This guy
This is beautiful Llanwenarth House, which inspired the hymn All Things Bright and Beautiful. It’s a 16th C building with a largely 18th C interior.
Or was. It was bought by a property developer who gutted it and redid it, inside and out, to modern (and bad) taste. Not surprisingly, he did all this without planning permission, because he totally would never have gotten planning permission to vandalize an historically important building like that.
All this happened last Summer and it would have been a story but not a very big one, but for one thing: when they dug up the new patio and turned over the stones, they found writing on the back. He’d used headstones from a local disused children’s cemetery, leaving a host of Victorian unfortunates in unmarked graves. None of the sources were very specific about how he got them or induced the workmen to chop them up. I suppose one good villain was all the story required.
As it happens, making unauthorized alterations to a listed building is a criminal, not a civil, offense. We know this because we live in a listed building. Every time I wad up a newspaper and stick it in a drafty crack, I think to myself, “self — you could go to jail for that.” Or gaol, as they call it here. They can’t spell for shyte.
Welp, today the news comes that the legal process has done its evil work and dude has gone bankrupt defending himself. I’m not usually a fan of lawfare, but in this case, I’ll make an exception.
Phun phact: Cecil Alexander, who wrote All Things Bright and Beautiful, was a woman.
February 11, 2016 — 10:32 pm
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