Country house sold for £1 goes on sale for £3.5m

Claire Gilchrist-Dick said her family felt they were custodians of the house

A Grade I listed 18th Century hall which was bought for £1 in 1981 has been put on the market with an estimated value of £3.5m.

Barlaston Hall, near Stoke-on-Trent, was facing demolition when it was bought by the campaign group SAVE Britain's Heritage.

They sold it on to private owners and the current occupiers, Cameron and Claire Gilchrist-Dick, said they had reluctantly decided to leave.

"We’re a custodian of this house. A part of me will always be in this house," Mrs Gilchrist-Dick said.

"I love every nook and cranny of it.”

Barlaston Hall was designed by Sir Robert Taylor and built in 1756 for Thomas Mills, a lawyer from Leek, Staffordshire County Council historians said.

Standing on a hill overlooking the Trent Valley, the house is on the outskirts of the village of Barlaston.

It was bought by the Wedgwood pottery family in 1937 and became the Wedgwood Memorial College by the late 1940s but dry rot forced them to move out.

The hall was bought by SAVE in 1981 and the group's founder Marcus Binney said it was in a state of decay at the time.

"All the floorboards had been removed and the ceilings and plasterwork had crashed down into the basement with the weight of water pouring through the roof," he said on SAVE's website.

"The main staircase had collapsed long ago, only the upper flight remained, hanging precariously in space. The back staircase collapsed a few weeks later."

Barlaston Hall has been extensively restored over several decades

Several years of restoration were carried out before it was sold on with interior repairs continuing.

It was acquired in 2020 by the Gilchrist-Dicks who went on to rescue the plot’s 11th Century church.

The estate was used as an events business with weddings and away days held at the site.

Mrs Gilchrist-Dick said they were "victims of their own success" as the work had grown rapidly and they wanted to move to a more peaceful family home.

Barlaston Hall had fallen into a "state of decay" when a campaign group bought it for £1 in 1981