Published: 9 December, 2013
By DAN CARRIER

FILM director and Monty Python star Terry Gilliam has called on the Town Hall to throw out plans to demolish Athlone House, the Victorian mansion near Hampstead Heath.

The director, who lives in Highgate Village, has thrown his weight behind the campaign to stop the owners pulling down the building in Hampstead Lane and replacing it with an eight-bedroom mega-mansion complete an underground swimming pool, landscaped gardens and a car park with a car lift.

Mr Gilliam said: “Athlone House is the most wonderful building, which can be seen from many parts of the Heath. It is an outrage that yet again we are faced with an application to demolish it. I urge residents and anyone who loves and enjoys Hampstead Heath to take five minutes out of their busy Christmas schedules to write or email Camden Council and demand that the owner restore Athlone House – it will be a tragedy to lose this building.”

Athlone House was used by troops suffering from shell-shock after the Great War. In the Second World War, it became a top secret training base for RAF servicemen, who used the grounds to learn bushcraft and how to escape from prison camps.

It was later used as a convalescence hospital by the NHS until it was sold for a cut-price £7million in 2005.

The Town Hall gave its owners permission to build luxury flats in parts of the gardens in return for a legally biding agreement to restore the house – built in a style known as Jacobethan. But although the homes have been built and sold, Athlone House is in a state of disrepair.

Mr Gilliam added: “Camden Council should be forced to enforce the agreement to restore the house which was a condition of the development which has now taken place.”

The owners, who Land Registry records note are a company based in the Channel Islands, have employed neo-Classical architect Robert Adam to design a new mansion.

Designs sent to Camden Council show a home with four corner towers, a ballroom, garden terraces overlooking Kenwood and new ponds, a grass-surfaced tennis court and an ornate orchard.

Mr Gilliam's intervention comes as a coalition of civic groups including the Highgate Society, the Heath and Hampstead Society, Highgate Conservation Area Advisory Committee and Athlone House Working Group are asking for people to swamp Camden Council's planning department with objections before the final day for comments on Decemeber 31.

Highgate Society spokeswoman Liz Morris said: “It is critical that Camden Council understands how strongly residents oppose the destruction of this historic house. At the last appeal over 600 objection letters were sent and we need just as many again. The house is rich in architectural detail and it is the Highgate Society’s view that it is good enough condition to restore if the will is there – which clearly it is not."

Solicitor David Cooper, acting for the owners, said the current building would cost around £20million to restore and, while the planned project could hit £80 million, the house was out of date and the vast sums needed to restore it would prove too high for anyone.