Banker tests patience with raffle for listed gothic folly
Campaigners ‘appalled’ by scheme that could net £3.6m for tower restored at taxpayers’ expense
WHEN the 175ft-high gothic Hadlow Tower was put on the market this year for £2million, there was outrage that the owner stood to make substantial profit from a restoration project funded by public money.
Yet the sale did not go quite as planned and its owner, Christian Tym, a tax accountant and former banker who purchased it barely a year ago for just £425,000, took it off the market and came up with another plan.
The Grade I listed folly near Tonbridge in Kent is now up for grabs via a public raffle, for which tickets cost between £4.50 and £2.75, depending on how many you buy.
The winner’s stamp duty will also be covered as well as help with solicitor’s fees and a year’s council tax.
But there are a few catches which have provoked further ire within the local community and accusations that the competition is little more than a “money-making scheme” that “cheapens the status” of the tower.
The small print reveals that
Mr Tym will only hand over the property, the world’s tallest gothic folly, if he sells more than 800,000 tickets, which could net him at least £3.6million.
If he sells at least 200,000 tickets, the winner gets his three-bed Caribbean villa instead and Mr Tym will either extend the deadline of the competition or keep the tower with a view to putting it back on the market.
In order to sell off the tower in a competition, he was legally required to test entrants’ skill, knowledge or judgment by including a quiz question. That takes the form of an equation, which at first glance appears simple but could flummox those not au fait with such mathematical challenges. Mr Tym, 42, admitted that a “wide variety of answers” had been submitted.
He insisted this was not “a rich man trying to sell a property” and that five per cent of the proceeds go to charity. A weekly draw gives one ticket holder two nights in the tower, worth £2,000. The Save Hadlow Tower Action Group fought to get the tower restored after it was severely damaged in the Great Storm of 1987 following years of neglect. More than £3million of public money was spent on it, including more than £50,000 raised by community campaigners. The work was recognised with two English Heritage Angel Awards, founded by Lord Lloydwebber, one of which – voted for by Daily Telegraph readers – celebrated the work of communities in rescuing important sites. The musician and impresario was among those who voiced reservations about the sale, saying it could undermine everything the property represented.
“A huge amount of public money was spent on this project,” he told the Telegraph at the time. “If it’s going to be sold, it should be returned to Historic England and the Heritage Lottery Fund. It can’t go into the pocket of a private person. “I don’t think the public purse should be used to speculate.” He was also concerned at suggestions that the purchaser might be able to buy their way out of a legal covenant that requires the tower to remain accessible to the public 28 days a year amid claims that visitor numbers had dwindled. Caroline Anderson, former chairman of the action group, said she was “appalled” by the competition.
“This iconic Grade 1 listed monument is now being raffled (read the Ts and Cs carefully) and will most probably not finish up in someone’s hands whilst the owner gets rich,” she wrote online.
‘[The] public purse should [not] be used to speculate – this seems to have slipped through the net’