Anticipation builds for the forthcoming 25th installment of the James Bond chronicles, No Time To Die, Daniel Craig returns for the fifth and final time as Agent 007. Academy Award-winning actor Rami Malek makes his villainous debut and Fleabag creator, award-winning writer, producer, and actress Phoebe Waller-Bridge was announced as a script consultant. Even Q, the M16 character who unveils his wizardry to awe and amaze, couldn’t have imaged this much star power.
The bucolic circa-1772 Colonial stone country estate on the border of New York and Vermont was the retreat where Mr. Fleming worked on such classics as Diamonds Are Forever, Goldfinger, and For Your Eyes Only in the 1950s.
The residence has since been fully updated by noted architect Jerome Cerny, who gained acclaim for preserving a home’s past while making it still relevant for the future. Spanning 8,143 square feet, the fieldstone and clapboard residence comprises six bedrooms, reception rooms all with fireplaces, and a fully updated gourmet kitchen. There is also a large greenhouse with a koi pond, an outdoor swimming pool, equestrian facilities, and private trails on 500 wooded acres that back up to the Green Mountain National Forest.
Story Jenks, who represents the property, said: “This property is a hidden treasure and the closest thing to an English country estate in the Adirondack and New England areas. Black Hole Hollow Farm still exudes that unique serenity that drew Mr. Fleming back time and again.”
Mr. Fleming would take long treks in the woods and the formal English gardens surrounding the farm, formulating his plots and characters in nature’s creative bliss. Mr. Fleming once wrote in an old guest register: “Lived here like a king — an uninvited one — in fragrant and luxurious solitude.”
Of course, Mr. Fleming was always welcome.
Ivar Felix C. Bryce was Mr. Fleming’s high school friend at Eton. Mr. Bryce and his wife Josephine, A&P heiress and Thoroughbred horse breeder, used the estate as their base during the famed summer racing season at Saratoga. Mr. Bryce wrote in his 1974 autobiography, You Only Live Once: Memories of Ivar Bryce and Ian Fleming, that the farm “answered some atavistic call in his Scots soul. He used to tramp alone for hours among the hills and come back relaxed and brooding on some embryo plot.”
Mr. Bryce, an actual spy as an intelligence officer with Britain’s MI6, was suave, handsome, debonair, and related to the Mountbatten family, cousins to the Royal Family. In Mr. Bryce’s copy of Casino Royale, Mr. Fleming inscribed: “For Ivar, who mixed the first Vesper…” filmdom’s most famous cocktail because the martini is shaken and not stirred.
History is clear that Mr. Fleming, also a commander in the British Naval Intelligence during World War II, created the enigmatic Mr. Bond from a tapestry of real-life agents, of which Mr. Bryce seems to be one: At least one colleague from the intelligence agency commented that Mr. Bryce was James Bond without the violent tendencies. Agent 007’s best friend, Felix Leiter, is honored with Mr. Bryce’s middle name.
Mrs. Bryce also left her imprint on the James Bond legacy. Black Hole Hollow Farm is located only 30 miles from Saratoga Springs, home to America’s oldest Thoroughbred race, the Travers Stakes. The Saratoga race venue was featured prominently in Diamonds Are Forever after Mrs. Bryce’s urged Mr. Fleming to attend this high-stake and internationally acclaimed race on one of his many visits to the farm.
