Actor Liam Neeson asked the owner of an historic Chiswick mansion, which had been at the heart of his late wife Natasha Richardson’s family, if he could buy it back, we can reveal today.

The owner of Bedford House told the Chiswick Times she received a letter from the Hollywood star asking if she would agree to sell the Grade II*-listed house, which belonged to the Redgrave dynasty in the 1950s.

The mansion was owned by Sir Michael Redgrave, Natasha’s grandfather, from 1945 to 1954, and Neeson had expressed his interest in returning it to the famous family.

It is not known if Neeson had planned to move to the London property with his wife Natasha, and their two sons, when he made the request last year from their New York home.

It comes as Richardson was this week laid to rest in a private funeral in New York.

The Tony Award-winning actress, who spent much of her childhood in Chiswick, died after a blow to the head during a skiing accident on March 18.

An autopsy carried out in New York, where Richardson lived with her immediate family, showed the knock to the head had caused fatal bleeding to her brain.

Richardson’s mother, actress Vanessa Redgrave, who still lives in Chiswick, was at her 45-year-old daughter’s bedside when she died last week, along with Neeson.

Although the family had left Bedford House, in Chiswick Mall, by the time Richardson was born on May 11, 1963, it held a special place in the family’s heart and the Redgraves would often make appearances at the annual Bedford House open day.

The current owner, who asked not to be named, said: “I got an odd letter from Liam Neeson asking me if he could buy the house. But now Natasha has died the connection has been lost. Of course the house is not for sale.”

She added: “The Redgraves would often pop round – I frequently found Michael Redgrave in my house having tea, before our gardener would take him back home again.”

Richardson attended St Paul’s Girl’s School in nearby Hammersmith before deciding to follow in her family’s acting footsteps at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London.

Since her death, tributes and memories of her time in Chiswick have flooded in from around the world.

“Yvonne” posted on the LA Times website: “Many years ago when her mother was filming Wagner with the late Richard Burton, I had to collect her at her home and drive her to Yorkshire for filming.

“I remember when I arrived at the house Natasha bouncing along the corridor in their Chiswick home and how warm and friendly she was.”

Theatre director Trevor Nunn said: “She was more or less of an age with my wife, Imogen [Stubbs], and they had shared many childhood escapades in Chiswick.

“Whatever might be the genetic explanation of what it is to be a Redgrave, Natasha had those ingredients of passionate concern, of indefatigable zeal, and a kind of emotional transference, identifying with and taking on the needs of those around her.”

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