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A billionaire entrepreneur and his wife have poured money into Castle Cary – but it hasn’t always gone down well
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If Henry Hobhouse’s father hadn’t blown the family fortune, Hadspen House near Castle Cary in Somerset would be his. Instead, he lives in a converted pig sty nearby and the house and surrounding estate belongs to Koos Bekker, a South African telecom billionaire, who with his wife, Karen Roos, has turned it into a hotel called The Newt. When Hobhouse fell in love a few years ago, he booked a room at the hotel, which charges from around £550 per night. For the most part though, when he visits his family estate, it’s as a garden member – Bekker waives him the £40 per year local membership because he’s a Hobhouse.
He’s telling me this as we wander down Castle Cary High Street in the autumn sunshine, stopping for him to talk to local friends and passing the various other properties that Bekker has bought up in the town: the building containing the deli and wine shop and the old coaching inn, The George, which is Hobhouse’s favourite watering hole.
He takes me inside to show me several ancient stones from Castle Cary itself, which was besieged in 1152. It’s everything a pub should be: warm rooms with low ceilings and flagstones, heaving with locals enjoying a Friday lunch out – one can see why Bekker would want to snap it up. But the outgoing manager, Pip Francis, is fuming that her beloved community pub is becoming part of The Newt empire. “Give it five years: almost every other shop on the high street will have Newt branding,” she told a local paper, before adding, “I think what’s happening is s—”. Views are split 50/50 in the village, but the locals who come in the pub just aren’t happy. “They have just expanded, bought anything they can and turned it into a monopoly,” one said.
The Newt and its expansion in and around Castle Cary is so divisive that it’s all local people talk about. There’s a strong feeling that an old local inn like The George, which was where Elton John’s driver stayed in a £120 room during the Glastonbury Festival last year, will be ruined if it becomes a swanky Newt-designed gastropub. The same goes for the station, where the opening of a new Newt farm shop and Creamery café angered locals who said they preferred the old burger van that used to park up outside. On Castle Cary’s Facebook group, The Newt is bashed regularly – despite many of the posts being job openings on the estate. Francis says that for every one person who has berated her for speaking up against The Newt another three have complimented her honesty. Locals believe their new Lord of the Manor is developing an unhealthy stronghold over the community.
Bekker declines an interview – he’s fed up with all the mud being slung at him, Hobhouse believes.
“We were initially clueless,” Bekker has admitted in the past. “One thing simply led to another, and the project ran away with itself.” That cluelessness included a lack of foresight of some of the obstacles ahead of him. For example, Natural England wouldn’t let construction begin until the estate’s rare 2,000-odd newts were protected (hence the estate’s name).
The problem is, according to Hobhouse – who has been a councillor in the area for 20 years and who used to farm – that the money Bekker is spending on the town and the Hadspen estate is making the area more desirable for Down From London’s (DFLs). “What’s going on in our little corner of Somerset? It’s gone mad,” comments one Facebook group member, while another bemoans the fenced footpaths across Newt land. “Dog walkers are the wildlife to be kept at bay,” she says. There’s also grumbling about the prices in the new farm shop and Creamery café at the station. “I think everyone just feels a bit bamboozled,” the woman behind the till tells me.
In reality, the cost of a coffee and croissant in the Creamery isn’t that much more fleecing than in the Costa in Clapham Junction where I’ve come from. No expense has been spared in the transformation of the Victorian farm buildings into a farm shop and café, though: shiny tiles, Crittall windows and mozzarella and yoghurt churning in a state-of-the-art creamery.
Hobhouse has lived and farmed in Castle Cary his whole life and says he’s fed up with all the chippiness against The Newt. If Bekker hadn’t bought Habspen House, someone else would have done – it was advertised in Country Life – and the new Creamery development at the station has led to a second car park, which Bekker has given the council on a free lease. “People say they prefer the old burger van, but that closed down five years ago,” he tells me. Besides, Castle Cary’s fortunes have always tracked those of the resident lord of the manor. In the town’s 19th-century glory days it was the Hoares banking dynasty at the helm, now the town has attracted someone even richer. “He’s spent £12 million a year on The Newt since 2014,” Hobhouse says. A small section of immaculate dry-stone walling around the station alone cost £400,000.
If Bekker hadn’t stepped in and bought The George, it would have fallen down, Hobhouse says. The two end walls need serious remedial work, he says – one is gaping away from the building and the other is cracked. It also needs re-thatching; there is moss all over its roof.
There were rumours of an overseas investor buying it but the deal fell through. “Only The Newt can afford to do work like this. It would have been forced to close eventually [otherwise], but this way it stays open.”
Hobhouse believes Bekker when he says that the pub will remain local-friendly – there’ll be £300 hotel rooms upstairs but who cares? Francis, meanwhile, is going to reopen the White Hart, further up the high street, and run it as a community-led pub. She tells me this is a nerve-wracking prospect when faced with competition from The Newt, but Hobhouse sees it as progress. “Castle Cary once had seven pubs – at least now it will have two again,” Hobhouse says. It’s a similar story for Pinsents Deli, housed in one of the buildings Bekker has bought. When I speak to Charlie Pinsent, he tells me that Bekker is only moving him on as the building requires substantial renovation. He’s opening in a larger premises up the street.
Today, the High Street is busy with young trendies as well as oldies – it’s hard to tell if they’re locals or Londoners – browsing the bookshop and wine shop. There’s an enviable array of useful independent shops including a baker and ironmonger. In September it was voted Britain’s Best Place to Live in the Muddy Stilettos Awards. Yet, locals insist that it was already a pleasant place to live before The Newt: the homewares shop has been there for 30 years, and the café where Hobhouse has a bacon or sausage bap every morning is nothing to do with Bekker. There’s a bohemian edge to the town, with a popular art gallery and a studio where a photographer, prop maker and garden designer are hard at work. The local pilates teacher warns me of Cary Leg – something to do with puddles in the uneven cobbles sending rainwater up your leg. Not a problem for Hobhouse, who tells me he wears pink Crocs to ensure he never has to cope with wet socks.
While he admits he’s not keen on the new station sign, which reads Castle Cary for The Newt – “it’s Castle Cary, not The Newt!” – he wishes locals would see the bright side. The Newt has brought with it 600 new jobs and boosted Castle Cary’s other local businesses. “I have almost no unemployment. If you look in Bridgewater and Taunton and Yeovil, it’s a different story.”
According to another local I chat to, the people complaining about The Newt, are the same people moaning about the new affordable housing bringing rough people into the town. “The fact is that people hate change and they dislike DFLs buying up houses in the area.” Local estate agent Giles Wreford-Brown agrees that there’s been a Newt-effect on local house prices, but the project has also benefited the local economy, too, with tradesmen and knowledge all being key, he says.
Isn’t it strange, though, that one man now owns most of the farms around the town? Hobhouse shakes his head. T’was ever thus – and increasing your dairy herd is a perfectly normal thing to do in Somerset. “Castle Cary is surrounded by large estates that own the farms: it was the Hobhouses who owned Hadspen and then Montgomery cheddar at North Cadbury and then the Hoare’s [of the banking dynasty] at Stourhead.”
Bekker is pulling in his horns, though. Hobhouse was hoping he’d buy up the large field separating the station and the town to prevent it becoming another housing estate – but he didn’t. Plans have been unanimously approved for 29 new homes. “He doesn’t want to interfere with the natural growth of the community,” Hobhouse claims.
He’s eager to show me what has become of his family estate. It’s early afternoon and the car park is filled with cars: young parents with a toddler, grandparents doing some babysitting, dog walkers in gym gear all enjoying the gardens, which feature a Roman villa, inspired by mosaics found on the estate by Hobhouse’s grandfather in the Seventies, and the asymmetrical walled garden originally laid out by Penelope Hobhouse. The place pulls in six to eight million visitors a year. I was surprised by what an “attraction” it is, with tour guides in Roman dress at the villa and shuttle buggies and various themed days throughout the year.
The hotel is off limits for the public – a fact that irritated The Telegraph’s restaurant critic William Sitwell – but Hobhouse manages to persuade our shuttle driver to sweep round the drive (they share a farming connection). He points out the outbuildings, where Bekker lives in a modest two-bedroom cottage, and the extension to the main house, where Hobhouse’s grandfather kept his gay lover. How does he feel when he sees the estate now?
“I’m grateful to Koos. He spent more money on it than we’d ever have had.”
That may be the free garden membership talking.
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