An Englishman's home

[Gob]

A farmer who built a mock-Tudor castle without planning permission has failed to demolish it despite a court order.



Robert Fidler built the home at Honeycrock Farm, in Salfords, Surrey, in 2002 and hid it behind hay bales.
He has been fighting to keep it ever since but in April lost an appeal against a High Court order that it should be demolished by 24 June.
Reigate and Banstead Borough Council said planners would be considering the council's next course of action.
The four-bedroom property, on greenbelt land, includes a kitchen, living room, study, a gravelled forecourt and a conservatory.

Mr Fidler, who keeps a herd of Sussex cattle at the farm, submitted a new planning application in February 2014 to retain the house, in Axes Lane, on the basis of agricultural need.
Permission was refused and the case, once again, went to the High Court.

An injunction last June ordered the house to be demolished.

"As Mr Fidler has not complied with the injunction, the planning committee will be considering the council's next course of action at their meeting on 1 July," said a council spokesman.
Mr Fidler said in April he accepted he had no choice but to demolish the house but said on Friday it would be like Picasso ripping up his best oil painting.
He also said he had sold his home to an Indian businessman.

"The greenbelt law says that any new house should not be allowed unless there are very special circumstances," he said.
"The example that Parliament gives for very special circumstances is a farmer who has to be here to look after his cattle, which is exactly my situation."

[rubato]

God, I'm envious!

How many times have I told my dearly beloved "if only I had some really good crenellations along the roof I could drive off those fucking greasy trespassers with a hail of arrows! ". And what do I have to put up with instead? Well if we had trespassers I'd have to put up with them wouldn't I?

I'll just have to settle for a pair of Irish Wolfhounds and a little extra concertina wire around the perimeter.


Yrs,
Rubato

[Econoline]

And the bees. Don't forget the bees.
(You and I know they're harmless, but we also both know that a lot of people--including some on this board--are really scared of them!)

[Lord Jim]

I don't get the problem here...

This guy built this thing on his cattle farm, not in the middle of a built up suburban community where the other home owners could say it was an eyesore, didn't fit with the style of the other homes, reduced their property values, etc... If he'd built a house made to look like an aircraft carrier, why should anyone care?

Is this just another typical case of munchkin-brained bureaucrats throwing their weight around just because they feel like it? ("How DARE he build anything on his property without coming to kiss our asses first! Tear it down!")

[Econoline]

From the article I got the impression that the zoning (or whatever they call it over there) was strictly agricultural and didn't allow any sort of residential structures at all.

[BoSoxGal]

That being said, I'll never understand tearing down a perfectly good building over regulations. Fine him heavily for the violation, but really, tear down that lovely home??? Stupid!

[MajGenl.Meade]

If planning permission is given, the structure is then subject during the construction phase to properly conducted inspections to ensure compliance with the law - foundations, electrical, waste-disposal, materials and so on.

One purpose is not to stop this guy from building this house. It is to stop developers (or this guy) from building houses and then claiming a fait accompli - "oh well lads. You've built a sub-division so we'll just levy a little fine and let it all stand".

What he did was (apparently) not apply for permission on the grounds of farmer in the dell before he built it. FIrst he built it, then he asked permission. That is known as flouting the law. He knew what he was doing was wrong. The council may well have refused his request even if' he'd gone about it the right way - they may have felt that he didn't plan to live there but was building to sell - we'll never know.

It would be nice if an exception could be made, but that may serve as bad precedent. I've known householders who've put additions on their property and had to demolish for the same reasons - even in cases where prior permission would have been easy to obtain.

[BoSoxGal]

Certainly I support the concept that folks should follow regulations but that butts up against my frustration with seeing resources wasted in such a way.

If the house isn't up to code, that's one thing I suppose.

What gets me about cases like this is, WTF was the building inspector for this district/town/city/etc. doing with himself all day long while this place was being built? Sorry, but you don't 'hide' a house that big behind hay bales. I know from my recent experience as a municipal attorney that there are municipal employees whose job it is to drive around and see who is building without a permit, then it's a pretty easy process to get a restraining order on the building project until the proper forms are filled out OR the project is stopped altogether because it's entirely unsuitable or in violation of the law, as in this case.

Methinks the appropriate personnel in this hamlet was not doing his/her job.

[oldr_n_wsr]

Methinks the appropriate personnel in this hamlet was not doing his/her job.

Or was paid off enough.

[MajGenl.Meade]

Robert Fidler, 64, built castle with ramparts and cannon in Redhill, Surrey, in 2001 without planning permission
Council discovered Mr Fidler had hidden the castle behind 40ft-high haystacks in attempt to avoid detection . . . he initially concealed it under a 40ft-high stack of hay bales until eight years ago - by which time he believed he would be immune from planning rules.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... -need.html

Robert Fidler attempted to hide the castle behind 40ft-high stacks of hay bales

[MajGenl.Meade]

Journo agrees with BSG

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfre ... tion-folly

Given the coalition government’s ever-beleaguered commitments to building more homes, its chillaxed approach to planning red tape, and its strained rhetoric of British “makers” and “strivers”, you’d expect Robert Fidler to be held aloft as a national hero. But it hasn’t quite worked out that way.

Fidler is the farmer-turned-renegade architect who took the adage about Englishmen and their castles rather literally and secretly built himself a fortified, four-bedroom stronghold. It was declared more of a house of cards this week, when he lost his seven-year legal battle to prevent it being demolished. Honeycrock Farm was built on green-belt land, in breach of national planning rules. The fact that Fidler concealed his Surrey citadel behind a 40ft haystack, hoping to sit out the four-year period after which it would become lawful, suggests that he knew it wasn’t strictly above board – either that or he’d totally misunderstood the Three Little Pigs. Now he has been ordered to tear it down. Fidler said it would be like Rembrandt ripping up a masterpiece.

Fidler’s home really is – or was – a castle, or at least a half-approximation of one. Its “turrets” are old grain silos, which the farmer plonked next to each other and built a sturdy-looking timber frame between, then clad the whole ensemble with brick, even putting crenellations around the top. The house owes more to its creator’s imagination than architectural orthodoxy. In contrast to the medieval fortifications, the opposite facade of the house is a mock Tudor affair: half-timbered and gabled. In the central hall is a salvaged Victorian stained-glass skylight. Not to everyone’s tastes – probably only to one person’s taste, in fact – but you’ve got to hand it to Fidler. Except not literally.

A victory for the rural British landscape, perhaps, but you can’t help feeling that the Honeycrock Farm case is a defeat for British eccentricity. We like to think of ourselves as a nation that embraces the peculiar and the unorthodox, especially when it comes to architecture, but when you look around, you start to wonder if it’s still true. Nowadays you can shock the nation merely by painting a few red stripes on your house – if it’s in Kensington, anyway.

You could argue that follies have traditionally been the preserve of the wealthy, and your average 18th-century peasant had little time for entertaining the erection of a summer house shaped like a pineapple, or dressing up their terraced house to look like an Egyptian mausoleum. But in retrospect, we’re glad some people did. Those two examples are now popular holiday homes owned by the Landmark Trust. Architecture and frivolity are not the cosiest of partners, but you know you’re in Britain when you stumble across an absurdity like a house perched on top of a 60ft tower (Thorpeness’s House in the Clouds), or the Rushton Triangular Lodge (the work of a 16th-century aristo obsessed with the number three).

Now we’d rather everything conformed to a show-flat standard of hygienic blandness

In other disciplines, we celebrate eccentrics as the mavericks and outliers who achieve the breakthroughs. We used to in architecture, too, when one thinks of Joseph Paxton’s revolutionary Crystal Palace, or John Nash’s Brighton Pavilion, or the Tardis-like cabinet of curiosities built by John Soane, architect of the Bank of England. Now we’d rather everything conformed to a show-flat standard of hygienic blandness. The Department for Communities and Local Government would, anyway, judging by its recent Starter Homes Design guide, whose depressingly regimented exemplars include Prince Charles’s retro-themed Poundbury – nice orderly streets, neoclassical and traditional details, nothing to frighten the horses.

And for all its celebration of self-build individualism, I’ve always suspected that Grand Designs is really the architectural equivalent of those pictures of diseased lungs on fag packets. The real message behind its tales of constructional overspend and under-thought seems to be, “Aren’t you glad you didn’t go through all this just for the sake of looking different?” Or “Shouldn’t you be thinking about property prices rather than design?”

There are exceptions, of course, but not that many. Like Living Architecture’s Balancing Barn, which appears to teeter, Italian Job-style, on the edge of a hill (Dutch architect, unfortunately), or their forthcoming House for Essex, a gingerbread oddity designed by Grayson Perry and now-defunct mavericks FAT (one of the few architectural practices who regularly stuck their necks out). Or take a trip to Yorkshire’s Forbidden Corner, a fantastical labyrinth of gardens, grottoes and dungeons apparently designed to get lost in. When a new one comes along, like Robert Fidler’s house, it’s a shame to see it torn down, even if there is a perfectly good reason for it. Couldn’t we let him off if he promises to open it to the public?

[Guinevere]

Honestly, that article is fantastically stupid.

The house isn't being torn down because of how it looks, it is being torn down because it exists and was built in secret on land that is not zoned for residential structures. Land, BTW, the owner probably bought at a significant discount *because* of the zoning status.

Also, let him build it and then keep it? Seriously? The article thinks its a good idea to deprive someone of their property (because regardless of the permitting status of the structure, he does apparently own the underlying land).

I've got no problem with having it torn down. He knew the rules. He purposefully attempted to evade them. He must pay the price.

Most states have rules about building without zoning approval -- you "build at your own risk" to having the structure removed if the permit is granted but not upheld on appeal (you are not allowed to build without the permit, and building inspectors will not grant building permits without the appropriate approvals on file). Just last month (or earlier this month) a Boston City Councilor was caught with a gigantic newly constructed second floor that was unpermitted and not allowed under the zoning for her property. She is now taking it down.

[Lord Jim]

Gee whiz, from some of the posts here you'd think this guy was some sort of unscrupulous real estate mogul, buying up land zoned for agriculture so he could convert it to tract home communities on the cheap and behind the backs of the local citizenry...

Rather than a real farmer who dared to build a home for himself on his own land without going to the local poobahs to beg them to allow him to build a house for himself on his own land....

Which is the real story...

[MajGenl.Meade]

You forgot the bit about knowingly evading the law, which is supposed to apply as much to this man as it does to the council estate tenant who wants to build a shed in the back yard. You ignore that he hid the construction, because he knew he was evading the law. And then there's the avoidance of all legal requirements for the construction itself - you know, those pesky things like electric codes and plumbing codes. And that he purchased the land knowing that it was a designated green belt which prevents the building of residences but does require permits for farm buildings, such as that nice barn he has, which was either there already or he applied properly for that one to be put up. And if you look carefully, there's a Confederate battle flag in one of the pictures. 'nuff said! Down it all comes!

[Lord Jim]

those pesky things like electric codes and plumbing codes.

Presumably at this point this house has been inspected by somebody and if the wiring or plumbing is in some way faulty or dangerous, then the logical thing to do would be to require him to have whatever fixes need to be made.

If it hasn't been inspected, then there's no way to know for sure that the criticism regarding the electrical wiring and plumbing and sewage hook up is even valid.

[MajGenl.Meade]

Why do you presume it's been inspected? The council has no need to do so, since it is under a compulsory demolition order.

Fifthly, you overlook that inspection-during-construction is required before construction proceeds. For example, foundations and footers are not now inspectable (there's a word!) - but they are during the stages of construction. The next step is not permitted until the completed step is approved.

Fourthly, you don't allow a lawbreaker to get away with breaking the law and set the precedent for hiding construction in order to break the law.

Secondly, er.... that's it

[Scooter]

No sympathy whatsoever. He knew that what he was doing was wrong, which is why he built it in secret. He gambled that it would be easier to get absolution than permission, and he lost. The only appropriate outcome is to tear it down; otherwise, you invite everyone and his uncle to make a mockery of planning laws, thinking that all they will have to do is pay a fine and can get away with it.

There is an epidemic of illegal construction in Italy, to the point where a previous government was prepared to throw up its hands and declare an amnesty for anyone who ponied up a fine. Local governments who would bear the burden of uncontrolled and unsafe growth rose in rebellion, and the idea was quashed, but with courts and tribunals overwhelmed, there is no way to keep pace with the perpetrators and bring them to heel.

[Lord Jim]

Why do you presume it's been inspected? The council has no need to do so, since it is under a compulsory demolition order.

Ah, so if it hasn't been inspected, then your insinuations that the construction did not meet the requirements of the codes is pulled out of :

[Long Run]

There is an epidemic of illegal construction in Italy, to the point where a previous government was prepared to throw up its hands and declare an amnesty

That's interesting, had not heard this. It does make you wonder, though, is the problem the numerous law-breakers or the law? In the unlawfully built house situation in England, there does not appear to be widespread violations of building permits, so it would be hard to conclude (based on the bit we know) that the homeowner is somehow an aggrieved victim of an over-reaching government.

[MajGenl.Meade]

Ah, so if it hasn't been inspected, then your insinuations that the construction did not meet the requirements of the codes is pulled out of :

... thin air (image removed to save space)

Really, LJ - get those bifocals fixed. I made no such insinuation. What I wrote was that he avoided the legal requirement to have code inspections ongoing during construction. When you grasp at straws shoot for straw instead of nothing.

And then there's the avoidance of all legal requirements for the construction itself - you know, those pesky things like electric codes and plumbing codes.

The issues is not all whether the construction meets code (that's irrelevant since it must be demolished) but that he avoided the code inspections, which is illegal.