Will US Billionaire win? Supermarket and hospitality financier applies for consent to build 'dream' mansion near Banbury

Supermarket and hospitality baron, Ron Burkle has engaged a Who’s Who of the UK’s top designers and architects to produce a plan he hopes will win over West Oxfordshire District Council (WODC) planners who refused his first plan in 2022.

No expense has been spared on preparation for this application for nearly 11 acres of agricultural land on Chipping Norton Road, Little Tew. The design statement for the property runs to three volumes.

The Serpentine Lodge, it says, represents a highly skilled reinterpretation of Oxfordshire classical traditions, as described by the design report author, Jeremy Musson - a former architectural editor at Country Life and a former National Trust Curator.

The statement describes it as ‘an example of truly outstanding architecture’ realised in locally quarried stone ‘in the manner of an eighteenth-century park pavilion, (that) nestles within the existing site and significantly enhanced natural setting’.

However it does not fit with planning expectations in such a protected countryside as the Great Tew area and if accepted could set a difficult precedent.

The rethought design achieves Passivhaus status (delivering high standards of comfort and health while reducing energy use) and significant biodiversity net gain within the overall landscape setting, Musson says in his justification.

“At the centre of the new proposal... is the ambition to bring the Oxfordshire baroque into the future. Thus, The Serpentine Lodge expresses the best ideas of past, present and future: a ‘dream home’ of original and memorable form and a truly outstanding design,” he says.

It would have a gun room, lift, entertainment room and wine store in the lower ground level and on the ground floor is proposed a formal reception room, informal reception room, library, snug, butler's pantry, study, kitchen and dining room.

On the first floor there would be five bedrooms with dressing rooms and en suite bathrooms and a sixth bedroom with bathroom and dressing room with a large drawing room looking out over the countryside.

It would also have a stable block with estate manager’s house.

The garden design by Christian Sweet, ‘carefully respects the historic grain of the agricultural landscape, balancing this with the desire to significantly enhance the setting of the proposed house’.

Tree planting would be on a ‘huge scale to give a wider framework to house, gardens and surrounding meadows’, the design statement says.

‘At each end of the proposed house, it is proposed to site two circular lawns... with a circular pool, in effect, turns the corner en route to what might be called the pleasure ground’.

The plan’s architect is Francis Terry who leads a list of notable and award-winning contributors to the application.

Terry is ‘an award‐winning architect who is widely recognised as one of the great talents of his generation. He was educated at Stowe and the University of Cambridge and qualified as an architect in 1994’, the statement says.

‘Francis Terry has also trained in fine art and painting and has exhibited at the Royal Academy, and this training in art is an important theme in his painterly view of architecture with an instinctive sense of composition and materials and relationship to context. Mr Terry’s approach to architecture is one of creating delight through the subtle evocation of tradition and historic examples’.

The design statement says the plan is informed by ‘significant late seventeenth‐ and early eighteenth‐century architecture… distinct significance of baroque in Oxford… sixteenth/seventeenth century vernacular... and manifestations of the evolving Classical tradition in twentieth century’.

The plan proposes a property to be a modern equivalent to match some of the great, classical buildings of Oxford, Woodstock and Burford.

Will this be enough to persuade the planning department of the district council to give Mr Burkle permission? They refused the 2022 application for failing to represent a ‘truly outstanding development’ and not meeting specific planning criteria.

The reason for refusal also indicated the proposals would result ‘in a medium level of less than substantial harm to the setting of the Little Tew Conservation Area and without there being discernible public benefits which would outweigh the identified harm’.

The design statement says: “The revised proposal presents a bold and elegant design based on a long, low house, of five bays at the core, with wings of a single storey with attic, to east and west, and with an entrance to the north, with their different characters. Each elevation, therefore, has its own character, each therefore contributing to the sophistication of the whole.

"The entrance elevation is especially exciting with its ‘serpentine’ form, with its semi-circular porch, through which is entered a remarkable domed hall inspired by the Pantheon, one of the key motifs of classical architecture, continuing an exciting sense of approach, discovery, and encounter, not just with the interior plan, but with the views to the landscape beyond, and the route through to the enclosed garden elements.”

Soho House & Co Board Inc says: “Ron Burkle has been a member of the Soho House & Co Board and the executive chairman since 2012. He founded The Yucaipa Companies, an investment firm, in 1986 and is widely recognized as one of the most successful investors in the hospitality, retail, distribution, automotive, technology, entertainment and sports sectors.

As well as being a billionaire, Mr Burkle is an activist and fundraiser for the Democratic Party.

Mr Burkle is reported as having bought the Mullin Motor Museum plan, passed by WODC against huge opposition from local residents who said it the motoring theme park would be be a blot on Enstone’s landscape. This plan was devised by fellow US billionaire Peter Mullin.

Zoopla cites two recent house sales in Chipping Norton Road, Little Tew – one being the Old Post Office at a £1,750,000 price tag and the recent sale of Bury Hill House at £7 million.