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KAMAL SULTAN FOR THE DAILY MAIL wrote how TV architect George Clarke is forced to sell £40,000 observatory tribute to his father following divorce… just a year after building it
- Television architect George Clarke, 47, has been forced to sell his observatory
- The 16ft structure, costing £40,000 to build, resembled a ‘Victorian spaceship’
- Clarke said the observatory was built to honour his late father, who loved space
- The observatory, in his Cotswolds home’s garden, has been sold due to divorce
- Mr TV host had said that the observatory was proof ‘dreams really do come true’
He had built the striking £40,000 observatory as a tribute to his late father – and enthused that it resembled a ‘Victorian spaceship’.
But television architect George Clarke has been forced to part ways with his pride and joy after just a year.
The Amazing Spaces host recently split from his wife Katie Morgan Jones and their home in the Cotswolds was put up for sale last month for £870,000.
The listing for the four-bedroom property had not included any mention or pictures of the 16ft structure in the garden.
However, following a viewing, the buyer asked if it could be included in the sale.tt
Clarke, 47, who purchased the 1960s bungalow for £660,000 in May 2019, was granted planning permission for the observatory the following August and it took eight months to craft it in the workshop of designer William Hardie.
The cedar wood and copper structure was built in honour of Clarke’s father, who died in a water skiing accident when he was seven years old.
‘You become a very different boy when your dad goes at such a young age.
‘I miss you every single day Dad,’ he said.
And he told Channel 4 viewers: ‘When I was a kid growing up, reading my dad’s astronomy books, I never imagined in a million light years that I’d have an observatory to honour my dad’s love of the moon and the stars.
‘This wonderful small structure is so much more than a tribute to my dad.
‘It shows that no matter what your small space fantasies are, you should never ever abandon your amazing space design dreams.
‘Because this for me proves that dreams really do come true.’
And showing off the finished project in the ninth series of Amazing Spaces, he said: ‘After eight months of tireless hard work, the observatory is finished.
‘I can’t quite believe it! It is like a Victorian spaceship! It’s fantastic. As if it’s beamed down from the days of Sherlock Holmes and Phileas Fogg.
‘It is without a shadow of doubt the best thing we have ever built. I wish my dad was here to see that.’
Clarke, who also presents The Home Show and The Restoration Man, was always doubtful he would be able to keep the observatory as he would not have been able to move it into his smaller garden at his other home in Notting Hill, west London.
He and Miss Morgan Jones, a PR executive, recently split after four years of marriage.
She is said to have alluded to their break-up in cryptic Instagram messages, before her page was made private.
One uploaded last month read: ‘Now to the future. After a weird couple of years… it’s time for change.’
In other posts, she reportedly spoke of ‘lockdowns isolated on my own’ which were a ‘test of mental agility’, while she also mentioned ‘many, many other trials and tribulations, tears and revelations’.
It came after ‘nomadic’ Clarke – previously married to Australian movie animator and art director Catriona Drummond until they split in 2014 – admitted staying ‘on average three nights a week in hotels’.
His Cotswolds home with Miss Morgan Jones narrowly avoided damage from a giant tree which fell during the recent storms.
We are very experienced in dealing with all things divorce. Contact us here at Penny Raby & Co if this applies to you.
