Remember Christian the lion from the reunion video? The Chelsea flat where he grew up is on the market

christian the lion
Christian the lion was bought in Harrods Credit: Derek Cattani/REX/Shutterstock

There have been plenty of famous lions, from Cecil to Simba, but only one that grew up in south-west London. The story begins in Harrods.

John Rendall and Anthony Bourke, two young Australians who had recently arrived in London, wandered into the department store to discover a zoo on the second floor.

After hours of gazing at two small lion cubs in a cage, they decided to buy one, in the belief that they could give him a better life. That was how, in December 1969, Christian the lion came to live in Chelsea.

The purchase cost Rendall and Bourke, then in their early 20s, a total of 250 guineas. That would be £3,500 or so today, Rendall says. “It was a lot of money in 1969,” he adds. “You could buy a car for that.”

The four-month-old cub, weighing 30lbs and measuring 2ft in length, became a much-loved local on the King’s Road. He would spend his days mingling with celebrities at Sophisticat, the aptly-named pine furniture shop underneath their flat where Rendall and Bourke worked, and was a regular at the nearby Moravian Church, where he would take his exercise walks.

Anthony Bourke and John Rendall with Christian the Lion
Anthony Bourke and John Rendall with Christian the lion Credit: Derek Cattani/REX/Shutterstock

The following summer, the actors Bill Travers and Virginia McKenna, who had starred in the film Born Free, happened to pop into the shop in search of a pine desk.

They helped Rendall and Bourke arrange for Christian, now considerably larger than a cub, to be flown to Kenya and set free with the help of George Adamson, the wildlife conservationist whose story they told in the 1966 film.

But it wasn’t until a video of Christian’s reunion with Rendall and Bourke, recorded a year after his return to the wild, was published on YouTube that their story captured the public’s heart. The clip, from the documentary Christian, The Lion at World’s End, shows a large lion running towards two shaggy-haired men, smothering his former flatmates with playful cuddles.

Bourke has since returned to Australia, where he is an expert on aboriginal art, but Rendall has remained in the same spot on the King’s Road. Now, his studio flat is for sale. The open-plan apartment, which has 788 sq ft of internal space, is on the market with Foxtons for £625,000 (020 7591 9000; foxtons.co.uk).

Set on the 18th floor, it has a private balcony accessed from the kitchen/diner that offers, Rendall says, “the most wonderful views” of London. “Right now, I’m looking at Hampstead Heath, and I can see Canary Wharf, down to Crystal Palace, and right there’s Richmond.”

Foxtons
The 788 sq ft flat is on the market with Foxtons for £625,000 

Admittedly, this is not the exact flat where Christian tore apart waste paper baskets, rode on the vacuum cleaner and pounced on his unsuspecting “parents”. That flat, along with Sophisticat, was ripped down in the Seventies so the World’s End estate could be built on that spot (designed, coincidentally, by the architect Eric Lyons).

But more than 45 years after Christian lived in Chelsea, the lion’s legacy is very much alive in the neighbourhood. “Each evening, he used to sit in the shop window, and a lot of the local children used to come around to see him,” Rendall recalls. “He was very much their lion, they were very proud of him and would tell people, ‘this is our lion’. He really was part of the community here. People still live on this estate who remember him.”

World's End estate in Chelsea
The flat is in the World's End estate in Chelsea – designed by the architect Eric Lyons

And Rendall himself won’t be far away; he has already found a bigger flat in the same building to move into. “I don’t want to go to anywhere else,” he says.

Christian has remained a part of Rendall’s life. Less than two decades after helping the lion relocate to Kenya, Adamson was killed. Rendall is among a group of people who founded the George Adamson Trust to continue the work of the conservationist. It operates mostly in Tanzania’s Mkomazi National Park, building schools and breeding endangered animals such as the black rhino. “The wonderful thing is that none of that would have happened – Christian was the start.”

balcony
The flat, which is full of African art, has a balcony with views over London

Rendall has also written several books on conservation, as well as the story of his former furry flatmate. And one of his sons is now in South Africa training to be a game ranger (the other works in the City).

So it’s clear that Rendall’s impulsive decision in the late Sixties, to buy a lion from a luxury shop, went on to change the entire trajectory of his and his family’s lives. And now a lucky buyer can be part of the continuation of this story. “It’s extraordinary what happened because of one little lion who lived at the World’s End.”

License this content