformed boyband by splashing out on a London pad. The 40-year-old Manchester-born singer has just paid £3.4m for a house in Kensington. Donald, who ploughed his money into property and shares after the band's break-up in 1996, also owns a home in Ringwood, Hampshire, and a flat in Berlin.

Manhattan transfer

The actress Winona Ryder is moving on. Ryder, who will appear in the next Star Trek movie as Spock’s mother, has just sold her Manhattan flat for £1.1m to a neighbour who plans to connect the property with his own. Ryder, 36, still owns a three-bedroom house in San Francisco, which she bought in 1995 for £840,000, as well as a four-bedroom property in Los Angeles, which cost her £1.6m in 1998.

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