Robert Fidler: Meeting the farmer battling to save his bat-filled castle filled built without permission

Robert Fidler tells Adam Lusher why his illicit structure should be saved

Robert Fidler invites us into his beautiful Surrey home, his very own self-built “work of art”. The proud farmer allows us to admire the cannon guarding the entrance, the battlements on brick towers that were once grain silos.

But he also wants to tell us about the bat droppings in the attic – and the ecological report stressing that, before anything is done to the house, it is “imperative” that a survey establishes what times of year bats are present.

Perhaps not all homeowners are quite so punctilious about bat surveys. But then, not everyone builds a mock-Tudor castle while hiding it from planning officers behind a giant haystack.

Mr Fidler did. His spot of extreme hide-and-seek DIY began in September 2000, the bricks being slipped inside the haystack in the dead of night. With his wife and young son, he began living in secret in a house hidden in a 40ft-high pile of straw bales.

Then in 2006 the bales were removed and Honeycrock Castle was revealed in all its glory. Mr Fidler told officials it was too late to complain about the absence of planning permission because the property had stood for more than four years. Reigate and Banstead Borough Council was not amused. So began a legal marathon that ended on 9 November in the High Court.

Mr Fidler had hoped his bat droppings would gain Honeycrock Castle a stay of execution. While it was illegal for him to defy the council’s demolition injunction, he said, it was equally illegal to deny the bats their rights to a year-long bat survey.

Mr Justice Dove told him to demolish by 6 June 2016 or go to jail. And so a forlorn Mr Fidler, 67, welcomed The Independent to Honeycrock Castle in Salfords.

“It will break my heart to demolish it,” he says. “It’s like asking Rembrandt to rip up his best oil painting.” He had done nearly all the work himself: “Well, I couldn’t exactly bring a builder in, could I?”

His wife Linda, 46, had mixed the cement. They had also fashioned a secret entrance, hidden behind what looked like a straw bale. Any intruder would come face-to-face with Chief, a cart/guardhorse.

Some have branded him “a disgrace”. But Mr Fidler says he has supporters in Russia and Germany. “And I’ve been told the French have taken me to their hearts,” he says. “French farmers stand up and get their way. The British bulldog attitude seems to have been bullied out of us by officials. [But] sometimes you have to stand up to authority to prevent it from stealing your dreams.”

Fidler, clad in blue jeans and a crucifix pendant over abundant chest hair, could be mistaken for a forgotten member of hellraising rockers Status Quo. But, he insists, he’s not the rebel hero of planning. “I am a law-abiding citizen, a father and grandfather who is trying to provide a home for his family,” he says. “I’ve not broken any laws. I’ve not told any lies.”

Before you could inquire whether that was because no one ever thought to ask “is that a four-bedroom castle in your haystack?”, Mr Fidler quotes a legal ruling: “The act of concealment does not... take away lawful rights.”

He was, he says, driven by desperation. He claims he had applied to convert a cowshed into a dwelling in 1998, only for the council to fail to make any decision. The council insists the application was received in January 2001 and “the decision was delayed due to other ongoing planning and enforcement matters at the site. He [already] had another house there”.

But Mr Fidler says that by 2000, he was living with Linda, who was pregnant, in the converted farm-office “shed” that he had moved into after his first marriage broke up. “I wasn’t going to let my family live in a shed for the rest of their lives, and I had to be on the farm to care for my cattle,” he says. The undercover building began, he claims, “because of the council’s inaction”.

“Yes, it was stressful – like being in the Resistance,” he says. “When our son was three, we had to keep him home from playschool on the day they were supposed to draw a picture of their houses. At that age, he probably thought everyone lived in a stack of straw; but if he had drawn a haystack, people might have started asking questions.”

He insists there was no danger of setting a precedent: the Localism Act 2011 introduced the safeguard that once a hidden house was revealed, a council still had six months to object.

He cites green-belt building exceptions for farmers if it is essential they live close to their cattle. He says he had replaced an ugly bit of hard standing with what one local glossy magazine described as “the only castle built in the area for years – a must-see for tourists”. But a council spokesperson says: “If we fail to act, it would give others free rein to build in the green belt. The judge agreed with the council’s case in full.”

He insists there is still hope: the council’s planning chairman has suggested talks about “realistic options”. Perhaps, says Mr Fidler, he could make peace. Perhaps a solution could be found. Perhaps he could offer reassurance. “That pile of bales I put up last year,” he says. “It’s bedding for my cattle – not an extension.”