Sculptor's home to be torn down (From Stroud News and Journal)

Sculptor's home to be torn down

A SCULPTOR who, for almost a decade, has lived in a Cotswold quarry surrounded by the honey-coloured stones that are his life, faces having to tear down his home after a top judge's ruling.

Jack Everett's timber home is tucked away in Shutway Quarry, Sheepscombe, Gloucestershire, and its visual impact on the area of outstanding natural beauty is "negligible", a court heard.

But both Stroud District Council and an Environment Department planning inspector decided the building was an "inappropriate" development in such a sensitive area.

Last week London's High Court, specialist planning judge, Michael Rich QC, upheld the inspector's decision to refuse Mr Everett's bid for retrospective planning consent to keep his home.

The district council had already issued an enforcement notice requiring him to level the building to the ground.

The judge said Mr Everett's history in the quarry began some time before 1986 when he was granted temporary planning permission for four buildings he put up without planning consent as store rooms and a private studio.

But the permission was limited to only five years and there was a tight prohibition on any residential use being made of the buildings.

The five-year time limit was twice extended but, in 1996, a final date for the demolition of the buildings was set at August 23, 2001.

But, unbeknown to the council, the judge said Mr Everett had, for a number of years, since at least 1993, been "clandestinely" using buildings on the site as living accommodation.