Comedian Alan Carr has lodged plans to convert a potting shed at his castle in the Scottish Borders into a cafe and estate shop. The Celebrity Traitors winner bought 19th Century Ayton Castle earlier this year. A new TV series is planned following his attempt to turn the ageing estate into a workable home.
Now he has put in a planning application to Scottish Borders Council (SBC) to redevelop a part of the estate. Inside the £3.25m castle bought by Celebrity Traitors winner Alan Carr The castle was put up for sale with an asking price of offers over £3.25m before Carr snapped it up. "Some men when they have a midlife crisis buy a Lamborghini or grow a ponytail, but me - I want my very own castle," he said at the time.
A residual sale was recently held of hundreds of items neither he nor the previous owners wanted. It included the highly-unusual creations from the Branxton Cement Menagerie. All of them found a buyer apart from a concrete cow.
Plans are in the pipeline for a Disney television series looking at his efforts to make the Scottish estate a workable home. As a first step, a planning application has been submitted to the local council to convert some currently vacant buildings in its walled garden into a community cafe and estate shop. It would include public toilets, staff welfare and storage facilities.
"With regard to the walled garden, there is a long-term commitment from the client to clear, repair and invest in this space over the coming years," said a heritage impact statement supporting the application. It added that the potting sheds had sat vacant and were in a "severely derelict state" and any change which could bring them back into use and encourage people to visit would be a "highly positive development". What stories would you like BBC News to cover from the south of Scotland?
"For the portion that is to be converted into a cafe and shop, the dilapidated state means that any intervention is an improvement," the statement added. "Overall, we objectively view that the proposed works will have minimal negative impact on the significance of the potting shed and as a whole provide a positive development in the life story of this single storey range of estate buildings. "The proposal by our client to preserve and convert the potting sheds into a cafe and estate shop is both an appropriate change of use and one which meets all the basic principles of preservation, conservation and long-term sustainability while managing change in historic buildings." SBC will decide at a later date if the plans should be allowed to proceed.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
