Castle dream comes true (From Witney Gazette)

Castle dream comes true

2:04pm Friday 4th January 2008 in Witney By David Horne

THE Englishman's dream of his own castle has come true for a West Oxfordshire millionaire.

The 18th-century 'folly' that Ian Richens has bought is a former National Trust property, which once housed a garrison of 250 men and 32 cannon.

The castle - Rodborough Fort, on top of a hill overlooking the town of Stroud, in Gloucestershire - cost him and his wife Maeve close on £2m, and still needs some renovation before they can move in in March.

"It's a schoolboy dream to own a place like this. It looks like a fairytale castle, " said Mr Richens, 59, who made his fortune in the insurance business, and who was born and brought up in Carterton, Oxfordshire's newest town, where historic buildings date only as far back as the 20th century.

"It's going to be a fantastic passion to restore over the next two to five years."

The self-made millionaires are well-known in Witney, where for over 30 years they ran FM Green insurance brokers at Market Square.

It was bought by the Bollington Group, of which Mr Richens is a director. He plans to retire for good this November.

He went to Burford School, and then into the insurance business, starting with the Royal Insurance office, in Oxford, before taking over FM Green at the age of 23. His wife joined him to run the office, overseeing the accounts.

Mr Richens still goes into the Witney office twice a week, and on Friday was attending the funeral of 102-year-old Jack Room, long-time associate at FM Green.

"We are self-made millionaires, but we are not trying to tell the world about it by buying a big property. It is really the Englishman and his castle dream. I've always been interested in history," said Mr Richens.

"We spotted it for sale, and the fourth time we went to visit it, we thought this was for us. It's not been lived in for years, so needs a lot doing to it. It's been leaking through the roof, so the ceiling plasters are in a bad way.

"It's going to be great to have our grown-up children and their families, including grandchildren, to come and stay."

Rodborough Fort went on the market last August as a Grade II-listed Victorian Cotswold folly, with six bedrooms and nine acres.

The fort actually dates back to the early 1760s, when it was first built with battlemented walls and turrets, for Captain George Hawker.

It housed a garrison of 250 men and 32 cannon to keep law and order in the countryside, before Stroud businessman Alexander Halcombe rebuilt it in 1870 as a two-storey folly, with a tower.

In 1937, it was left to the National Trust, and in 1956 housed refugees from the Hungarian revolution. The trust then sold it in 1995 to a father and son, who have now moved to Malawi to launch a mobile phone network.