When you are a wealthy, eligible bachelor of 41 with a London home, a Maserati and a penchant for F Scott Fitzgerald, all you really need is a large country estate so you can throw huge parties, Great Gatsby-style. Indeed, you probably need something larger than large. What I mean is voluminous; palatial. This was Simon Karimzadeh’s quest. And two years ago, when the businessman whose wealth was last estimated by The Sunday Times at £120m drove along the country lanes of Northamptonshire and came across Grade I-listed Apethorpe Hall, he knew he had found the answer.
For Apethorpe Hall is indeed a palace of a building, and one of the last in private ownership. It was started at the end of the Wars of the Roses and bought by Henry VIII in 1543. It was then purchased by Sir Walter Mildmay in 1551. He built a suite of state apartments, in which James VI of Scotland stayed in 1603 on his way to be crowned James I.
James I seems to have been very keen on Apethorpe; he stayed there on a number of occasions and in 1622 commanded that it should have a more commodious entertaining area. Hence the astounding Long Gallery, a beamed, panelled gallery with long latticed windows on three sides, which was added in 1624. It’s thought such a royal command is unique in British architectural history.
The house then went to the Earls of Westmoreland, who greatly extended it in both the 17th and 18th centuries, without tampering with the Jacobean rooms and ceiling decorations. The result is a breathtaking alliance of latticed windows, a Jacobean gabled facade and a Palladian facade over the library.
It has two inner courtyards, one of them resonant of a venerable Oxbridge quad. There are about 30 bedrooms, a former chapel and a stone-flagged arcade, not to mention the orangery, stabling, granary, bakery, parkland and 50 acres of formal garden, where peacocks strut and screech. Apethorpe Hall is indeed a palace. And Karimzadeh wants it.
He’s already exchanged on the property, and is prepared to pay the asking price of £3.1m. But Karimzadeh will have to wait before his incarnation as Jay Gatsby can be realised; he cannot complete because the hall is subject to a compulsory purchase order (CPO), slapped on it by the Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) some two years ago.
For although the mullioned and latticed windows sparkle, and the honey-coloured stone bears testimony to 400 years of English history, Apethorpe Hall has a less savoury recent tale to tell. The Westmoreland family sold it to the MP Leonard Brassey in 1904. His family sold it in 1948 to the Roman Catholic diocese of Northampton, which with assistance from the Home Office, turned it into a reform school. The grounds where James I strolled housed young offenders.
In 1983, it was bought by Wanis Burweila, a Libyan businessman, who left the country after the Libyan embassy siege, abandoning Apethorpe to the care of a single gardener and a heroic caretaker, George Kelley.
After the departure of Burweila, something far more sinister entered Apethorpe. Dry rot. It took hold in 1986 and, to Kelley’s alarm, spread through part of the house. The local council was roused and English Heritage contacted. Emergency-repairs notices were served on the absentee owner, to no avail. Finally, the department of culture served a CPO on Burweila in Athens. Which would have been fine, had not Burweila quietly been in negotiations with a development consortium, led by Harold Winton, president of Queens Park Rangers football club, and two days earlier exchanged contracts on Apethorpe Hall. The developers had hoped to turn the mansion into five homes. Unable to raise funds for development because of the CPO, Winton began seeking a new owner and advertised the mansion in the Estates Gazette. Which brings us back to our roving Gatsby, Karimzadeh, who saw the advert and offered on Apethorpe.
Now he is frustrated and angry. “My vision is to restore Apethorpe to the way it was,” he says. “As one fantastic mansion. It was built to entertain, and that’s what I want it to become. We’ve had the chief structural engineer from English Heritage over, who agrees it is actually very solid. The problem areas of rot are localised and containable. What the house needs is a use. And with a use, everything will fall into place. But the CPO has not been removed.”
Quite why the government has not allowed Karimzadeh, who is British, to become lord of the manor is unclear. He says the DCMS and English Heritage set out three criteria that need answering before the CPO is lifted. The first concerns planning permission. Karimzadeh says this won’t be a problem, as what he wants to do is restore, not change the use of the mansion. The second is about availability of funds, and Karimzadeh says he can easily show he has the finances to do what he considers will be a six-year repair job, costing £11m. He says he has already offered a cash payment of £1.5m to start refurbishments.
The third criteria is that Karimzadeh can produce a suitably professional team. His answer is that he has already hired Peter Inskip of Inskip and Jenkins, whose portfolio includes the refurbishment of Somerset House.
“We are not a Mickey Mouse company,” says Karimzadeh, who runs the traders Eskar International with his brother Edmond. “This is a relatively small deal for us. I have offered a bank guarantee, and an insurance policy for £5m for the costs, but this was again not good enough. Whatever we provide, they ask for more.”
Indeed, he thinks the state is dragging its heels because it has its own plans for Apethorpe Hall: “English Heritage has a magnificent scheme to turn it into a cultural centre. Between them and the department of culture, they have already spent £1m of public money on a feasibility study. They speak about finding an ‘end user’, but are putting up so many hurdles that they will never find one.”
Karimzadeh says the DCMS advisers treat him “as if I am not one of them. They say ‘We don’t know if you’ll still be around in six years’ time’, that sort of thing”.
According to the DCMS, the concerns of all interested parties were debated in full and at great length at a public inquiry in Thrapston in February and March 2004. It comments: “Our only goal is to ensure the proper preservation of Apethorpe Hall and other historic buildings on the estate. Our clear preference is for the property to remain in private ownership, if at all possible. Negotiations with Apethorpe Country Estates Ltd (Harold Winton’s consortium) and Simon Karimzadeh are continuing. If the hall is acquired by the department, conversion to an English Heritage visitor attraction would only be considered as a last resort if no private-sector solution can be found.”
Karimzadeh escorts me around the house. It takes us about an hour to see half of it. Quite apart from the Long Gallery, the rooms clearly could be made very grand indeed. Many of the plastered, decorated ceilings are held up by scaffolding and planks. “They are not falling down,” he insists. “It’s just in case.”
We wander downstairs into a 20ft room big enough for a large family living space. “This will be one of the kitchens,” he announces. “But just with a large island in the middle. I see this as a place where you would make a cup of tea.” A 20ft-long tea-making area? We peer out onto the courtyard. “That’s where I would have summer barbecues. With the Gypsy Kings softly playing.” He’s got it all planned; a 30m swimming pool in the orangery, a gym, a billiards room, every bedroom with en-suite bathroom and sitting room — essentially, the ultimate party house.
“If I get a grant to do it, and have to open it to the public for 60 days a year, I could have wedding parties here. Fireworks, the whole front facade lit by spotlights.
“It’s a Great Gatsby sort of a place. It has that kind of feel.”
