THERE are no plans to take any action over an abandoned and unoccupied mansion in Uckfield which was never finished off after construction began in the mid-1980s.

Building began on the £40m Hamilton Palace, near Framfield on the outskirts of Uckfield, by Nicholas van Hoogstraten in 1985.

It was paused in 2006 after Mr Hoogstraten was forced by a court to make a large payout after a £6 million civil lawsuit found him liable for the manslaughter of a business rival.

Speaking to The Argus three years ago, Mr Hoogstraten said completing Hamilton Palace was not his top priority, with building work at properties in Hove coming first.

A spokesman for Wealden District Council told The Argus yesterday: “Planning permission is in place and building regulations for the property are satisfied.

“We have received no complaints from residents, as it stands, regarding dangers or other issues concerning the property.”

He told The Argus that the council has no plans to intervene in the process at the current time, meaning the building could potentially fall into disrepair.

Richard Hodge, whose house in Framfield is just behind the back of the Hamilton estate, often walks his dog just down by the palace.

He said: “There’s been scaffolding up for years but I haven’t seen any work being done.

“But there’s been people on site now and again.

“I’ve got no idea if it’ll ever be finished, it’s crazy.

Meanwhile many residents in Framfield refused to be drawn on their feelings over the construction project, referencing the building’s notorious owner.

Jordan Brennan, 18, said he and his friends steer clear of the site, adding: “I’ve never tried to trespass there, I know whose house that is.”

Another resident who had lived in the village for ten years said that he had “never given any thought at all” to living next to such an extraordinary property, nor to its notorious owner, nor to whether it might ever be finalised and occupied.

A third responded to a question about Mr Hoogstraten by saying: “I just live here, I’m not going to get into talking about him.”

WITH NO SIGN OF COMPLETION, WE WILL WITNESS MANSION’S DEMISE

IN 2016 there is not much of a stronger indication that a building doesn’t formally exist than not being able to find it on Google Maps.

So good luck to any intrepid explorer using the internet to navigate your way to Hamilton Palace – Nicholas van Hoogstraten’s unfinished mansion on the outskirts of Uckfield.

“No results,” it will say, in foreboding red text. And – as far as is known – it always will.

And yet as you drive past the Temple of Doom on the A22 to Eastbourne, having missed (of course) the turning which would allow you the best view of the garish (of course) lacquered-copper cupola, there it sits: half a mile back from the carriageway in defiance of the search engine’s pronouncements.

So well hidden is the vast property that you could almost blink and miss it, unless the sun was shining, in which case the brilliant golden metal of that £180,000 dome would glare, demanding attention.

Perhaps it is not surprising that a man who once insisted the builders of his property demolish and rebuild the entire grand staircase four feet further back (to improve his view of his galleries) should have avoided a finish which would have allowed his roof to fade to a soft English verdigris with the passing of time.

Because it has been 31 years since construction started on Hamilton Palace, – named after the Bermudean capital where Hoogstraten amassed some of his wealth–- and while the shiny domes still sparkle, the rest of the building remains unfinished and, increasingly, abandoned.

Two sides of the building can be seen in glimpses – from a distance and between trees – from the A22 and from the single-track road towards the little village of Framfield which winds up the side of the estate.

But every yard of the perimeter is secured by fencing or barbed wire – often both. Large signs reading HIGH CROSS ESTATE – PRIVATE PROPERTY – KEEP OUT adorn every gate.

Peering beyond the barbs, and through the trees towards the property, you get a sense of the intended grandeur of the place.

The vast Baroque and neoclassical edifice stretches perhaps 800ft from east wing to west, and the main hall towers over its estate.

High thin windows, which give the building a hint of an ersatz-Versailles, run the whole length of the structure, and the imposing double staircase to the grand entrance - although unfinished and unplanted - has exactly the Disneyesque sweep which its owner obviously intended.

But scaffolding still surrounds the beautifully-quarried stone, encasing Hamilton in a prison of overlapping steel tubes.

Construction was paused on the most expensive private home to be built in Britain in more than a century in 2006, shortly after Nicholas van Hoogstraten lost a civil case connected with his overturned manslaughter conviction, and was ordered to pay £6 million to the family of his rival Mohammed Raja after he was killed.

The building had been intended as a lasting home for the slum landlord’s art collection and for his mortal remains – the basement is a mausoleum.

Under a rare legal clause, that fact also allows for the upkeep of the building to be paid for in perpetuity by a trust (like the trust Hoogstraten is believed to own in Bermuda) rather than having to rely on his own money, much of which is understood to have been moved out of his own name.

But no progress towards completion of the building has been made in many years, although the site continues to bear the scars of work with portable buildings and temporary tyre tracks still marking the surroundings.

Jordan Brennan, 18, lives in Framfield and says he and his friends tend to steer clear of the unoccupied palace, surely a sorely tempting edifice for teenagers on long evenings in rural Sussex.

“My mates have tried to get in there a few times but because there’s guards they always get turned around and really nobody tries any more,” he said. 

“I’ve never tried to trespass there, I know whose house that is.”

His reasoning was echoed when The Argus spoke to neighbours as few of them wished to be named.

One Framfield resident who had lived in the village for 10 years said that he had “never given any thought at all” to living next to such an extraordinary property, nor to its notorious owner, nor to whether it will ever be finalised and occupied.

With no indication that the £40 million property will ever be finished by its owners, and no plans from the council to interfere, the neighbours of Hamilton Palace will long witness the gentle collapse of this grand folly into its foundations.

NO HIDING CONTEMPT FOR ‘RIFF-RAFF’

NICHOLAS van Hoogstraten has built a vast fortune using extreme strongarm tactics which have twice landed him behind bars.

He was sentenced to four years after throwing a grenade into a rabbi’s garden in 1968, at a trial in which the judge called him a “self-styled emissary of Beelzebub”.

And starting in 2003, he served 17 months of a 10-year term for manslaughter before winning an appeal which overturned his conviction as “unsafe”.

He subsequently lost a £6 million civil case which found that, on the balance of probabilities, he was associated with the stabbing and shooting of business rival Mohammed Raja, and he was ordered to pay the litigant. In 2002 his 18-year-old then-girlfriend Tanaka Sali told police he had beaten her around the face with a slipper until the sole split, and punched her in the head. She retracted these statements on the eve of his trial.

Nicholas Hoogstraten (he added the “van” later) was born in 1946 in Shoreham, and built a fortune from trading stamps at school then from buying low value properties in central London. 

He expanded his empire during the 1980s and started investing in Zimbabwe, where he counts Robert Mugabe among his friends. When a fire broke out at one of his properties in the early 1990s in Brighton, he described the five people who died as “scum”.

He is supposedly worth about £500 million and once said: “The only purpose in creating great wealth like mine is to separate oneself from the riff-raff.”

It is tempting to wonder whether Nicholas van Hoogstraten ever Googles his own name and concludes that his wealth has elevated him above the “riff- raff” he has spent his life looking down on.