A COUPLE have been forced to stop renovation work on their historic house, dubbed one of the “most important buildings in Reading”.
Owner John Dyson and his wife ripped out the entire ground floor and removed fireplaces, doors, skirting boards and dado rails from their Grade II* town house on Castle Hill.
But now the council has put a blocking order on any more work and ordered the couple to apply for retrospective planning permission. Reading Borough Council’s planning committee is now seeking legal advice.
The house, number 160 Castle Hill, was built in the 18th century and was the former King’s Arms Inn.
Chairman of the planning committee, Councillor Marian Livingston, said: “This is a huge, important issue as this is a Grade II listed building. It is one of the most important buildings in Reading. It is among the six per cent of important buildings in the country. We are deferring it because we need further legal consultation and we would like a site visit for members.”
But a “heartbroken” Mr Dyson said the house was in urgent need of repair when they bought it last July.
He said: “It is absolutely heartbreaking. We bought the house in July 2014 and it was in a very dilapidated state.
“It had not been occupied for over five years and whilst the previous owners were having a dispute between each other water had been coming in through in at least half a dozen places in that five-year period.
“There was a large amount of rotted timber, rotted window frames, one window completely disappeared and the whole of the floor was completely saturated.
“It needed a tremendous amount of immediate work to stop things getting worse.”
Mr Dyson, 67, who bought the house as a retirement project, says he and his wife have now had to decamp to an upper floor and have resorted to cooking their meals on a camping gas stove.
“We were doing preservation work in an emergency situation to stop things getting worse,” he said. “We did not think that for replacements we would need to get permission but because it is a Grade II* listed building it is a bit different.
“It is the bureaucratic process that makes it a very, very torturous process. It becomes extremely antagonistic when people should be working together.”
Mr and Mrs Dyson submitted a retrospective planning application at the meeting last Wednesday, June 24, but the council deferred making a decision until its next meeting in July.
Meanwhile, a report from Historic England submitted to the committee appeared to come down on the side of the owners.
It read: “There is considered to be little to be gained by reinstatement of some of these elements and we acknowledge that the works form part of a larger programme of repairs and refurbishment which will bring this building back into use and secure its long-term future, thus sustaining its significance.”