IN a smart, pale suit set off with a patterned tie, striped shirt and silk hankie, ex-bingo caller Ken King had a sparkle in his eye and a cheque for a million quid stuffed in his pocket when he returned one sunny afternoon to what, quite literally, was his old manor.

He hadn’t, sadly, been behind the wheel of his once customary Rolls Royce Silver Spirit but he had at least retained its customised number plate – KK5 748 – that was now affixed to a not quite so sleek or elegant three year-old Rover Metro.

However, he was Thinking Big. His aim? To buy back the historic 16th Century mansion from the National Trust, complete with spacious gardens that, almost unbelievably, the rags-to-riches (and then back to rags again) wheeler-dealer had once owned. You had to admire his gall as he gamely posed in front of the ornate gates of Avebury Manor, the 500 year-old stately pile that – to the sheer horror of many conservationists – he had transformed for a brief, controversy-crammed period into an ‘Elizabethan Experience’ theme park.

But you’d have to have been one of those dopey court fools to believe that Ken’s bumper cheque – if indeed, it existed – wasn’t made of rubber.

“I have backers,” he asserted with typical bravura. “But they must remain anonymous.”

Any activity at Avebury Manor – such as the recent £25-a-head Festive Cream Tea Day – invariably reminds me of the self-styled King of Avebury… along with the rancour he inevitably aroused.

Someone should make a film about Ken King’s reign at Avebury Manor. Talk about antagonising the local well-to-dos. It’s a shame Bob Hoskins is no longer with us. He’d have done a hell of a job on Ken.

So who was the man who would be King of Avebury…?

Raised in St Albans, postman’s son Ken King was a bingo caller, hotel washer-upper and a seller of tents and ski equipment before he got into the design-cum-redevelopment game and bagged a fortune during the booming Eighties.

One day in 1988 he and ‘common law wife’ Gillian Mitchell were motoring through deepest Wiltshire when they happened upon, and were instantly smitten by, Avebury Manor, one of the most sumptuous abodes in the Swindon area.

Stumping up a cool million – which, to misquote Dudley Moore in the film Arthur, was back when £1 million was considered a lot of money – the couple were soon ensconced within the gentrified surroundings of a creaking, ten bedroom Grade I listed mansion.

Oozing opulence it may have been but it was in a state of monumental decay with rampant dry rot, leaky guttering and an 1860-built Great Library on the verge of collapse.

More cash had to be splashed. But hey, why not make the old girl pay for herself, the couple reasoned, by turning her into a tourist trap? In December ’88 they unveiled their princely plans to the people of Avebury.

Like the owners of many an historic pile elsewhere they would lure punters to their palatial pad with a variety of themed attractions including craftwork shops, falconry centre, vintage car display and adventure playground.

Merrie England, no less, would be recreated with 30 staff donning “quality period costume”. Naturally, a torture chamber would be installed. But the serving wenches would – we were relieved to hear – refrain from cavorting “with their boobs and bums hanging out”. Around 70,000 visitors a year would stream into Avebury, he reckoned.

No surprise then, when many a brow was seriously raised among the couple’s new neighbours. Anxious parish councillors deemed the project “an explosion of development” .

They had a point. Ken’s manor, it must be remembered, was bang in the middle of a revered 5,000 year-old World Heritage Site that boasted Europe’s largest prehistoric stone circle.

Not one to hang around for planning permission, he got cracking; building here, converting there, restoring the esteemed property in his own bullish way. Sights were firmly set on a spring ’89 opening but Ken King was on a collision course with Kennet council who, predictably, took offence at his transformation of Avebury Manor without the relevant consent.

Emerging from a less than convivial planning meeting in February 1989 when a raft of retrospective applications for work already being undertaken were booted out, he was moved to fume: “I was not expecting all the crap they talked this afternoon.” Squire Ken was also up against no less an adversary than eminent broadcaster and Avebury resident Sir Ludovic Kennedy who, with fellow knight of the realm, retired diplomat Sir Wynn Normington Hugh-Jones, launched the Avebury In Danger group to thwart his Elizabethan enterprise. There would be no gaudy court jesters or jolly jousters swanning around our village, they vowed. Shrugging it off Ken hired an eye-catching assortment of medieval minstrels, falconers and phony Tudor lords and ladies to populate the manor when more than 2,000 visitors turned up on Easter Bank Holiday for a taster of things to come.

The official grand opening, however, was reserved for Spring Bank Holiday a couple of months later.

Imagine the delight/horror of the good people of Avebury when a raggle-taggle, cart-wheeling band of medieval troubadours, beggars, jesters, stilt-walkers and fire-eaters wove their way through the village’s ancient, narrow lanes.

Appalled at such an undignified hullabaloo, Sir Ludovic and co were presumably left scowling and muttering from behind their net curtains.

Ken was everywhere; marching through the streets, cutting ribbons, collecting tickets, meeting, greeting and slapping skin with visitors (4,000, reportedly) like long lost cousins. “Past is present at Avebury Manor,” went the logo.

Souvenirs purchased there included plastic spiders bearing the legend: “I crawled out of the woodwork at Avebury.”

But as Wiltshire’s Elizabethan theme park rolled noisily on, the depth of the Squire of Avebury’s pockets were being seriously tested.

A £21,000 fine for 20 breaches of planning regulations came on top of £700,000 he had lavished on restoring/reimagining Avebury Manor.

Lawyers and consultants – they ain’t cheap – were required to fight his corner at a public inquiry which he characteristically proclaimed “a waste of taxpayers’ money”.

But his reign was nearing its end. Enforce-ment orders, court hearings, inquiries and appeals were progressively chipping away at the one time flamboyant millionaire’s fortune. In May 1990, he was declared bankrupt.

Ever ebullient, however, he pronounced: “Not even Saddam Hussein could get me out of here.” But out he got. The Tudor theme park got the chop in November 1990 and weeks later the king left the castle.

Alerted by the furore, the National Trust – owners of the Avebury stone circle – stepped in with an “undisclosed bid” to save and manage the manor house, as they do today.

So when a beaming Ken King arrived on their doorstep in the summer of 1993 with an alleged wad to buy back his old pad the response, predictably, was abrupt and to the point. “No chance,” was their reply. Or words to that effect.

  • TO say Ken King agitated an entire community when he turned Avebury Manor into a theme park would be a gross untruth.

    Some locals saw him as the saviour of an historic mansion in desperate need of renovation while others felt he was boosting the village economy. He immersed himself in village life, helping with fund-raising ventures, kitting out the village soccer team and organising all manner of Avebury events.I took part in one myself; a ten mile yomp along the Ridgeway starting and finishing at the manor where Ken was on hand, cheerfully presenting certificates… as if to the manor born.

  • NEARLY two stressful years of battling bureaucracy took its toll on Ken King’s personal life when he split with long term partner Gillian Mitchell.

    Bizarrely, he struck up a friendship with HTV presenter Annie St John, 36, and kept a bedside vigil after she took what proved a fatal drugs overdose in November 1990. Then 37, he set up a foundation in her memory which eventually hit financial buffers. Various enterprises followed, from home décor to nightclubbing and at one stage he was disqualified from running a company.