AFTER six years in a caravan, a nervous breakdown and a period of feeling suicidal, a property developer is finally hoping his architecturally important manor house can be restored.

Kirk Shenton and his wife Beverley had to raise their young family in the shadow of the crumbling Grade II listed Hankelow Hall after a planning wrangle left them without funds to restore it.

Mr Shenton, 56, bought the hall in the village near Nantwich and 16 acres of land around it in 1989, intending to renovate the roofless structure. The project depended on funds from the sale of a portion of their land for housing, which was rejected by council planning chiefs.

This left Mr and Mrs Shenton to bring up their two young children, Vicky and James, now 23 and 20, in a caravan in the backyard of the house.

Mr Shenton's award-winning housing company collapsed and he suffered a nervous breakdown due to the financial and emotional stress of the deadlock.

'I went through stages of contemplating suicide' said Mr Shenton. 'My company went under, I had to lose two dozen employees, and I woke up every morning looking at the fabulous hall that we couldn't do anything to save.'

Mrs Shenton, 48, said: 'That period was a nightmare. Kirk just used to go out in his car and then sleep all day. We moved here expecting to live in the caravan for up to a year while we completed work on the hall, but we ended up living there for six years, while our children went to school.'

As well as his original £320,000 investment, Mr Shenton says he has spent another £500,000 on preventing the

18th Century hall from crumbling to the ground. This work has enabled the family to move in to a small portion at the rear of the property, but the majority is still uninhabitable.

Mr Shenton said: 'Looking back, buying Hankelow Hall was a big mistake. If I'd known just how much trouble it would have caused our family I never would have moved my family here. Losing my business was very hard, as it was my hobby as well as my living.

Mr Shenton specialised in renovating listed properties, and restoring them to their former glory. Now, however, he hopes to be able to rebuild his livelihood, after securing the services of an expert in listed buildings who is drafting a proposal that they hope will be accepted by the borough council.

Peter Davies, from town and country planners Allan Moss Associates, has outlined a development of individually-tailored homes that will maintain the character of the area. He said: 'Successive chief planning officers have rejected Mr Shenton's proposals since the early 1990s. We now feel we have a strong enough application for the development to be approved.

'English Heritage is supporting us in our application as Hankelow Hall is on its Buildings At Risk register. It is committing £100,000 in funding if we can raise the rest of the money through the sale of land. We have estimated that the cost of a complete restoration would be in the region of £2m.'

English Heritage provides grant aid to buildings on its register that can match its funding with private initiatives. One way of raising this extra cash is by selling off land for other developments - what English Heritage calls an 'enabling development'.

A similar proposal at Combermere Abbey, which is also on the Buildings At Risk register, was rejected by planning chiefs last month. However, Mr Davies says the scale of the proposed development at Hankelow is a fraction of that put forward at Combermere.

He said: 'The plans are very different. The access road to the hall is very narrow, so we are only proposing a development with a single figure number of dwellings. We are confident that we can work together to secure the existence of Hankelow Hall for future generations to enjoy.'