‘We’d always wanted a stately ruin’
After a ‘restoration nightmare’, why have Sarah Beeny and her husband decided to sell Rise Hall? Madeleine Howell finds out
‘Ihave very big dreams,” says Sarah Beeny. “You only live once, and what are you going to do on your deathbed if you’ve been careful and cautious?” The property developer and television presenter recalls with wonder her bold decision to purchase Rise Hall in 2001 with her then-boyfriend, Graham Swift, when the pair were in their 20s.
At their wedding in the stately home two years later (Swift proposed on the roof of what was then a crumbling building, beset with both wet and dry rot), the couple served homemade lasagne. “We were more concerned with making sure there was enough to drink,” Beeny jokes.
Now, after 18 years, the pair are celebrating the sale of the house – for an amount that has not been disclosed – to friends Dan and Helen Gill, who run Dine, a luxury hospitality business. Specialising in historic and logistically challenging spaces, they will continue to host weddings, dinners and events at Rise Hall.
Beeny’s wedding would be a more polished affair if it were to take place at Rise Hall today. “I’d love to get married again now, with them doing the catering,” she says. “Perhaps we should renew our vows?” Beeny glances at Swift, with a laugh.
The couple bought Rise Hall near Beverley, in the East Riding of Yorkshire, for around £440,000 in 2001. Rise is recorded as far back as the Domesday Book, but the current house was built in the 19th century by the Bethell family, who owned the majority of the village of Rise until the Nineties. During the Second World War, the manor served as headquarters for the operation of searchlight batteries, accommodating the officers manning them (Beeny was later to discover their graffiti on walls during her renovations). From 1946 until 1989, the building was used as a convent school. The story of their restoration of the dere
lict 30-bedroom stately was documented in the Channel 4 series Beeny’s Restoration Nightmare (it is still available for viewing on UKTV Play).
The gymnasium with exposed brickwork is now a white-panelled ballroom capable of hosting dinner for 200. French doors lead out to 27 acres of grounds, designed by landscape designer Lancelot “Capability” Brown.
But despite the emphasis on the possibility of financial disaster and the daunting scale of the project portrayed
in the programme – “you can’t have a show without a bit of jeopardy!” laughs Beeny – she admits the purchase was a calculated move.
“If you were going to take a heritage property on the brink of collapse and attempt to give it a new lease of life, which is what we wanted to do, this was a good bet,” says Beeny. “We’d talked for years about buying a stately home in ruins, and if we didn’t do it then, we might never have done it.”
Although the house was in bad nick, it sat in the middle of its own land, with no obvious unsalvageable issues. “We didn’t come across any problems in terms of the restoration itself that we hadn’t tackled before on a smaller scale,” says Beeny.
Still, it wasn’t easy: Beeny and Swift had three young sons, Billy, Charles and Rafferty, in tow at the time, and a fourth, Laurie, came along right in the middle of it all. Friends visiting could expect to sleep on mattresses on the floor with electric blankets for warmth. “I was 27, so the excitement overshadowed the challenges. It was leaking, but it was really good fun,” insists Swift, an artist as well as his wife’s business partner. A number of his etchings and portraits hang in the gallery at Rise Hall.
And while they took the reconstruction of the place in their stride, they ran into problems with the council. Objections that the work did not comply with planning regulations and listed building consent were raised, and they were forced to apply for costly retrospective planning permission, lawful development certificates and listed building consent.
At the time, a disgruntled council source told The Telegraph: “The bottom line is that this self-proclaimed property expert had just gone ahead and done all this without the relevant permissions and we are now having to row back and sort it all out.”
For Beeny, it was a learning curve. “It was politics with a small ‘p’ and I couldn’t understand what the problem was, but I learnt so many lessons and now I understand that politics with a small ‘p’ counts,” she reflects.
Swift admits that they may have added fuel to the fire: “From our point of view, it was a house with no use. We’re doers, and we couldn’t see why they wouldn’t allow a house with no use to be taken to its full potential. There were a few people in the council who were difficult, but that might have been partly our fault, because we just went: ‘Are you for real? This Grade II* listed house was falling down, and you’re going to complain?’”
So after all that work, why are they selling now? “We decided we didn’t want to bring our sons up in the city any more,” says Beeny. “If I’m honest, we struggled with education in London – so we’ve bought a sheep farm in Somerset. We’re building a house there which will lend itself better to day-today living.
“Having houses in London and Yorkshire is one thing, Somerset and Yorkshire is another – so it seemed like the right time.”
In any case, under the Gills’ guardianship, they can continue to return to Rise Hall for celebrations at Christmas or New Year. “This is a house that is everyone’s,” Beeny says. “There’s so many people who feel ownership and that’s right and just. Hopefully it will stand a lot longer after we’re around; it’s stood for a long time before.
“People who attended the convent school and the officers who were stationed here in the Second World War have a sense of connection to the house – but if it had been divided into flats, they would never have come here again. We wanted to share it, and they can have their birthdays and anniversaries here.”
And while the Gills intend to keep Rise Hall largely as it is, they have so far refurnished Beeny and Swift’s opulent Brighton Pavilion-style bedroom at the top of the grand cantilevered staircase, fashioning it into a new bridal suite for guests.
For Swift, who fulfilled a lifelong dream when he built an oak-panelled pub in the house, Rise Hall’s present use as a party venue is simply a reversion to the building’s original purpose. “It wasn’t built so people could have a cosy dinner alone with their children: there would have been dozens of guests and indoor staff bustling around. It was a centre of the community, and fundamentally, it was built so that rich people could entertain their friends.”
The dark green library is now used as a lounge area for overnight guests and as somewhere to retire to for after-dinner drinks late into the night (there’s “no curfew” at Rise Hall, so that it feels more like “a home rather than a hotel”). It holds particularly special memories of Beeny and Swift’s time entertaining here. “Eighteen years ago, Sarah’s mum [who died from cancer when Beeny was 10] sadly wasn’t alive, but my dad was, and I remember having really lovely chats with him by the fire,” says Swift.
“Even before we did it all up, we had family Christmases in here with 40 people: grandparents, babies and kids. Whether it’s getting p----- on Pimms outside on the lawn when the sun’s going down or eating good food in the drawing room, to us, it’s permeated with good humour – it’s the most joyful house in the world.”
‘We wanted to share it, and people can have their birthdays and anniversaries here’