ALTERING a listed building to create an open plan art room for one of North Yorkshire's top fee-paying schools brought its chairman of governors an unexpected £36,000 bill.

Brian Martin, governors' chairman at Queen Ethelburga's College, Thorpe Underwood Hall near Green Hammerton, yesterday admitted two offences of breaching the planning laws governing buildings listed for their architectural or historic merit.

The hall, built in 1902, is one of only 120 Grade II* Listed Buildings in the Harrogate District.

The case, which goes back to August 1998, was listed for trial, but Martin, who lives at Monk's House on the Thorpe Underwood Estate, changed his plea last week, and a further count involving removal of partition walls was dropped.

He pleaded guilty to having one of the hall's four chimney stacks and a chimney breast knocked down and was fined a total of £6,000. He was also ordered to pay costs of £30,000.

Prosecuting for Harrogate Borough Council, Stuart Brown QC said Martin had bought the W H Brearley-designed hall in 1980 and eight years later for tax reasons he conveyed it to an offshore company registered in the British Virgin Islands. The college moved there in 1991. "He accepts he gave the critical instruction to create an open plan art room on the second floor of the building, the attic floor, and everything flows from that,'' said Mr Brown.

Council officials, alerted by English Heritage and knowing no listed building consent had been applied for, found one of the four stacks had gone, leaving a hole in the roof. There had been more than 30 planning applications lodged for the hall, many of them retrospective, which the council contended worsened the degree of culpability here.

Nicholas Dyson, for Martin, said he was a private man who was desperately supportive of the school and worried about damage to it.

Martin had bought the hall when it had declined to a poor state of repair. He had taken the building in hand and restored it with an awful lot of time and effort. He had not sought to gain financially by having the alterations done and had accepted the blame for what had happened. A school was being created from scratch and some corners may have been cut, but he had acted on professional advice.

Updated: 10:26 Tuesday, December 11, 2001