TV property guru Sarah Beeny has been hit with a devastating order — to tear down her £3million mansion, branded a “mini Downton Abbey,” after building it without the proper planning permission.
The Property Ladder presenter, 53, has been locked in a six-year battle with local residents and Somerset Council over the rural estate she bought in Stoney Stoke back in 2018.
Four years after receiving approval to demolish the original 1970s farmhouse to make way for a grand seven-bedroom mansion, Beeny instead extended the property without authorisation. She later applied for retrospective approval — including new French doors and a first-floor balcony — but her application was rejected. In March, she lost her appeal, despite her design team submitting a 125-page document in her defence.
Now a live enforcement notice has been issued, and Somerset Council is preparing to send a team of enforcement officers and ecological experts to meet Beeny and her husband Graham Swift on-site. A council spokesperson confirmed: “A site visit is due later this month or early October. Next steps will be determined after that visit has taken place.”
Local anger has been mounting. Charlton Musgrove Parish Council strongly objected to her latest plans, pointing out that she had originally agreed to demolish the farmhouse rather than refurbish and extend it. The presence of bats on the property also raised concerns, with the parish council calling for the creation of a proper roost.
One neighbour, Kevin Flint, told The Sun: “It’s created a lot of bad feeling in the village. She was given permission to build a new house on the condition she demolished the old one, which she extended and refurbished instead. She thinks she can ride roughshod over everyone — but it’s not going to happen. The fair thing is for anything unauthorised to be demolished, just like Captain Tom’s daughter’s spa.”
The controversy echoes the case of Hannah Ingram-Moore, who was forced to tear down an unauthorised spa at her home last year.
Beeny’s renovations have been featured on her Channel 4 series Sarah Beeny’s New Life in the Country, but this is not her first planning row. In 2022, she fought a two-year battle to keep a James Bond-style treehouse at her estate, built with her children from old dairy farm timber. She also constructed a thatched boathouse and greenhouse without permission, narrowly avoiding demolition by later applying for retrospective approval.
Officials eventually granted her a “change of use” to extend her garden, despite objections from the parish council, who argued the extension was excessive.
Last year, she was again forced into a U-turn after attempting to convert two barns into four new homes. Local opponents claimed she had “blatantly ignored” an earlier enforcement notice and accused her of pushing ahead with developments without regard for planning rules.
Now, as council officials prepare to revisit her Somerset estate, Beeny faces the very real possibility of losing her grand countryside mansion — the very project that was meant to embody her family’s new life in the country.
Source: Daily Mail
