Mayfair squatters say come and live at £6.5m house

THIS elegant five-storey Mayfair house is owned by one of Britain's richest men and its distinguished former occupants include MPs, barons, viscounts and industrialists.

Today, the latest people to call the £6.25 million building home are the Da! Collective, a ramshackle bunch of young people and artists who have been squatting there for almost a month.

The spacious rooms, which once hosted sparkling gatherings of London's wealthy and titled, have been redesignated as an "organic project space" - a live-in art installation to which all-comers are welcome.

One of the Da! Collective, Stephanie Smith, 21, an artist and squatter for the past three years, said they were improving the dilapidated property which had been abandoned by its previous tenants and left to rot.

Miss Smith, originally from north London, said the squatters had not heard anything from the building's tenants, a company called Deltaland Resources Ltd, which leases it from the Duke of Westminster's Grosvenor estate.

She said: "Other people can come here. We want people to use it as project space. It is organic - people can work here, stay wherever they want."

Miss Smith said her parents did not criticise her choice of lifestyle. "It took a bit of getting used to but they have been round and this is their preferred one. The building has been left to rot, but I love living in dust and dirt."

The collective says it survives by plundering the rubbish bins of central London. Tom Crouse-Smith, 20, said they lived a "freeganistic" lifestyle. "We do get food from bins. The whole place is a very rich experience - it is cultured. We are just trying to learn from each other."

The Grade II-listed house in Upper Grosvenor Street in the heart of Mayfair is one of a number of large central London properties the group have occupied in the past, including addresses on Kensington High Street, in Tottenham Court Road and the former Iraqi consulate in Knightsbridge.

If the group remain for 12 years they would legally be able to own the house if the owner does not try to reclaim it. They have had a mixed reception from neighbours, who include the American Embassy and Claridge's.

Michelin-starred chef Richard Corrigan's new restaurant, Corrigans Mayfair, is on the opposite side of the road. Jacques Dejardin, the manager, said: "It's rather bewildering. When you move into an address like this you don't expect to have squatters as neighbours."

Built in the 1730s, the house has been home to the landowner and politician, Baron de Dunstanville, Baron Rolle, who was a supporter of William Pitt the Younger, F.Wooton Isaacson, a colliery owner and former MP for Tower Hamlets and Sir Victor Warrender, a prominent Scottish landowner and Conservative politician, later Baron Bruntisfield, who lived there between 1924 and 1928.

Deltaland Resources, which is registered in the British Virgin Islands, has employed Macfarlands, a City law firm to deal with the matter.