Kuwaiti princess buys our ancestral home with 42 rooms - 24 years later we bought it back

30 September 1992 the gavel fell on the last of the 1,047 lots to be sold at Christie'\'s auction from a tent outside the grand estate of Pitchford Hall, near Shrewsbury. More than £1.3 million was raised, but the heartache faced by the Colthurst family - owners of Pitchford - could not be put into money.

Oliver Colthurst, a partner at brokerage firm de Zoete and Bevan, invested in a Lloyd's of London syndicate but lost money in the days when investors had unlimited liability. As a result Pitchford, the house his wife Caroline inherited in 1972, had to be sold and with it its contents.

On the eve of the auction, Oliver and Caroline's youngest daughter, Rowena, called in desperation''to Labor MP Tam Daly. A couple of days earlier he had asked in the House of Commons how 'an almost unique 16th century wooden house could have come under the Christies gavel'. Rowena had asked him for help but there was nothing he could do. "It seems naive now, but at the time it seemed like the right decision," recalls James Nason, Rowena's husband.

The following month, the empty house was sold to a Kuwaiti princess, but she never inhabited it. The Colthursts kept the 400-acre estate and could only watch as the structure crumbled. Angus Stirling, head of the National Association for the Preservation of Monuments, described the partitioning of Pitchford with its contents as a tragedy. Nason vowed that they would do everything they could to get the house back. After all, the Colthursts'. 'Pitchford.

There is still a lot of work to be done. While Pitchford is not huge in terms of a country house (it has 42 rooms), a third of the house is still in a state of disrepair. The cost of completing the restoration of the house has been steadily rising. The Nasons first tried to raise funds through crowdfunding, but much of the funding came not only from their own pockets, but also from individuals in both the United Kingdom and the United States, as well as from the Historic Houses Foundation.

Over the years, they have organized outdoor theater performances and ghost parades, Civil War reenactments and weddings, "making the most of every opportunity." In September, they organized the first-ever marching history festival, which will return next year.

How''The 'central, eternal task stands to reunite the house with its contents. So far, 50-60 items sold in 1992 have been returned to Pitchford. An American who was given an online tour of the house by Nason during the pandemic bought back James Ward RA's 'Jenkinson Barb', a painting of a bucking horse against the Pitchford backdrop.

Even after 32 years, Nason still gets a shiver coming home to Pitchford. "I remember the smell, that special, slightly dusty smell because the house is oak and limestone," he says. "It's unique, and it takes me back to the first time I came to this hall in 1991'''year'".

It's easy to get caught up in the romance of Pitchford, but both Nason and his wife are realistic about the challenges ahead. "As seems to be the case for all owners of historic homes, you look at a house and think it's wonderful, but you also see the deterioration of the colecta," Nason says. They hope their project will inspire others, "not just about big Tudor houses, but about historic buildings in general, whether it's a townhouse or a cottage," Nason says. "I hope the size of the house doesn't scare people away. The important thing is that you can restore buildings, it just takes a little bit of time, dedication and passion.".