Lord of the manor in the clear on sale of house’s ‘listed’ urns

A MANOR house owner has won a Supreme Court challenge over the £55,000 sale of two 18th-century urns after a local council pursued legal action against him.

Marcus Dill, who was facing enforcement action over the auctioning of the vases in 2009, challenged a Court of Appeal ruling that the items could be considered to have listed status as buildings under planning laws. Listed status is given to buildings based on their architectural and historic interest and awards them special protection.

In a ruling yesterday, the Supreme Court allowed Mr Dill’s appeal.

The urns were once owned by the first Duke of Kent, and moved to several historic houses before arriving at Idlicote House in Warwickshire in 1973. The property had been designated a Grade II listed building in 1966, and the urns were added to the list in June 1986 under the Town and Country Planning Act.

Mr Dill acquired the house and items in 1993 and was not aware of the listing of the urns when he did so.

In 2009, he sold the items at auction, and it is understood they are no longer in the UK.

Five years later, the local planning authority, Stratford-upon-Avon District Council, learned the items had been removed.

In April 2015, they then wrote to Mr Dill informing him that consent had been needed for the removal and threatening legal action.

He applied in June that year for listed building consent, which was refused, and the authority issued an enforcement notice in April 2016 requiring both of the urns be brought back to Idlicote House.

Mr Dill appealed to the Department for Housing, Communities and Local Government (DHCLG) against the refusal of listed building consent and the enforcement notice, but a planning inspector appointed by the Government dismissed the appeal. He took his case to the High Court and the Court of Appeal, but lost his challenge on both occasions.

Allowing Mr Dill’s latest appeal, Lord Carnwarth ruled: “It seems clear that the vases and their piers did not fall to be treated as part of the listed building of Idlicote House”.