Villagers versus the TECH TYCOON
When a Silicon Valley millionaire sank a small fortune into his childhood holiday haven, you’d have thought locals would embrace their luck. No chance!
The graffiti cannot be seen from the graveyard of the beautiful medieval church, nor from the bench outside The Farmers Arms, the thatched 17th-century pub.
Neither is it visible from the traditional red telephone box or the village shop whose delightfully old-fashioned service allows the elderly to come in for a chat as they select their groceries, then have them delivered free of charge.
Indeed, it’s only if anyone ventures into Back Street, the oldest road in the seemingly idyllic North Devon village of Woolsery, that they’re confronted by the letters daubed on a corrugated tin shed.
The perpetrator is not a local yob but John heath, a 72-year-old grandfather so incensed at the target of his scrawl, Michael Birch, that he graffitied his own property. ‘Birch out of our lives,’ it demands. heath’s anger also led to a dramatic incident which last month resulted in police confiscating his shotgun.
And if that seems extraordinary in this usually tranquil setting, then more unexpected is the target of his fury.
Michael Birch, 49, is the multi-millionaire credited with saving Woolsery from the decline that has robbed so many other rural communities of the pubs and village shops once at their heart.
Although he made his fortune in San Francisco, founding Facebook rival Bebo and selling it to online giant AOL for £650million in 2008, Birch is British.
He WAS born and raised in Cambridgeshire but has such strong links to Woolsery that he and his American-born wife Xochi named their youngest son Devon. his family have lived in the village since the 1700s — his great-great-grandfather Job Andrew building the village shop, above which the tycoon’s grandmother Millicent was born in 1900. She later married local boy Joseph Burrow.
Their daughter, Ida, Birch’s mother, often took her children from Cambridgeshire to Woolsery during the long summer holidays.
In 2015, learning that The Farmers Arms had been closed for two years and was about to be sold to property developers, Birch bought it. So began ‘The Woolsery Project’, a determined effort to invest in the village which has also seen the Birches buy the manor house opposite the pub.
Work is underway on turning that into a 17-bedroom boutique hotel, complete with underground spa and a spacious front lawn that will double as a village green.
Further visitor accommodation will be provided above the village shop, which will continue to run as a thriving business but needs substantial investment to repair the crumbling building in which it is housed, and in three cottages behind the pub.
All have been bought by the Birches, along with the local chippy and a 90-acre farm to provide local organic ingredients for the various commercial ventures. Of the 65 people working on the project, around 30 are from Woolsery — roughly three per cent of the population — and there are plans to create 200 jobs in the village in total, with pay rates starting above the minimum wage in an area where weekly earnings are 34 per cent below the national average.
Birch has also donated £6,000 towards repairs to the church ceiling, and bought a new fence for the primary school playground and a new strip for the local football team.
What, you might wonder, is not to like?
Well, even among those who are supportive (probably the majority), there is a feeling that the building works, disturbances and changes to village life have gone on much too long.
With diggers and lorries thundering all day along roads that, in some places, are barely wide enough to fit the local bus, it’s hardly surprising that the work has upset those living closest to it — including unlikely graffiti artist John heath, for one.
Now retired, John, who was in the Navy before becoming a photographer, has lived in the village for 40 years and raised two sons there with his wife Christine.
They welcome the investment made in Woolsery. But their house on Back Street is opposite the access to the Birches’ holiday home on neighbouring Chapel Street. Renovations have included lowering the garden by 10ft, with the earth removed in lorries making what
John claims were 70 or 80 trips up and down their narrow lane.
he says one lorry destroyed his neighbour’s doorstep. Others were parked so close to the houses that residents were unable to get out of their front doors.
‘They showed no thought about the impact on us,’ says one of John’s neighbours, a retiree who asked not to be named. We felt forgotten about and we had run-ins with the builders about things like starting at 6.30am on Bank holidays.’
When the work was at its height, John and Christine often felt driven to leave the area for the day.
‘You’d get back home and wonder what you were going to find,’ says John. ‘I get worked up thinking about it even now.’
Last month, with work on the village shop due to begin, the premises’ large refrigerators had been moved temporarily into two sheds close to the heaths’ house. They emitted a loud hum that kept them awake at night. And the noise was heard further afield.
‘I’ve a lot of sympathy for them,’ says Micky Robertson, 56, a cheese factory manager who has lived in Woolsery all his life.
‘I live probably three or four times further away from those fridges as John does, but still I could hear them early in the morning.’
As a result of John’s complaints, soundproofing was installed. But it didn’t resolve the issue satisfactorily, and he told the project’s operations manager that he’d been driven to the point where he felt like shooting out the fridges’ power supply.
‘I didn’t threaten anyone. I was just trying to get across how angry I felt,’ he says. ‘On returning from a long, calming walk, I found the police there.’
‘I’ve got a shotgun that I use for shooting game and they confiscated it and took away my licence. I was pretty p’d off about it but I know
that I really did flip in a way I never have before.
‘Since the police came, I’ve had a number of people phoning or knocking on my door to say they feel the same.’
They include retired company director Peter Willetts, 84, and his wife Eileen, 83, owners of one of several bungalows in a neatly manicured cul-de-sac which backs on to the manor.
‘We used to have a lovely view,’ says Eileen. ‘But we’ve had to let the hedge between us and the manor grow to hide all the building work. And we hardly sit out in the garden any more because of all the clanging.’
The Willetts were particularly upset about a sycamore tree attached to their boundary fence which had been cut down, despite them thinking they had persuaded a contractor not to do it.
When Peter complained, he said they got a letter from The Woolsery Project accusing them of threatening and harassing the contractor. He adds: ‘I said:
“We’re both in our 80s.” We’re not the kind to threaten anyone.’ Eileen adds: We’re just people trying to live a peaceful retired life.’
When Michael Birch took over the pub, it was in a wretched state, with a tree growing through the thatched roof and damp everywhere. And many locals I spoke to have raved about the architecturally stunning transformation, along with a menu revamped by a chef from the two-Michelin-starred Gidleigh Park hotel on the edge of Dartmoor.
‘Michael Birch is definitely dragging Woolsery up,’ says retired printer Terry Woolnough. ‘But although what he’s done with The Farmers Arms is very nice, I don’t go in there so much. It’s what I would call a bistro pub, not a village pub.’
‘It feels more like a country house hotel,’ says Micky robertson. For the past 15 years Micky has been part of a team of volunteers running a social club in the community hall that now has 200 members. ‘We offer everything the pub doesn’t,’ he says. ‘Two pool tables, six dartboards, a jukebox, televised sport and fruit machines.’
The pub does have a dartboard but, in John Heath’s view, the social club is the kind of venue the village needs, not what he describes as ‘a poncey chef restaurant like The Farmers Arms’.
When contacted by the Mail, Birch, who lives in the tax haven of the British Virgin Islands, was unavailable for comment. His spokesperson Emily Harmon admits there were ‘issues’ with the builders and says they’ve now been replaced.
So will peace return to Devon’s ‘best-kept village 2008’?
‘You wonder where it’s all going to end,’ says one resident. ‘I think we’re going to end up as a holiday destination, with Birch asking us to dress up in costumes and dance around the maypole to entertain visitors.’ She is joking, of course, but no one smiles.
Good for the village that The Woolsery Project undoubtedly is, for some residents, any gain seems to come with much pain.