Couple who bought 'crack den' home for £225k spend £2m and 10 years restoring it
A couple who bought a rundown 'crack den' stately home for just 225,000 spent a decade restoring it to its former glory.
Reg and Elizabeth Price bought the 200-year-old Roswarne House in Camborne, Cornwall, in 2013 which had been taken over by squatters.
When they got the keys to 29-room home they found every window was smashed, doors kicked in, the roof was caved in, and all electrics and lead stolen.
Over the next decade they spent £2million restoring Roswarne as they renovated every room, roof, cellar, garden, staircase and the ballroom.
Former conservation officer Elizabeth, 72, had heard about the house from a friend and 'fell in love' with the place.
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She said: "We came up here one day, there's six acres of grounds and all the flowers were out. It was just so beautiful so we fell in love with it.
"The former owners originally wanted 750k, but it was in such a derelict state, it was clear a lot of work would be needed to restore it.
"Nobody had lived here for around six years, and it was full of rough sleepers and naughty boys doing drugs and stealing everything.
"Everything had been stolen, including all of the fireplaces except one and most of the window's glass.
"The roof had totally failed, and so when I came in the entrance hall one august afternoon not long after we had bought it, the whole ceiling had gone.
"Rainwater had just flooded all the way through the house and destroyed much of it, I remember just bursting into tears at the sight of it.
"Squatters had lit a fire in the middle of one of the rooms. We had to board the place up and hire security at £70,000 a year.
"Repairing it was a whole-family job, and the dry rot in some parts of it will never dry out, but it's looking fantastic now.”
Work on the house was largely funded by the sale of another renovated derelict property in Waterloo, London.
Reg, 73, who worked in marketing for Unilever before retiring, says at one point there were 18 work vans outside the building.
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He added: "For at least two years we had to maintain constant day and night security to keep youths and the homeless out.
It was hard turfing people out, we felt bad, but we wanted to save the building.
"After the roof and windows, we left the house for about five years and returned to do the inside later.
"We had to remove all the doors and dry them horizontally to keep them in shape.
"We had a lot of difficulties with the Grade-II* listing as well - but the house was just so ruined when we found it, without extensive work it would have collapsed within years.
"There was also a huge problem with asbestos, but thankfully the council were very supportive and we're really happy with the final result.
"We wanted to downsize but ended up upsizing again when we bought this house. It's just too big for the two of us.
"But we've certainly put a lot of time, money and passion into it."
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