Tom Cruise And Katie Buy British Home?

LOS ANGELES, Calif. (November 30, 2006) Tom Cruise may have a new threshold over which to carry his blushing bride. Cruise (44) and wife Katie Holmes (27) have reportedly purchased a six bedroom property, just outside of London.

Half-an-hour South of the British capital city and about the same distance North of coastal community of Brighton (where Paul McCartney has a home), sits West Sussex mansion Rede Place, which Tom and Katie are believed to have snapped up for $4.75 million, according to Us Weekly.

Photo: Splash

Though the couple have at least two homes in the U.S. one in LA, another in Colorado -- the English estate, located in Dormans Park, may offer a special attraction for Cruise due to its close proximity to the UKs Scientology headquarters. The brick built house is just a few miles from Scientology central -- East Grinstead, the town where L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology, lived for just under a decade in the sixties.

The beautiful home includes a staff cottage, an indoor swimming pool, game room and underground garage. Despite a high tech security system, Cruise may not be able to achieve all the privacy he has previously enjoyed. While paparazzi would be prohibited under British law from using ladders or other devices to peer over surrounding fences, the house is currently just surrounded by a small, four-tier wooden fence and winter-barren shrubbery. Basically, until it fills in or the Cruise family builds a high fence (or calls the bobbies out for trespassing) they could end up with snappers shooting through the brush.