Sale of Heath home gets provisional green light
has given provisional approval to the sale of in the Cathedral Close in Salisbury.
Heath, who was prime minister from 1970 to 1974, lived at Arundells for the last 20 years of his life.
Before he died in 2005, Heath arranged to leave the home to a charitable trust, together with a legacy of £5m for its upkeep, to enable members of the public to visit the property.
In effect, Heath wanted Arundells to become a museum, and a memorial to himself.
Alas, it seems that there was not as much public interest in Sir Edward as he may anticipated - nor in the former Conservative leader's interesting political career and personal life, or in his extremely attractive retirement residence.
Last year the trustees of the property announced that it was no longer viable to keep the building open to the public - even though visitors have to pay an entrance fee.
So the trustees closed the property to visitors and applied to the Charity Commission for permission to sell the site and use the proceeds for other charitable purposes specified in Sir Edward Heath's will.
The Charity Commission has now announced:
"We have now agreed a draft scheme with the trustees, which would give them the power to sell the property. Before we make that scheme, we will be publishing details of the trustees' proposal to allow members of the public to make representations. We hope to publish the proposals next month."
Meanwhile, the trustees of Arundells plan to open the building to the public on various days later this year to give people a final opportunity to visit the property before it passes into private hands.
I certainly plan to go there whilst I can.
I'm Michael Crick, and I'm Newsnight's political editor. My guiding rule is that in any story there's usually something the politicians would prefer the world not to know. My job is to find that out. Follow me on
Comment number 1.
At 3rd May 2011, Phillip wrote:I think that here in the UK we don't value our former PMs enough. This would have been a perfect project to centralise Heath's archives as a study centre/museum for the nation. Along the lines of the presidential libraries in the US. I may not agree with Heath's politics and certainly had no time for him in his post leader life in Parliament. But he was the PM and therefore an important political figure.
In addition to Heath's archives this would be a great opportunity to build a museum looking at UK life in the early 70's.
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Comment number 2.
At 3rd May 2011, barriesingleton wrote:WITH RESPECT (#1)
Edward Heath enticed us (the people) into the Common Market, indicating it amounted to no more than a 'squalid' little trading exercise. Not exactly a visionary . . .
Please don't let's build anything to remember Major - he signed Maastrict, equally blindly, and without my approval.
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Comment number 3.
At 4th May 2011, stanilic wrote:I never thought people would pay to see the Incredible Sulk.
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Comment number 4.
At 4th May 2011, stevie wrote:I thought he lived on a boat...the Morning Cloud....
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Comment number 5.
At 5th May 2011, Aub123 wrote:'My guiding rule is that in any story there's usually something the politicians would prefer the world not to know.'
Looks like the guiding rule is anything but. This is a matter for the trustees of Arundells and the Charity Commission. Why would politicians not want anyone to know what is patently obvious, namely that there is insufficient interest in the property to cover the costs of opening it to the public?
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Comment number 6.
At 5th May 2011, Peter Clary wrote:I'm not sure about "insufficient interest". From the Arundells website:
"Visitor numbers have indeed risen each year since it was first opened in 2008. But increases of revenue from increasing numbers of visitors entail increases of expenditure on managing the operation. The Foundation is still operating at a significant loss, and, as the visitor operation has been running at virtually full capacity, there is no guarantee that visitor numbers could continue to rise if the house remained open."
The page at has a pretty thorough Q&A explaining the situation as they see it, and covers the National Trust option.
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