Inside half-built and abandoned £40m mansion ‘bigger than Buckingham Palace' & owned by a convicted criminal
A £40million mansion in Sussex once said to be the most expensive private house built in Britain for a century remains unfinished – 40 years after work first started.
Hamilton Palace near Uckfield, in East Sussex, is owned by notorious property tycoon Nicholas van Hoogstraten and is bigger than Buckingham Palace.
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Van Hoogstraten was once dubbed Britain's youngest millionaire and has been locked in a dispute with neighbours of the property for decades.
But, 40 years after work on the enormous £40 million mansion began in 1985, it remains no more than a huge shell and has been dubbed the "Ghost House of Sussex."
After work halted in 2001, the mansion was mostly abandoned, unfinished and is surrounded by acres of countryside.
It's been the subject of immense investment despite the fact that no one has ever lived in it.
But despite its scale, there is little to hint at its presence.
It is hidden away off of an unassuming junction on the A22 south of Uckfield and the house is completely obscured by a thick wooded area.
The closest glimpse you can get on foot is of a gated entrance onto the estate that gives nothing away, aside from a bricked unit and a large, white container.
But there is a definite sense of unease.
It has been reported that stuck on the gate is a sign, written in capital letters. It baldly states: "High Cross Estate, Private Property, Keep Out."
If that's not enough, multiple other signs reportedly warn of "shooting in progress", "dogs running free" and CCTV being in operation.
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The only recent photographs of the property have been taken by drones and older photographs taken on site apparently when work was still ongoing.
Those photos show an an eerie building, shrouded in scaffolding and overgrowing foliage, with discarded containers, construction equipment and other items littered throughout the grounds.
It doesn't look like anything has happened at the site for a long time.
Few have been inside, but one reporter who did, in 2000, when it was said to be two years off completion, described a grand central staircase and reception hall, with lift shafts already installed and expensive stone balustrades and pillars.
Who is Nicholas van Hoogstraten?
Nicholas van Hoogstraten is a convicted criminal.
He is now 80 and goes by the name of Nicholas von Hessen.
A Sussex native born in Shoreham, he owns dozens of properties in the area.
He is said to have started making money selling stamps as a teenager before moving into property and, by the age of 22, had 350 properties in Sussex alone.
In the 1980s housing boom he acquired more than 2,000 properties and had sold 90% of them by the 1990s.
Over the past couple of decades, he has been involved in widely reported disputes with neighbours over Hamilton Palace.
Low-level lighting had been installed on the roof, where there was to be a garden, and there was space for a fountain below.
One entire floor was due to house van Hoogstraten's art collection.
Today, the domed roof of the main building still rises over the top of the treeline and remains visible from a distance from the nearest set of houses in the hamlet of Palehouse Common.
Locals have previously vented about the large area being left unused and there was a row over a public footpath that ran through it that van Hoogstraten did not want to be used.
In answer to those complaints, he was quoted as saying "even the most moronic of peasants would be able to see… that we have been busy landscaping the grounds of the palace so as to prepare for scheduled works".
And he has also denied that the house is falling apart.
He added: "Hamilton Palace is far from 'crumbling' and was built to last for at least 2,000 years.
"The scaffolding only remains as a part of ongoing routine maintenance such a property would require until completion."
It has been reported the estate is now owned by his children through the company Messina Investments.
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