It now appears that the couple have a history of apparently ignoring planning permission. They have declined to respond to speculation about the destruction of the Crooked House.
Mr Taylor also owns the Sarah Mansfield Country Inn, a pub with a wooden-beamed bar in the tiny Warwickshire village of Willey, five miles from their home in Lutterworth, Leicestershire.
Until lockdown it was said to be a “thriving heart of the community”, the only place for its 100 or so residents to socialise in a village that has no shop or church. Mr Taylor is alleged to have stripped the pub of its interior after buying it from a brewer, defying a campaign by villagers who wanted to preserve it.
In March 2021, Rugby borough council approved residents’ request to have the Sarah Mansfield protected as “an asset of community value”, but the decision was overturned on appeal.
“The next day, men appeared with diggers and skip lorries and they just gutted the place, taking out the kitchen, the bar, everything,” said a source. “It was the heart of the community. There was a village billiards team and an ‘early doors’ every Friday at 6pm for the villagers to meet and catch up. They had their new year parties there and there was an elderly couple who had their lunch there every Sunday. Now it is just four walls and looks like it is waiting to fall down. It is devastating.”
Mr Taylor has since won his application to build two properties in the rear car park and turn the first floor of the pub into “letting bedrooms”. Submissions to the council on behalf of Taylor and AT Contracting and Plant Hire outlined his intention to restore the pub once the new dwellings had been built.
However, Emma Worley, a planning inspector, noted “concerns regarding the lack of certainty that the work to the public house would take place . . . and that the public house may ultimately be lost”.
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