Farmer Builds Hay ‘Castle’
Some people will go to great lengths to avoid certain situations. We’ve seen people do some crazy things – but this one tops the charts. Robert Fidler is a farmer who wanted to go by the rules and avoid having to deal with anyone from planning regulations.
He had built some buildings and wanted to make sure that there were no objections to them. In order to do this he wanted to take advantage of the provision of planning law that states that after four years of no objections there is nothing that can be done to it and the building will stay. How did he do this? He built a ‘castle’ around the building completely made out of hay – which he stayed hidden behind for the whole four years and was just recently discovered.
But Reigate and Banstead Borough Council in Surrey is not impressed. “It does not count because the property was hidden behind hay bales,” said a spokeswoman. “No one knew it was there.” The council wants the building near Redhill some 30 km south of London to be demolished, along with an associated conservatory, marquee structure, wooden bridge, patio, decking and tarmac racecourse.
“It looks like a mock-Tudor house from the front and it’s got two turrets at the back,” the spokeswoman said. “I understand there is also a cannon.” The couple would have been unlikely to get planning permission as the farm was in “green belt” land where building was restricted, she said. A hearing takes place in February. Fidler’s wife Linda told the Daily Mail newspaper the children grew up looking at straw out of the windows of the house and that they kept their son away from playschool on the day his class were due to do paintings of their houses.
“We couldn’t have him drawing a big blue haystack,” she said. “People might ask questions.” Planning inspectors had been called to the site by concerned neighbors shortly before Fidler took the hay bales down in summer 2006 but had not seen the house. “When the inspectors went there, all they saw were hay bales and hay bales on agricultural land are not that unusual,” the spokeswoman said. “I think the neighbors thought there might be something going on but it is difficult to tell, isn’t it?”