'Secret' mansion that hid fraudster's wealth to become luxury home

Shedley Manor was clad to look like a barn from the road

A mansion disguised as a farm shed to hide a fraudster's wealth is to be converted into a luxury family home.

The six-bedroom property called Shedley Manor in Yeaveley, near Ashbourne, Derbyshire, was built by Alan Yeomans to look like an agricultural building from the road.

He filed for bankruptcy claiming he owned just £300 and a £30 watch but was running three firms to launder cash from cannabis production.

He was jailed in 2016.

Police had found £83,000 in fine art, designer shoes and cannabis worth £40,000 hidden inside Shedley Manor.

After Yeomans was jailed, the £1.2m property was auctioned and initially earmarked for demolition but was then re-sold.

An artist's impression of how the renovated Shedley Manor will look

The current owners have now been given planning permission by Derbyshire Dales District Council to renovate it, putting windows in rooms that had none and creating a new entrance.

Their architect Matthew Montague said work would start later in 2023 on making the building habitable and to give it the appearance of a home.

He said: "This property has quite a history. It was built to look, from the outside, like a non-descript corrugated green agricultural barn but it was far from that and in reality there was luxury hidden within.

"Quite a considerable amount of work is now needed, both inside and out, to make it into a house but permission has been granted so the owners can get on with it.

"It will look very, very different."

Investigators found the house full of antiques and paintings and uncovered a hidden room where Yeomans grew cannabis

Yeomans was jailed for six and a half years after pleading guilty to nine charges relating to the production and supply of cannabis, stealing electricity, concealing criminal property and failing to disclose bankruptcy.

Derby Crown Court heard he had built the manor in 2002 in his mother's back garden, without planning permission, and with green cladding to disguise it as a large shed.

When he was sentenced, Glenn Wicks, of the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills, said: "He [Yeomans] is a fraudster, a liar and a drugs dealer who very cynically made himself bankrupt and then continued to act unlawfully on the management of three companies.

"What surprised me when I went into Shedley Manor was that someone built a six-bedroom manor house in the Peak District and filled it with fine art and antiques and the authorities didn't know anything about it.

"This was a very intricate, sophisticated set-up.

"He told the official receiver that he lived in a shed in his mother's back garden and he had £300 worth of furniture in his house.

"But he had £83,000 worth of fine art and antiques, all of which he should have declared officially to the receiver so that the creditors could have got some of their money back."