It featured eight bedrooms, four sitting rooms, four bathrooms, a single swimming pool,[4] and sat in 12 acres (4.9 ha) of grounds.

[5] Between 1962 and 1976 the property was home to Major General Sir Philip Ward, his wife Pamela and their four children, and during their ownership the gardens were open to the public to enjoy the spectacular woodland and roses.

Trees felled by the storm had brought down power lines, causing an explosion in the house and starting a fire.

[7] A redevelopment of the site was masterminded by consultant engineer Anthony Pearce[9] and designed by John B. Scholz, an Arizona-based architect.

[15] The raid came a day after HMCE had launched a High Court action and obtained an order allowing them to appoint a risk consultancy company to take over the running of the project as joint receivers and managers.

In 2002 Bairstow instructed FPDSavills and Knight Frank, to sell Updown Court to recover the company's assets and pay back creditors, who included an overseas lender.

[17] A planned further £30 million was to be spent finishing and redeveloping the property and the project was mainly funded by loans from the Irish Nationwide Building Society.

A leather-bound brochure, which in an effort to discourage timewasters, cost interested parties £500 to purchase, was produced and it is said that Savills were happy to arrange for prospective buyers to be driven to Updown Court in a Rolls-Royce or flown in by helicopter for a viewing.

[18] In light of the buoyant property market at the time and a huge amount of press coverage, Allen-Veroe boasted in a 2005 interview that "it will be gone in six months.

[19] By the end of 2009, as a result of further loans and accrued interest INBS was owed around £61 million[18] and when, the following year, INBS was effectively nationalised, its share of the property came to be owned by the National Asset Management Agency,[20] With running costs when fully staffed of around £1million a year[21] and even reduced costs imposed by NAMA running to £60,000 per month,[6] the property needed to start to bring in some sort of income.

[24] Finally, after over six years on the market, in October 2011, it was announced that the property had been sold for £35m by joint agents Knight Frank and Hamptons International to a purchaser, believed to be Dubai based education entrepreneur Sunny Varkey.