--- In papercreters@yahoogroups.com, JUDITH WILLIAMS
<williams_judith@...> wrote:
>
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?
in_article_id=510161&in_page_id=1770
Copy and paste the rest of the URL (after the question mark) into
your browser. Here is the text.
Hiding a needle in a haystack is easy enough.
But Robert Fidler kept something much bigger concealed among the
piles of straw down on his farm... a castle. Over the course of two
years, he managed to secretly – and unlawfully – build the imposing
mock Tudor structure in one of his fields, shielded behind a 40ft
stack of hay bales covered by huge tarpaulins. The family hid the
house behind hay bales 40ft high for four years while it was being
built - in a failed bid to avoid having to apply for planning
permission. Once it was finished, he and his family moved in and
lived there for four years before finally revealing the development –
complete with battlements and cannons – in August 2006. Mr Fidler
claims that because the building has been there for four years with
no objections, it is no longer illegal.
But he is under siege from council planners, who say the castle at
Honeycrock Farm, Salfords, Redhill, Surrey, will have to be knocked
down. "I can't believe they want to demolish this beautiful house,"
said 59-year-old Mr Fidler. "To me they are no different than vandals
who just want to smash it down." Mr. Fidler, a farmer, erected the
disguise in 2000 out of hundreds of 8ftx4ft bales of straw and
covered the top with blue tarpaulin.
After building the castle on the site of two grain silos at a cost of
£50,000, he and his wife Linda went to extraordinary lengths to keep
it secret. That included keeping their son Harry, now seven, away
from playschool the day he was supposed to do a painting of his home
in class. "We couldn't have him drawing a big blue haystack – people
might asked questions," said 39-year-old Mrs Fidler. Mr Fidler, who
has five children from a previous marriage, said: "We moved into the
house on Harry's first birthday, so he grew up looking at straw out
of the windows. "We thought it would be a boring view but birds
nested there and feasted on the worms. We had several families of
robins and even a duck made a nest and hatched 13 ducklings on top of
the bales."
But neighbours were unimpressed. One said: "Nobody thought anything
of it when the hay went up. It was presumed he was building a barn or
something similar. "It was a complete shock when the hay came down
and this castle was in its place. Everyone else has to abide by
planning laws, so why shouldn't they?" Problems began last April when
Mr Fidler, thinking he had beaten the planning system, applied for a
certificate of lawfulness which is given if a property is erected but
nobody objects to it after four years. But Reigate and Banstead
Council says the four-year period after which the building would be
allowed to stay is void – because nobody had been given a chance to
see it.
The matter will now be decided in February by the council's planning
inspector, who could give the Fidlers as little as six months to tear
the castle down.
>
> I was interested to see this article. To me the concept is not too
far fetched. Anyway, it didn't come up when I went to that link. Can
you send it to me again? Thanks Judith
>
>
> To: papercreters@...: rhdesigns@...: Sun, 27 Jan 2008 18:37:36
+0000Subject: [papercreters] One way to deal with zoning and planning.
>
>
>
>
> This was just too amusing to pass up. An English couple hid their
self built "castle" behind a wall of straw bales and tarps for four
years in order to make an end run around the planning dept.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?
in_article_id=510161&in_page_id=1770Randy
>
>
>
>
>
>
> _________________________________________________________________
> Climb to the top of the charts! Play the word scramble challenge
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icid=starshuffle_wlmailtextlink_jan
>
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