Drawbridge is cranked up when buyers come sniffing

By CATHERINE MASTERS

A bit of medieval Europe sits in the middle of a North Shore suburb alongside the weatherboard and brick and tile three bedroom homes.

Lymington Castle in Birkdale is hardly ancient but it is definitely a castle, even if it was designed with all the comforts of modern living in mind.

The sprawling structure, complete with five bathrooms, a moat and turrets, was built single-handedly in the Fifties and Sixties by Ron Reid, one of the founders of Reidbuilt Homes.

He still lives there now with his wife Esme - who was born in the old Kauri villa that was sited where the castle lounge is now.

They have a 2 hectare backyard that stretches beyond the creek at the bottom of the property where trout and freshwater crayfish still survive, and it boasts once award-winning gardens.

But why a castle?

Mr Reid says he wanted to be a bit different from everyone else - and his wife loves castles.

"My wife is an anglophile. She was going through a book on castles one day and I said 'that's what we'll have.' "

He did the research and drew up three sets of plans which he discarded before settling on the final design: "I don't think I'd get away with it these days, with all the consents you need."

Then the back-breaking work began. He demolished the old Kauri villa and other buildings. He dug the foundations. He cut each piece of Hinuera stone individually, laying 20 or so stones a day.

The stonework took 10 years to complete and another four years were spent building the outside wall.

Says Mrs Reid: "He lost two inches in height wheeling all the stone. He kept at it, he's that kind of person."

Mr Reid, who likes to say he began building the castle in the middle of the last century, certainly has an eye for detail.

There are coats of arms in the stonework and there is a working drawbridge. There is even a concealed passageway into one of the rooms and, in the slightly eccentric way of olde England, there is a lawn known as the "100 ft" lawn, which in fact is a 210 ft lawn.

Nothing was going to stop Mr Reid from completing his labour of love, not even a couple of accidents - including falling backwards from a stool on top of a table on to a concrete path.

There have been many approaches to buy the Verbena Rd property over the years, including cards slipped in the letter box saying "thinking of selling?"

"Not bloody likely," is Mr Reid's reply.

As for a potential price tag, Mr Reid seems puzzled. "To some people perhaps some millions, to others nothing at all."