To the manor reborn
Eight country houses were sold off recently when their owner was forced into liquidation. Nigel Lewis finds out what happened next HERE’S a dream that many of us cherish: to escape the noise and pollution of the city and move to the country, where the air is clean and the nights are dark. Property investor Richard Burrows, 40, is doing it in spectacular style. ‘I live with my family in Putney, but my wife and I have been keen to get out of London for some time, ’ he says. ‘I never dreamed I’d end up owing a 400-year-old mansion-cum-retirement-home.’ A few months ago he read about the plight of Danny House, a Grade I listed Elizabethan mansion near Brighton in West Sussex – one of eight owned until recently by the Country House Association. ‘It has eight acres of grounds, a considerable improvement on our small Putney garden.’ Danny House is at the foot of the West Sussex downs near Hurst-pierpoint and was built in 1596, although there has been a house of some sort on this site since the 13th century. Its most famous resident was Prime Minister David Lloyd George, who convened his War Cabinet in the mansion’s magnificent Great Hall to draw up the terms of the Armistice Treaty on October 31, 1918 – with Winston Churchill in attendance. Yet today it is not politicians who enjoy the Great Hall’s portrait of Charles I but 35 retired residents who pay between ₤ 1, 250 and ₤ 3, 500 a month to live there. Their rent includes three square meals a day, their apartment, use of the gardens, Great Hall and other communal rooms. As Mr. Borrows told me what attracted him to such an unusual property investment, several guests played croquet in the late afternoon sun while cows grazed in an adjacent field. He thinks Danny House can run successfully as a retirement home – and provide a luxurious family home in a tranquil spot. He and his wife Rachel plus their children Miles, aged four, Heather, two, and Willow, one, are moving into two of the 28 apartments, leaving two for staff, one for Rachel’s mother (who’s helping run the business) and 23 for the residents. The mansion-cum-retirement-home used to be one of eight run by the Country House Association (CHA), which was founded in 1955 by Rear-Admiral Bernard Wilberforce Greathed to provide mostly retired former colonial officials with opulent, affordable and manageable mansion apartments. By last year the CHA had accumulated eight stately homes, mostly in the Home Counties. But a mounting financial crisis at the association forced it into liquidation and Deloitte & Touche has now sold off the properties for a cool ₤ 20 million. SO FAR six of the houses have been sold, including Albury Park in Surrey, Aynhoe Park in Oxfordshire, Gosfield Hall in Essex, Swallowfield Park in Berkshire, Flete House in Devon and Danny House. The good news is that these, like Danny, will continue as retirement homes and their residents will not be forced to move out. But, sadly, the two remaining properties – Pyt House in Wiltshire and Great Maytham in Kent – are being sold on the open market and their residents must leave by June 30.
(from the Daily Mail) Notes
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