How an Apprentice star’s gold windows upset Britain’s most picturesque town
Is there a difference between “cherished gold” and “yellow”? Not, apparently, if you’re a planning officer in Stamford town council in Lincolnshire.
This week former Apprentice candidate Marianne Rawlins was told to repaint her baby shop after a complaint from the town’s civic society forced her to submit a retrospective planning application last November. The application has now been denied, with a note stating “yellow is not an acceptable colour in the conservation area”.
Dulux might tend to disagree with the council’s assessment of the colouration from its heritage collection, which it describes as “Cherished Gold”.
Rawlins opened Stork of Stamford in September 2023 in a Tudor building that had lain vacant for more than two years before she moved her business in. She spent £2,000 repainting the window ledges and awnings in the colour, with the rest of the shopfront repainted in black. She claims she had taken time considering her colour choices.
“You have to be careful what you do as it’s a listed building, so I was careful. I thought I was within the bounds,” she said when the complaint was filed in November. “There’s black and gold on quite a few shops. There’s one just a few shops down, then there’s even a pink shop on the high street.”
“I was really surprised because everyone seems to love it. I’ve not heard any negative comments about it at all.
“I’m still waiting to hear back but it doesn’t look good. It is ultimately the district council that makes the decision.”
At the time, Rawlins vowed to challenge the ruling if it did not go in her favour.
Stamford has zealously guarded its heritage status over the years. The town, which is frequently named as Britain’s most picturesque, was actually made the UK’s first ever conservation area in 1967 following concerns about the rate of development.
In 1992, the planning authority at South Kesteven District Council created a Stamford Shopfront Design Guide, which created recommendations including using white or neutral colours on slender shopfronts, and suggested a single colour for all the major elements of a shopfront. There is, however, no specific guidance on which colours can and cannot be used.
Guidance from the council has been unclear at times, thinks Rawlins. After she offered to choose a different shade of yellow (or gold), “they then came back and said ‘actually we don’t like the black’,” she said. “If you look at Tudor-style buildings the majority have black so I don’t really understand.”
Rawlins is a mother-of-two and former owner of a risk management consultancy. She moved from the US to the UK in 2017, appeared on the 15th series of The Apprentice in 2019. On the show she noted, “I’m definitely the epitome of ‘don’t judge a book by its cover’ because what you see is not what you get.”
While the Stork of Stamford case has riven the local community, it’s hardly the first time a bit of paintwork has caused strife among neighbours…
The candy-striped house of Kensington
In 2015 property developer Zipporah Lisle-Mainwaring caused chaos among her neighbours in South End, Kensington, when she repainted her multi million-pound townhouse with red and white stripes. Neighbours alleged that she had done so to spite them after they objected to plans to destroy the house and replace it with a new home. Lisle-Mainwaring denied this. The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea ordered her to repaint “all external paintwork located on the front elevation white” within 28 days, however, Lisle-Mainwaring took the case to the high court, which sided with her and allowed the red and white stripes to stay. She was also finally granted planning permission to demolish the house and rebuild it with traditional-looking brown bricks, much more in keeping with the rest of the street.
The pink door of Edinburgh
In 2022, Edinburgh homeowner Miranda Dickson was putting the finishing touches on renovating her childhood home in the city’s New Town. She’d inherited the property after the passing of her parents and worked on doing it up over 18 months with pink wallpaper, pink curtains, pink carpets, and even a pink enamelled bath tub. The crowning glory of the property, on Drummond Street, was a pastel-pink front door. However, Edinburgh City Council said the door was “not in keeping with the historic character” of the listed building and ordered her to repaint it or risk a £20,000 fine. Dickson complied after receiving planning permission to repaint the door green, though not before noting that neighbours had doors in bright reds, blues, and yellows. However, in July 2023, she received another complaint after repainting the door a different shade of pink. “It is definitely not the same colour as it was originally painted – it’s an off-white,” she said.
The pink shops of Canterbury
Just last month, and in a strikingly similar case to that faced by Rawlins, Christopher Nevill secured permission to repaint a nail salon and hairdressers (housed in grade II-listed 16th-century shopfronts) on the high street in Canterbury a lighter shade of pink. However, after work had commenced, Nevill received a written notice from Canterbury City Council, which had organised a crackdown on “garish” buildings, telling him that he would face “jail or an unlimited fine”, he told reporters. Nevill had already been in trouble with the council in 2023 after having painted the shops a brighter shade of pink without permission, hence his decision to start repainting them in a more pastel shade, which had been selected by the council. Canterbury City Council eventually admitted it had made a mistake and the new shade was acceptable after all.
The pink house of Belsize Park
Pink was a problem once again in 2016, when 70-year-old Su Rose of Buckland Crescent, Belsize Park, became embroiled in a dispute with Camden Council after repainting her house. The three-storey home had already been painted pink in the 1990s, but when Rose carried out repair work on the property’s exterior, she decided to refresh the paint in “Cinder Rose” from Farrow & Ball. The council informed her that since the Georgian property was within a conservation area, she would have to apply for retrospective planning permission for the repaint. Happily, Rose was successfully granted planning permission and her house remains pink to this day.
The ‘baby poo’ homes of Isleworth
While most cases of house repaintings causing controversy involve homeowners making decisions against the council’s wishes, in 2020, an estate in Isleworth suffered the reverse. The Worple Estate, a mix of authority-owned and private homes, was subjected to a repainting by Hounslow Council in 2020. Thermal cladding was added to 30 houses, which were then painted “mustard yellow” after residents had been informed the council houses would be repainted “magnolia or similar”. Those who lived on the estate noted at the time that the colour reminded them of “baby poo” and “dog sick”. One family tried to repaint their home, but were prevented from doing so by the council, which said doing so would invalidate the warranty on the house.