Brink’s-Mat robbery: Home where gang melted gold is up for rent
EXCLUSIVE A house fit for a kingpin: Country home where criminal mastermind John ‘Goldfinger’ Palmer melted down gold bars from £26m Brink’s-Mat heist goes on rental market for £5,000 per month
- The Georgian pile is nestled into the countryside in a secluded hamlet near Bath
- It was where John Palmer melted down gold stolen in the 1983 Brink’s-Matt heist
The country home where criminal mastermind John ‘Goldfinger’ Palmer melted down gold bars from the £26million Brink’s-Mat robbery is up for rent for £5,000 a month.
Looking at the Georgian pile nestling into the countryside in a secluded hamlet near Bath, there are no clues to its underworld past.
But it is the place where Palmer – murdered in an unsolved gangland execution in 2015 – smelted bars of gold bullion stolen from a warehouse in one of Britain’s biggest ever crimes.
And although it has been extensively renovated since, it is unmistakably the property where he and wife Marnie were pictured after Palmer was cleared of involvement in the robbery in 1987.
Listed on an estate agent’s website, it says the Grade II-listed former coach house is available to rent from April 2023.
The luxury Georgian pile nestling into the countryside in a secluded hamlet near Bath, shows no sign to its underworld past
The home is complete with a gym, five bedrooms and a huge plot of land. But it was once the location where criminal mastermind John ‘Goldfinger’ Palmer melted down gold bars from the £26million Brink’s-Mat robbery
Palmer, pictured right with his wife Marnie, was later murdered in an unsolved gangland execution in 2015. He is pictured at his former country estate – which can now be rented for £5,000 a month
It has five bedrooms, four bathrooms, a utility room, gym, extensive grounds, a boot room and private parking for up to five cars.
A description describes it as ‘an impressive Grade II listed period property which has been immaculately refurbished throughout to a very high standard.’
It goes on: ‘The house is set in stunning surroundings…..with extensive private gardens and fabulous views.
‘The main house has four bedrooms, three bathrooms, three reception rooms, a large kitchen with excellent quality fittings and finish.
‘The house has a gym and storage as well as ample private parking for five or six vehicles.
‘With period features and historic importance, this property offers charming character and spacious living which is enhanced by wood burning stoves, cosy inglenooks and a fabulous view from every window.
‘This is a rare opportunity to acquire a property of this size, quality and surroundings so close to Bath.’
But it is also hiding a sinister secret – that it was once owned by one of Britain’s richest – and most criminal – men.
The home is described as ‘an impressive Grade II listed period property which has been immaculately refurbished throughout to a very high standard’
The property shows no sign of its criminal underworld past, coming with three reception rooms, five bedrooms and four bathrooms
The five bedrooms boast impressive views over the countryside near Bath
Outside, the lavish country estate has an immaculate garden, surrounded by trees and fields
John Palmer shot to notoriety in the 1980s after he was accused of involvement in the now famous Brink’s-Mat heist.
It occurred at the Heathrow International Trading Estate on November 26, 1983, when six men broke into the Brink’s-Mat warehouse and was one of the largest robberies in British history, with £26m worth of gold bullion, cash and diamonds pinched.
Two men were convicted, but the majority of the gold has never been recovered.
The heist is currently the subject of BBC series The Gold, starring Hugh Bonneville, Dominic Cooper, Charlotte Spencer and Jack Lowden.
Palmer is seen in the back of a police car in 1986, the year before he was acquitted over involvement in the Brink’s-Mat heist – even though admitted to smelting gold from the robbery in his garden
Palmer was arrested in 2001, accused of ‘masterminding the largest timeshare fraud on record’. Above: Palmer outside the Old Bailey in 2001
The impressive pile has an imposing entrance, with plenty of space for parking, is believed to be where Palmer melted down the gold from the robbery
Just two days after the robbery, a couple tipped off police when they saw Palmer, their neighbour, smelting metal in a shed in the grounds of his home.
He ran a gold and jewellery dealing company, Scadlynn Ltd, in Bedminster, Bristol, with business partners Garth Chappell and Terence Patch.
At the time, the tipsters said Palmer had moved into the house shortly before the robbery, adding: ‘We only saw him once or twice in the driveway.’
Incredibly, police never acted on the tip and it was 14 months before his house was raided by which point an estimated £13million had been melted down to disguise its origins and sold on the open market.
Mr Palmer was charged with complicity in the robbery and admitted smelting the gold, but denied knowing it was the stolen Brink’s-Mat bullion and was acquitted.
The robbery took place at the Heathrow International Trading Estate on November 26, 1983, when six men broke into the Brink’s-Mat warehouse. Pictured is the kitchen in Palmer’s old home
A total of £26million worth of gold bullion, cash and diamonds pinched. Two men were convicted, but the majority of the gold has never been recovered. Pictured is the interior of Palmer’s former country home
Just two days after the infamous robbery, a couple tipped off police when they saw Palmer, their neighbour, smelting metal in a shed in the grounds of his home. Pictured are the grounds of his former Georgian home
Had officers responded to the neighbours’ tip, much of the gold may have been recovered before it was passed on.
Pictures after his acquittal show Palmer and his wife Marnie, then 37, celebrating in the courtyard of their home, her clutching an Easter egg.
Years later, in 2001, he was convicted of a huge timeshare fraud and jailed for eight years.
Palmer, who was at one point richer than the Queen with an estimated fortune of £300million, was eventually gunned down in a gangland hit at his home in Essex in 2015.
He was found dead in his back garden in South Weald, Essex on June 24. At the time, police and paramedics concluded he died of a pre-existing heart condition.
Palmer’s partner Christina Ketley believes her husband was killed by a stalker who shot him after making a hole in their garden fence (pictured) and is offering a £100,000 reward
Pictured is one of the five bullets found at the scene. The sixth was never found
But he was later found to have six bullet wounds in his back and a coroner slammed Essex Police for their failings and concluded he was unlawfully killed.
Speaking almost three years later, his partner Christina Ketley said the notorious gangland boss had been stalked like an animal by his assassin.
‘It haunts us every day to think that whoever was responsible was clearly watching John, stalking him like an animal before so brutally and callously ending his life,’ she said in 2018.
‘Losing a loved one is hard enough but in this case we have the added stress of not only not knowing who did it but why.’
No-one has ever been arrested over the murder.
WHO WAS JOHN ‘GOLDFINGER’ PALMER?
Pictured: John ‘Goldfinger’ Palmer during his years in Tenerife
By Wensley Clarkson for The Mail On Sunday
John Palmer’s life had always been steeped in crime.
He grew up poverty-stricken and illiterate in the post-war slums of Birmingham, where his absent father had once been a member of the city’s feared Peaky Blinders gang – so-called because members stitched razor blades into the peaks of their caps.
Sleeping three-to-a-bed with his brothers, Palmer often went hungry and wore hand-me-down clothes.
He was still in short trousers when he turned to petty theft and street robbery. He even acted as a pint-sized runner for a gang supplying illegal guns.
But despite his lack of education, Palmer was bright, resourceful and ruthless. Contemporaries say he was obsessed with money – the only thing that could wipe away the stigma of being born dirt-poor.
In his teens, Palmer realised the ‘fences’ to whom he sold his stolen goods made much greater profits and with little risk, so he opened a small jeweller’s shop in the centre of Birmingham – its takings boosted by ‘hot’ jewellery.
When a gang of older criminals muscled into the operation, he took his business model to Bristol, where he opened another jewellery store handling stolen goods.
Palmer was in his mid-20s and a prosperous, if shady, local businessman when his friendship with notorious Kent criminal Kenneth Noye marked an escalation in his criminal career.
When Noye originally approached Palmer with a scheme to ‘launder’ gold in the early 1980s, Palmer hired a helicopter and flew low over Noye’s five-acre home in Kent.
When Palmer saw a figure run from the house and train a gun on the aircraft, he realised, he told friends later, that Noye was a man he could do business with.
In November 1983, Noye was sounded out by the South London perpetrators of Britain’s biggest-ever bullion robbery at a Brink’s-Mat warehouse near Heathrow.
Noye and Palmer were offered a 25 per cent cut to ‘recycle’ £26 million in gold bars.
Within weeks of the heist, Palmer, then known as ‘Goldfinger’ was smelting £1 million worth of gold every month, which was secretly transported to his West Country home by Noye and associates including Reader, who would emerge 30 years later as ringleader of the Hatton Garden gang. For 12 months, Palmer and Noye outsmarted the law.
They smuggled the new, untraceable gold bars out of the country in lorry drivers’ lunchboxes and by private plane and reimported them with a ‘legitimate’ paper trail. They even claimed back 15 per cent VAT on each deal.
The event that would catapult Palmer into an even bigger league was one that risked causing his gilded life to collapse around his ears.
In January 1985, Noye killed an undercover policeman, John Fordham, in the garden of his house.
Detectives called to the scene found gold bars from the Brink’s-Mat raid and – as the known associate of a cop killer – Palmer suddenly became one of Britain’s most wanted men. He was arrested and later charged.
But somehow at his trial, Palmer managed to convince an Old Bailey jury that he did not know he was smelting Brink’s-Mat ingots.
After his 1985 acquittal, he moved to Spain, which then had no extradition treaty with Britain.
Eschewing the so-called ‘Costa del Crime’ and its flashy London criminals, Palmer settled in Tenerife, where he could live in relative obscurity.
It was there that he would turn his Brink’s-Mat gold into riches beyond his wildest dreams.
When Palmer was forced to flee his home in Battlefield, near Bath, for Tenerife, he told his wife Marnie to stay at home and look after their two daughters.
It was on the holiday island that Palmer hired Essex-born accountant Christina Ketley as his business adviser. Before long, he had moved her into his apartment as his ‘Tenerife wife’.
In 2001 he tried to defend himself against charges of ‘masterminding the largest timeshare fraud on record’ but failed and was jailed for eight years.
He was arrested again in 2007 and spent two years without being charged in a Spanish jail. He was later released on bail.
After scaling back his activities on the holiday island, they retired together to a mansion in High Weald, Essex – where he planned for a long and happy retirement after a hugely profitable life of crime.
These plans were abruptly cut short one June day as he pottered around the garden and six bullets from an assassin’s silenced pistol found their target.