Athlone House owners ready to fight for mansion plan

Published: 1 April 2010
by DAN CARRIER

IT was dubbed by its design team as a magnificent contemporary palace, a money-no-object scheme that would create one of the best homes ever built in Britain. 

Now, after three years of delays, the long-awaited planning application from the owners of the former hospital Athlone House, overlooking Hampstead Heath, has finally been submitted and will go before councillors next Thursday.

Town Hall planners have given it the thumbs down in their advice to elected members but the developers will get the chance to argue their case.

The anonymous owners, who have issued statements through UK planning law expert David Cooper, will face a tough battle to get the dream mansion built. The only link to who they are is an address in a seafront office in the Channel Island tax haven, Guernsey. 

They have asked for permission to knock down the 1870s pile and replace it with a new mansion complete with underground car parking, leisure centre, sculptured gardens, and staff accommodation. 

A plethora of conservation and civic groups have objected to the scheme, from English Heritage, the Highgate Society, and the Heath and Hampstead Society, through to the Victorian Society and Heath managers the City of London. 

The Athlone House Working Group – formed by members of civic groups – pointed out that the owners are legally bound to restore the home. When the site was sold by the NHS the new owners were given permission to build three blocks of luxury flats in the gardens, on the condition they restored Athlone House.

Group convener Jeremy Wright said: “They entered freely into an agreement to restore the house in return for a very lucrative planning permission to build three blocks of apartments. 

“Now they have built and profited from these apartments they want to renege on the restoration of this house.”