An incredible £40 million mansion, which was intended to house the art collection of one of the wealthiest people in the UK, has been abandoned and left to decay for over 40 years.
Hamilton Palace, near Uckfield, East Sussex, is even bigger than Buckingham Palace in size, but nobody has ever lived inside, with it looking unlikely anybody ever will.
Locals have since claimed the “death trap” shell of a property, known as “The Ghost House of Sussex”, has attracted anti-social behaviour. Signs around its huge woodland perimeter warn the public to keep out of the site.
It was originally built as a home for the art collection of property tycoon Nicholas van Hoogstraten, one of the country’s wealthiest people. It has been left to rot in a state of disrepair since construction halted in 1985, with most of the unfinished building still covered in scaffolding, as its owner was convicted for the manslaughter of Mohammed Raja, a former business rival, in 2002.
After a successful appeal, the verdict was overturned and van Hoogstraten was released from prison, but ordered to pay the Raja family £6 million in a civil case. Construction was halted shortly after, with the owner claiming it wasn’t his “top priority”, speaking to The Argus.
He was previously jailed in 1968 for paying a gang to throw a grenade into the home of a Rabbi in Sussex whose son owed him money. In the 1980s, he was charged but cleared of harassing his tenants, but then faced being fined for contempt of court. He was fined again in 2000 for contempt of court after threatening a barrister, the Mirror reports.
Despite massive investment, the huge crumbling estate is unlikely to ever be inhabited. Drone footage taken in 2022 showed the owner clearly still had no intentions of continuing construction, with the dilapidated building mostly covered in scaffolding and overgrown foliage, with the ground littered with discarded items and construction equipment.