Rodborough Fort bought

From various points in Ruscombe, Whiteshill and Randwick Rodborough Fort can be seen. The Citizen reports today that self-made millionaires Ian and Mave Richens are delighted to have bought the unique, grade II listed folly on the top of Rodborough Common for just under £2 million.

Photos: View across to Whiteshill from the Fort and me outside the Fort

Here is the rest of the info from their article:

The insurance brokers, who sold their company last year, said they planned to create a comfortable family home while at the same time remaining sympathetic to the character of the building. Mr Richens, 59, said: "It looks like a fairytale castle. It's a schoolboy dream for me to own a place like this and I am just an old schoolboy now."

The couple plans to restore the fort and to move their two adoptees from Sidmouth Donkey Sanctuary and six alpacas into the grounds. Rodborough Fort has six bedrooms, five bathrooms, a chapel, outbuildings, a tower from which you can see the Black Mountains in Wales and nearly nine acres of land as well as outbuildings.

Mr Richens said: "I am seriously considering registering it as a location available for film shoots. "However it is very windy and we are told you lose at least one flag a month to the wind," he said. Both Mr Richens and his wife, who come Stow-on-the-Wold, said they had been touched by their welcome to the area. "Everybody who we have met have been so lovely," said Mrs Richens, 55.

The stunning fort was sold by the Lamplough family trust, which owned it for the past 12 years. Originally built as a folly for Captain Hawker in 1761, the crenellated property has been described by English Heritage as a "very important" landscape feature "in lofty eminence above Stroud town." It was home to former racing driver Peter Lamplough until his business interests took him to Botswana a few years ago. The Lamploughs bought the fort from the National Trust, which owns the surrounding common land, in 1995. Rodborough Fort was a thriving caravan and camping centre in the 1960s.

The paper could have also added that around 1994 I remember well that the local press was alive with stories about the then Fort's owner being charged with cruelty to 9 monkeys kept in small cages, another 6 that ran loose in the fort and dogs that were kept there in poor conditions - plus a peregrine falcon and a red- tailed buzzard that were allegedly kept without proper authority.

Update Friday 21st December: walked around Fort today and met Ian, the new owner - it was great to hear of his plans to improve the Fort - indeed he was there looking at all the Cotswold Stone walls and seeing how best to repair them.