I bought this castle and didn’t tell my husband!
Her £250k ruin needs £5m repairs – but for entrepreneur Nicole Rudder, that’s all part of the attraction...
NICOLE Rudder is standing in a room full of rubble in a bright red mini dress, explaining why she neglected to tell her husband that she’d bought a derelict castle for £250,000.
‘My husband has nothing to do with my businesses,’ she says sensibly. ‘I’m not taking the money out of his bank. When I placed an offer I didn’t tell anyone at all.
‘Then when I got it I went to him and said, “Look, I’ve done something. I’ve bought a castle.” And he said, “What? Have you not got enough to do?”’
He has a point. Rudder, 32, runs several businesses, including a claims company, a podcast studio and a clothing line for which she models herself, and is also mother to two girls, Isabella, six, and Stella, three. Was adding a tumbledown castle into the mix – Garrion Tower near Wishaw in Lanarkshire, which will, it is estimated, need a whopping £5million investment to restore it to its former glory – not a bit daunting?
‘Nah,’ she says. ‘I’m excited. People keep asking me that but I know what we’re going to do. I can see the vision. I can see the final result. With things like this I’m of the mind that if you want to make something work you will make it work. I’ll do whatever it takes.’
A tour round Garrion Tower with the new lady of the manor is something of an eye opener. She arrives in an enormous white breakdown truck – which she later drives away still wearing the towering high heels she pops on for our photo shoot – and is trailed everywhere by a member of her social media team who films her every move for, she explains, ‘our records’.
Sensibly opting for a pair of Holland Cooper wellies as we troop through the ramshackle rooms and up several floors of rubble-strewn stairs (although as she gleefully points out: ‘I’ve done this five or six times in heels. It’s been a struggle let me tell you, but I’ve got there’) she bubbles over with enthusiasm for her new project.
She paid £250,000 – a low offer given that it was on the market for £450,000 – and estimates the cost of renovation will be anywhere between £3million and £5million. She wants to turn it into a fairytale wedding venue.
‘We’re trying to keep it as preserved as possible, saving all the original details so we can put them back in,’ she says.
In each room she points out original fireplaces, some still containing pot-holders for hot water, and ornate fragments of cornicing (‘we’re going to cut that and get it dipped and remoulded’). In the largest room she tells me of her vision for a bridal suite.
‘I’m imagining this gorgeous room with a wee sofa and stations for hair and makeup for the bride and bridesmaids getting ready. And having the big pyjama party the night before.’
From the first floor, as we look out over the overgrown parkland, she explains her plans to rebuild an old pavilion so walkers can stop in for a cup of tea or a G&T.
‘Behind the treeline is the River Clyde and there’s a pathway that runs along the river. It’s really nice. The plan is really just to make this chateau garden vibes.’
Once used as a pre-Reformation summer home for the bishops of Glasgow and Galloway (what they would have made of makeup stations and chateau garden vibes we shall never know), Garrion Tower will need all the help it can get.
With some parts dating back to the 15th century and the bulk of it from the 17th, with more extensions built during the Victorian era, the castle was last inhabited in 2008 and placed on the Buildings at Risk Register in 2018. Some parts have been deemed structurally unsound and at every turn there are smashed windows, caved in ceilings and rickety stairs that look as though they might collapse at any moment.
The oldest part of the building is also B-listed, meaning any proposed renovations will have to be done extremely sensitively.
And yet despite the mammoth task ahead, and being on site almost every day since she purchased it in February, Rudder retains an endearing, childlike excitement about the place.
‘Look up there,’ she says as we emerge from the basement to the ground floor.
Through a gap in the ceiling she points out the remnants of what would have once been the castle’s magnificent turret.
‘It would have been just so amazing,’ she says, dreamily. ‘We’re getting this all rebuilt and put back together and the turret will make the most beautiful bridal suite or honeymoon suite. Very “Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair”. In fact I want to do that first, before we have any weddings, I want to go up there and do Rapunzel.’
What, I ask tentatively, about the finances? ‘I think everybody worries about finances if you’ve got a project like this on the go.
‘If you’re not worrying you’re probably not bothered about projects like this.
‘We are in talks with a few different grant people, including the Forestry Commission, the Scottish Heritage Fund and North Lanarkshire Council.
‘We’ve applied for grants. Because part of it is a B-listed building we’re hoping to be able to get help with some of the most expensive stuff, things like the stone masons, which are such a rare trade, and the roof.
‘I’m hoping to get some grant funding for that and then I’m going to be funding some of it myself through my business and take it from there, really.’
Originally from Parkhead, in Glasgow’s East End, Rudder is the epitome of the self-made businesswoman. Having moved to the Clyde Valley with her parents as a teenager, after school she got a job with South Lanarkshire Council.
But she had always been intrigued by her father’s line of work in accident management and, aged 20 she set up her non
‘I can see the vision, the final result. I’ll do whatever it takes’ ‘He’s just laughing about it. He knows what I’m like’
fault accident claims company, G4 Claims.
‘Originally we were small, just me and my sister-in-law. Now there are 19 of us, we’ve been going for 12 years and we’ve added on a hire company, a marketing company, and I run two podcast studios, too.’
Eying her stunning dress, complete with the G4 logo emblazoned on the side, you get the feeling Rudder could give the Beckhams a run for their money when it comes to branding.
At a recent staff outing to Hamilton race course (she employs a number of family members, including her aunt, her sister-in-law and her brother-in-law), the entire staff wore outfits in red, black and white, the company colours, with logos emblazoned on the side.
Rudder herself opted to wear a black ballgown and a black and red tiara.
‘When we go out all my girls are branded,’ she says. ‘Everything we do is branded. We’re well known for it. It’s kind of what we do.’
It’s savvy, too. Their logo adorns the back of the Motherwell FC home strip and in her new studios, any podcast makers wanting to use the facility must advertise the company.
‘I literally don’t own any clothes without a logo, I’m not lying,’ she says. ‘I wear G4 every day. All my gym wear is G4, all my normal clothes are G4, all my work clothes, all my dresses.’
I ask why she settled on turning her new acquisition into a wedding venue.
She tells me about renovating her company’s new office buildings, which were completed last autumn and include an on-site gym for staff, complete with a snazzy Peloton bike.
‘I’ve always loved weddings but I didn’t think I was going to have a wedding venue.
‘But last year I purchased an old factory. It hadn’t been touched in 27 years, there was no gas, it was a riot.
‘I loved it but everybody else said it was madness. But I just loved renovating it, the thrill of it, pushing it back to the bare brick and redesigning it – I loved every part of it.
‘And then I was looking for something else and this came up and I thought, “It’s completely different but I like it”.’
She smiles, and adds: ‘There’s no rhyme or reason to anything I’m doing really if that’s what you’re asking.’
So far, the only event Garrion Tower has hosted since Rudder bought the place is her sister-in-law’s hen do, where they strung balloons from the castle and painted the big iron door, designed to keep out intruders and urban explorers, a vivid pink.
All that might change soon, however. Rudder is uncharacteristically coy on the subject, but she’s set to star in a TV show about the renovation of the castle, with a film crew tracking the project from start to finish.
I’m not surprised. From the tips of her multicoloured manicure to her immaculate eyelash extensions, Rudder is a walking TV reality show, a modern-day Michelle Mone with genuine business savvy and enough grit to cover a driveway.
But when I ask if she considers herself entrepreneurial she seems stumped by the question.
‘Oh,’ she says, pausing for the first time in our conversation.
‘I’d just say I love my work. I think if you love something you’re going to try really, really hard and ultimately you’re probably going to be good at it because you’re good at it. I love my work.’
And there’s little doubt that she loves Garrion Tower, which in recent decades has passed through multiple owners, none of whom – unlike her – seemed to know what to do with it.
Rudder is desperate to know more about its history, and tells me excitedly about people who have been in touch recently to tell her that they once lived there, or had family members who passed through its doors.
She has an image in her head that one day some of them might revisit, or even hold weddings there themselves.
It’s about recreating history and adding to the history it’s already got, she says. It’s got so much character so trying to find out the stories is fascinating.’
Later, after telling me she only sleeps four hours a night, she says: ‘I love being stressed, I think that’s the issue. People always say to me, “If you’re not stressed, you’re not happy”.’
She’s the polar opposite to her husband, Grant, who is a selfemployed painter and decorator and has never taken any involvement with her businesses.
‘He does his own thing,’ she says. ‘He likes to do his jobs, go home at night and switch off. He’s a very laid-back guy.
‘They say opposites attract and that must be true because we’re complete opposites.’
And now that the shock has worn off, how does Grant feel about her buying a castle behind his back these days, I wonder?
‘He’s cool now,’ she says breezily. ‘He’s just laughing about it. He knows what I’m like.’
I leave her by one of the picnic tables in the sunshine, cheerily firing off requests to her staff, branded phone in hand.
Standing there with her very own castle in the background, the soft chiffon folds of her cape dress billowing in the breeze, she looks, I think, not just like the lady of the manor, but a little like superwoman, too.
‘I love being stressed, I think that’s the issue’