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How Athlone House could look after rebuilding |
£15m donor for Heath house?
Conservation group claim wealthy individual could prevent house demolition
A KNIGHT in shining armour is waiting to ride to the rescue of a Hampstead Heath mansion threatened with demolition.
The owners of Athlone House, the former hospital which overlooks Kenwood, have applied for permission to demolish the 1870 building and replace it with an eight-bedroom mansion designed by leading classical architect Robert Adam.
But members of the Athlone House Working Group (AHWG) – a body made up of conservationists and the Highgate Society and the Heath and Hampstead Society – claim that they have found a wealthy anonymous individual so concerned by the plans to knock down the house that they are willing to stump up around £15million to buy the property from its current owners and restore it to its original glory.
Athlone was built for chemical magnate Edward Brooke in a Jacobean style and originally called Caenwood Towers.
AHWG’s Michael Hammerson said: “We have been approached by a developer who knows the house, likes it and is appalled by what is going on.”
Mr Hammerson added that he was confident the owners’ planning application would be dismissed as it would lead to a loss of metropolitan open land, the urban equivalent of protected green belt land.
He also criticised the design, saying the current building was an important part of the conservation area and the designs were “gross and vulgar”.
The faceless owners are a company based in the tax haven of Guernsey, and its directors remain unknown.
Expert planning lawyer David Cooper, who represents them, said the fears of protesters are unfounded. He said the home would be only slightly larger in terms of footprint, as most of the increase in size would be underground.
He added: “This means not building on fresh metropolitan open land. Doing up Athlone House is a joke. There was nothing to say how this should be done and the cost is now so astronomical that nobody in their right mind would pay for it to be done because the end product wouldn’t be worth the money spent on it.”
And Mr Cooper sung the praises of the design, by leading classical architect Robert Adam. Mr Cooper said: “When it is completed this will be a masterpiece. It has been designed and evolved in the best tradition. It is a money no object design. It will be much larger – but the increase is all underground, where no body can see it, so it has no impact on anyone.”
Athlone House is not a listed building. It was used during the war to train top secret RAF agents and was then passed on to the NHS, who used it as a hospital and old people’s home. It was sold in the late 1990s to developers who built luxury flats in the grounds, and then sold on to its current owners. |
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