Captain Tom's daughter removes £2.25m mansion from housing market after failing to find 'discreet buyer'
10 January 2025, 17:14
Captain Tom’s daughter has reportedly taken her controversial £2.25m country mansion off the market after failing to find a buyer.
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The seven-bed Bedfordshire mansion has been on the market for nearly a year, with Hannah Ingram-Moore demanding a whopping £2.25m for the infamous property.
However, Ms Ingram-Moore has been unable to find a buyer after she was found to have used the charity set up in her father’s name to "significant" personal benefit.
The Grade II listed property no longer appears on major sites such as Zoopla and Rightmove and estate agents Fine and Country told The Sun it is "no longer appointed as the agents".
Ms Ingram-Moore and her husband Colin put the 3.5-acre property on the market just months after losing an appeal to keep the spa they were building in its garden.
Bedfordshire County Council demanded the spa be knocked down after the couple claimed it would be used as part of the Captain Tom Foundation “and its charitable objectives”.
Early in April 2020, near the start of the coronavirus pandemic, Captain Tom said he wanted to complete 100 laps of his patio before his 100th birthday in an attempt to raise £1,000 for the National Health Service.
He eventually raised £38m for NHS Charities Together, which works with a network of more than 230 NHS Charities across the UK to support the organisation.
On 17 July 2020, he was knighted for his fundraising efforts on the grounds of Windsor Castle.
The original listing for the home relied heavily on Captain Tom’s memory as a selling point.
An owner’s statement read: “A particularly special memory of our time here is of my father walking 100 laps of the garden to raise a record-breaking sum of almost £40million for NHS charities during the pandemic.”
The brochure particulars added: “The property is owned by the family of Captain Sir Tom Moore who spent his final years there raising money for the NHS during the Covid pandemic.”
Hannah Ingram-Moore and her husband Colin committed repeated acts of misconduct in their management of the Captain Tom Foundation, the Charity Commission ruled in November.
Failings found in the 30-page report include:
- The couple misled the public about a payment of nearly £1.5m from Captain Tom's books, none of which went to the foundation
- She claimed incorrectly that £18,000 she was given for charity appearances was in a personal capacity, rather than for the foundation
- She and her husband used the foundation in a planning application for a spa and pool annex on the grounds of their house
- Ms Ingram-Moore made 'disingenuous' statements about her salary demands as CEO of the charity
- There was also confusion over handling of intellectual property rights, which the commission said were owned by the family but offered to the foundation to use without the right agreements in place, leading to possible financial losses to the charity
Ms Ingram-Moore had earlier been banned from holding a senior position in a charity or being a trustee for ten years, while her husband was barred for eight years.
David Holdsworth, who led the inquiry, said that the charity did not live up to Captain Tom's legacy.
"Our inquiry report details repeated failures of governance and integrity," he said.
“The public – and the law – rightly expect those involved in charities to make an unambiguous distinction between their personal interests, and those of the charity and the beneficiaries they are there to serve. This did not happen in the case of The Captain Tom Foundation.
"We found repeated instances of a blurring of boundaries between private and charitable interests, with Mr and Mrs Ingram-Moore receiving significant personal benefit. Together the failings amount to misconduct and/or mismanagement."
The commission set up the inquiry in 2021, and it became a statutory inquiry in 2022 as concerns grew about Mr and Ms Ingram-Moore's handling of the charity.
Ms Ingram-Moore was "disingenuous" in claiming that she had not been offered a six-figure sum to run the foundation, the inquiry found.
While this was technically correct, she had previously effectively asked for £150,000 and been rejected. She was later given a salary of £85,000 per year pro rata for nine months.
