A 20-bedroom castle that's just been sold for £450,000 after an eight-year, £3 million salvation project

It’s exactly eight years since Ribbesford House sent a ripple of excitement through the property market. This 500-year-old castle in Worcestershire came up for auction with 20,000 sq ft of space, eight acres of land and enough towers and turrets to make it look like a miniature Tower of London.

Just as eye-catching as the list of features, bedrooms (20 of them) and touches of character was the cost: the auctioneers put a guide of just £500,000 on this house, the sort of money which — as we noted at the time — would stretch to a three-bedroom bungalow in Cheshire or a tiny flat in Islington.

Interest was huge, and the Grade II*-listed Ribbesford ended up selling to a pair of property-developers for just over £800,000. The brothers, Samuel and Russell Leeds, told Country Life a few months into the project that they’d estimated £1 million for the work that needed doing, and that they were determined to do this wonderful old building justice. ‘'We are highly conscious of its history and the importance of preserving the building,' Russell said. ‘It has immense character and we intend to return it to its heyday. I love old buildings and love them to stay.’

As the pictures here show, the work that needed doing proved far more extensive than they’d originally estimated. An experienced chartered surveyor, Adrian Walsh, was brought in, and it took an entire year just to get a handle on what had happened. ‘'It’s taken 12 months just to fully assess it. Every imaginable problem an old building could have is present – the full A-Z of issues,’ said Walsh at the time.

'The scale of what is involved is unbelievable. I’ve seen properties in a poor state of repair, but absolutely nothing to this extent.’ To give but one example, Ribbesford had previously been converted into 12 flats, but ‘we couldn’t even find flat six and flat seven had literally fallen down in a gale.’

Eight years on and — according to the brothers’ calculations — with £3 million spent on the place, it’s just sold at auction once more… this time, for just £450,000.

It’s an eye-opening cautionary tale, and one which the main characters have shared with the world: in the intervening years Samuel and Russell have bought, developed and sold plenty of other property, but have also moved into online coaching and social media — provoking a fair bit of controversy along the way.

Why sell up after so much work?It seems that Ribbesford has proven so much bigger a project, and taken so much time from the other parts of his life, that the Leeds brothers have decided to cut their losses and move on.

On his Instagram page, Samuel has shared a series of posts and videos about it, one of which goes in to detail. ‘I just sold my castle. On paper I lost about £3.5 million. But here is the part most people will not understand. It is also a tax write-off,’ he says.

‘The castle sold for £450,000. I originally bought it for £810,000 and then spent around £3 million restoring it. So yes, financially it was a big loss.

‘But when I bought the castle I knew it was a high risk project. Historic buildings are unpredictable. Costs spiral, timelines change and sometimes the market simply does not value the work the way you hoped it would.’

There are many cautionary tales in the world of property, then, and this is one of them. But

‘When I first bought it the building was in a terrible state. It was completely dilapidated. My focus was to stabilise it and save it.

‘We made the structure airtight, put a proper roof on it and carried out major restoration work to bring it back from the brink. I am genuinely proud of what we achieved.’

Though the project has ended prematurely, that pride: after buying Ribbesford, Samuel and Russell were visited by a Free French soldier who trained at the house during the Second World War. It was an important base for the Free French, so much so that even Charles de Gaulle came to visit. The soldier — the only one still alive in 2018 — came to visit the Russells and and talk to them about the building.

Ribbesford was set to be sold at auction via Savills, but was bought before it went under the hammer.

‘For me it was not about squeezing out the very last pound,’ Samuel adds.

‘What mattered more was that it went to the right person who would continue looking after it properly.

Over the years I have done many profitable projects. Some have done very well and some have massively exceeded expectations.But you cannot win them all. Anyone who tells you every deal they do is a success is either lying or they have not been in the game very long.’

Samuel is clearly not going to struggle to pay his bills — as well as Ribbesford, his Instagram page features fancy houses, fast cars, private jets and investing tips — but walking away from the project clearly stings a bit.

‘It still hurts. Losing money always does,’ the post finishes. ‘But experienced investors understand that one deal does not define you.You take calculated risks.You win some and you lose some. Then you move on to the next opportunity.’

Ribbesford House was up for auction via Savills.