View Single Post
Old 01-08-2013, 10:44 PM   #2
Icelander
 
Icelander's Avatar
 
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Iceland*
Default Ardtornish Castle

Continued from the other thread:

Quote:
Originally Posted by Brett View Post
Here's an article about the costs of buying and restoring castles and the values of the results: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...817825976.html.

I read a bit about a conference about making income out of estates like Ardtornish. It seems to be hard to get any return other than by subdividing and selling real estate. In other words, the people who have millions of pounds aren't going to spend them on remote estates.
I don't see any harm in assuming that the real estate can be had without having to actually pay Hugh Raven for it, instead compensating him by allowing him the use of some more conveniently locatated real estate that currently belongs to the Crown as well as providing him with assistance in finding charitable foundations, research grants and remarkably patient investors for his pet project of a sustainable energy village.*

Of course, this assumes that Hugh Raven is among those in the know, which I also don't see any harm in doing. It would not be implausible to propose that one of the people on the financial side of the Queen's household** had worked with him while installing windmills on land owned by the Royal Family and was aware of his fascination for Pythagorean sacred architecture as applied to sustainable and natural-seeming landscaping, not to mention the huge and isolated estate his family owned, complete with crumbling castles. So when the Queen began looking for headquarters, she might have had him approached.

*With only the minor catch that it has to serve as housing for a bunch of dubious people there to do strange things, while being publicly claimed to be some form of resort.
**As soon as anyone in the know requires a source of funds to do something secret, it would become necessary to subvert accountants. Therefore, as early as 1990, the first people recruited for skill set instead of purely for personal relationships would have been some people working for the Keeper of the Privy Purse or Treasurer to the Queen.
__________________
Za uspiekh nashevo beznadiozhnovo diela!
Icelander is offline   Reply With Quote