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Tenant living at Evelyn Waugh’s £2,500,000 mansion says it’s ‘not for sale’

Mail Online. Evelyn Waugh's once beloved Cotswold mansion up for auction. Piers Court in Stinchcombe. 13th December 2022.
Piers Court in Gloucestershire is set for auction at a guide price of £2.5 million (Picture: SWNS)

Tenants living in Evelyn Waugh’s famous mansion for just £250 per year have insisted ‘the house is not for sale’ and will come off the market soon.

Helen Lawton – who is a fan of the author – lives at Piers Court in Gloucestershire with partner Bechara Madi.

The mansion, where the British author wrote Brideshead Revisited, is set to be sold at auction tomorrow with a guide price of £2.5 million, but the couple are making the process difficult and refusing to let buyers look around.

Ms Lawton told The Times: ‘The house is not for sale, it is coming off the market.

‘We’ve been through hell in the last three weeks. This is going to become very big public knowledge.’

She did not explain how she planned to take the Grade II-listed Georgian manor off the market.

Auctioneers Allsop have attached the following warning to the listing: ‘The property is occupied under a Common Law Tenancy at a rent of £250 per annum.

Jason Blain (L) and producer Deborah Schindler attend NY TIMES Party at the C5 Resturant at The Royal Ontario Museum during the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival on September 13, 2009 in Toronto, Canada. (Photo by Vito Amati/WireImage)
Jason Blain, pictured here with producer Deborah Schindler in 2009, set up a company to buy the house in 2019 (Picture: WireImage)
2nd July 1955: Evelyn Arthur St John Waugh (1903 - 1966), English novelist, travel writer and biographer. Original Publication: Picture Post - 7833 - Waugh On War - pub. 1955 (Photo by Kurt Hutton/Picture Post/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
Evelyn Waugh once said Piers Court is ‘the kind of house which takes a lot of living up to’ (Picture: Getty)

‘A Notice To Quit was served on the occupant on 19th August 2022 and a copy of such Notice was affixed to the property gate on 22nd August 2022.

‘Prospective purchasers should take their own legal advice regarding this and will be deemed to bid accordingly.’

Ms Lawton set herself up as a tenant after asking her friend Jason Blain, a former BBC business development boss, for help buying the mansion.

He set up a company to take out mortgages and buy the property for £2.9million in 2019, with Ms Lawton and Mr Madi as directors.

On the day of the purchase, they resigned from their roles in the business.

But not before establishing a rolling six-month tenancy with rent of £250 a year.

Piers Court at Stinchcombe near Dursley.
The 23-acre property is a Grade II-listed Georgian manor (Picture: Knight Frank)

Creditors have reportedly called in the £1.8 million mortgage with interest, paving the way for it to be auctioned off by Hoare & Co bank.

Mr Waugh lived on the 23-acre property with his second wife for 19 years. He famously loved it, calling it: ‘The kind of house which takes a lot of living up to.’

He sold it in 1955 after two reporters showed up asking for an interview, which annoyed him.

He wrote in his diary: ‘I sent them away and remained tremulous with rage all the evening.’

Waugh later told estate agents Knight Frank & Rutley to sell the property, saying: ‘I felt as if the house had been polluted.’

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