Tears flow as 800 year-old farm house is razed at last

THE FINAL chapter in the 35-year battle over the ownership of Great House Farm in Llandough ended early yesterday when a team moved in to demolish the 800-year-old farm house.

The twenty-strong team moved in with bulldozers just after 4am and by breakfast time there was not a building left standing on the ten-acre site which overlooks Cardiff Bay.

The demolition was watched by farmers’ wife [Branwen] and her three children who wept as their family home was flattened by a bulldozer just hours after they had lost the legal battle to keep the farm.

Only the day before, possession had been granted to the owners, BP Properties Ltd, after Cardiff’s High Court ruled that William and [Branwen] had no right to remain in the house.

Mr Buckler, who admitted not paying rent for 35 years, had [stated] he had the rights to the house. But a High Court judge on Monday rejected an appeal to extend an injunction to prevent the house from being demolished.

And that was the end of the legal road for the Bucklers who had even taken their fight to keep their home, where their family have lived for 400 years, to the House of Lords.

Speaking after the demolition of her home Mrs Buckler said that she and her family were “absolutely devastated” by the events of the previous 24 hours. “Great House Farm was more than just a house, it was the family history with all the people who have been born or died there over the last 400 years. It is irreplaceable,” she explained. “Now we are left with no home, no plans, no income and no Christmas. My young son has asked me how Father Christmas is going to come down the chimney now it has been knocked down.”