As the Rolling Stones release their new hit Scarlet, the song’s writer – Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page – and his girlfriend Scarlett Sabet welcome Tatler to their Gothic castle

As the Rolling Stones release a new song featuring Jimmy Page, entitled ‘Scarlet’, Tatler revisits a feature from the June 2020 issue, in which a west London street offers a portal to a private paradise. In their Gothic fortress, septuagenarian Led Zeppelin rock god Jimmy Page and luminous poet Scarlett Sabet live a saintly existence sustained mostly by love and tea, found Clare Conway

Led Zeppelin fans often stop outside the Tower House, an imposing redbrick castle in front of Holland Park, and wait, vinyl and pen in hand, for Jimmy Page to emerge. ‘To them it’s sort of like Abbey Road,’ says Scarlett Sabet, a poet, 30 years of age and Page’s girlfriend of six years. If the devotees are lucky, they might catch the man himself, the 76-year-old guitarist and founder of one of the best-selling rock groups in history, on his way out, ambling towards KFC for lunch. Page might stop and chat, but he never signs his autograph and won’t pose for selfies.

Sometimes the lurkers grow impatient. ‘Is Jimmy in?’ they call to his assistants, Natalie and Lionel, as they head up to the house. ‘He’s away,’ they shout back. ‘But’ – a fan insisted one time – ‘I just saw Jimmy in the window.’ ‘That was a cardboard cutout,’ Natalie replied solemnly. She laughs now as she tells the story.

You can spot the remarkable building from all the way down the tree-lined road off Kensington High Street – its Gothic façade, stained-glass windows and turret leap out from among the many lovely multimillion-pound mansions that surround it. It’s notable, too, for being next door to Robbie Williams’ home. A long-running dispute between the two musicians has decorated newspaper pages and kept the Kensington and Chelsea planning committee busy. The source of the trouble involves Williams’ plan for a hefty ‘iceberg’ basement extension. The work, Page has argued, could cause ‘possible structural damage’ to his Grade I-listed house. There have been insults: Robbie had to apologise for likening Page to someone with ‘a mental illness’. Today, though, Sabet explains, she can’t talk about it for legal reasons. ‘But I can say that Jimmy just wants to protect the house,’ she says.

You can see why. It’s quite some place, this heavy-metal mecca. A weighty, fortress-style wooden door leads on to a tiled porch, before another, internal door swings open to reveal such an abundance of gilding and plasterwork, such majestic walls of marble, such an extravagance of painted ceilings that it elicits a symphony of sighs. In one room, there’s a ceiling of stars, each with its own little mirror.

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