Facing court, Lady of the Manor who put plastic windows in lodge houses
A MILLIONAIRE aristocrat once dubbed the ‘First Lady of Lloyd’s’ has been ordered to face court after a five-year legal battle over plastic windows at two 19th-century lodges on her 395-acre estate.
Lady Rona Delves Broughton, 84, fell foul of planning inspectors after builders installed eight double glazed UPVC frames at one of the Grade Two listed properties when their timber predecessors were destroyed in a fire in 2017.
In 2019 Lady Delves Broughton was ordered to remove replace
‘Considerable expense’
ments from Avenue Lodge, which flanks the entrance to her family seat, 18th century Doddington Hall near Nantwich, Cheshire, and match them to its adjacent sister building, Lake Lodge.
But instead the defiant widow – whose late husband’s father, Sir Henry ‘ Jock’ Delves Broughton, was famously acquitted of the 1941 White Mischief murder of a wealthy earl in Kenya – removed seven wooden windows at Lake Lodge and replaced them with UPVC frames matching those at Avenue Lodge.
This week Lady Delves Broughton, whose address was given as a £14million townhouse in Kensington, west London, was due to face magistrates in Crewe charged with breaching a listed building enforcement notice.
But the case was adjourned to allow her further time to replace the plastic windows with wooden ones. She faces unlimited fines and a criminal record if she fails to comply.
Last night Lady Delves Broughton said she checked at the time of the installation of the plastic windows and the property ‘was not listed with English Heritage and Cheshire Council’. She said the windows were for the benefit of her tenants, to make the lodges warmer and quieter. In 2021 Lady Broughton, right, appealed against the enforcement notice to the planning inspectorate saying Avenue Lodge was ‘not of special architectural or historic interest’. But a planning inspector said it was ‘an important building associated with the historical development of the wider estate’. As such, every effort should be made to conserve its ‘historic windows’ to preserve its ‘aesthetic value’. Lady Delves Broughton said: ‘All this took place during... lockdown but I gave up fighting and, as required, the new softwood single glazed windows are being made and waiting to be installed.
‘So after considerable expense, we will end up with two almost uninhabitable properties.’