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Richard Hammond‘s wife Mindy ‘kicked the Top Gear star out to sleep in the castle’s barn’ before he confirmed the end of their 28-year marriage on Thursday.
The TV star, 55, is reportedly staying at a rented property in a nearby village where he runs his ‘Smallest Cog’ car restoration garage.
But before this, he was thought to have been sleeping in a converted barn on his family’s castle estate, according to The Sun.
Mindy had previously warned that he was on his ‘last chance’, eight years before the couple announced their marriage was over, but is understood to have since filed divorce papers.
According to the publication, she demanded the divorce after a source claimed she ‘wanted him gone’.
A source told The Sun: ‘Richard is very upset about all this. It seems he has tried hard to rekindle the relationship but to no avail. There is no speculation that any third party is involved.’
Richard Hammond ‘s wife Mindy ‘kicked the Top Gear star out to sleep in the castle’s barn’ before he confirmed the end of their 28-year marriage on Thursday
On Thursday, the Top Gear star shared that he and his spouse have split after 22 years of marriage, writing in a statement they will ‘always be in each other’s lives’
As the pair draw up divorce settlements, the publication added that Mindy wants to keep their £7million Bollitree Castle estate, which is located in Herefordshire.
MailOnline has contacted a representative for Richard Hammond for comment.
On Thursday, the Top Gear star, 55, shared that he and his spouse have split after 22 years of marriage, writing in a statement they will ‘always be in each other’s lives.’
In 2017, Mindy, 54, made an appearance with Richard on This Morning after he was involved in a second high speed crash.
The TV star was filming for The Grand Tour in Switzerland when the car he was driving crashed and repeatedly flipped over before catching fire, moments after he managed to escape it.
In 2006 Richard suffered life-threatening head injuries and was in a coma following a high-speed crash as he filmed for BBC‘s Top Gear.
Following his second crash 11 years later, Mindy flew to be at her husband’s bedside after he careered off the Swiss hillside and told ITV‘s This Morning: ‘I did say three strikes and you’re out. You’ve had two goes’.
His daughter Isabella who was behind the camera with younger sister Willow who told her dad: ‘Don’t crash again will you’.
She added: ‘He has one of these every ten years so I’ve marked the next one in my diary’.
Mindy said she had predicted the crash after having a ‘funny’ feeling on the day before the crash.
She said: ‘I actually called Richard on the day before which I don’t usually do, ever.
Richard was filming for The Grand Tour in Switzerland when the car he was driving crashed and repeatedly flipped over before catching fire, moments after he managed to escape it
Richard had repeatedly apologised to his wife and two daughters for putting them through more trauma (pictured with Mindy in February 2024)
‘Then the day of the accident I call him and he said he was fine but had a couple more runs to do.
‘Then there was a phone call and he said: ‘I’d had a bit of a shunt’. I did go quite a bit funny which I’ve never done before’.
The star required reconstructive surgery on his fractured left knee having escaped the wreckage just seconds before it went up in flames.
Richard has repeatedly apologised to his wife and two daughters for putting them through more trauma.
He said today that he believed he might die when his car flew off the mountain.
He said he knew it was ‘bad’, adding: When the car touched down it smashed the bottom bit of my knee’.
When he was in hospital he revealed: ‘They told me I’ve lost 7mm of height. I can’t be losing that’.
Holly Willoughby responded with: So are you uneven?’ and he said: ‘Yes. No, no, I can’t be running in circles for the rest of my life.’
The smash came more than a decade after Hammond’s previous horror crash in 2006 when he flipped a car travelling at 318mph while filming for Top Gear, leaving him in a two-week coma with life-threatening head injuries.
Following his second crash, Mindy flew to be at her husband’s bedside and told ITV’s This Morning: ‘I did say three strikes and you’re out. You’ve had two goes’
The couple married in 2002, and they share daughters Isabella, 24, and Willow, 22
Hammond, who was driving up a hill in the Rimac Concept One electric car when he crashed last month, said previously: ‘It was the very last run of the day, at the top just over the finish line it got away from me and I went over the edge.’
He then hurtled 100 metres down a hill, narrowly avoiding crashing into a house and leaving craters in the cliffside.
He told DriveTribe: ‘I was very much aware at that point that it being a hillclimb and me being at the end of it, I would be at the top of the hill.
‘So what followed was getting down the hill very very quickly.
‘I was aware that I was up, that I was high, that inevitably the car was going to come down, and of course there was a moment of dread ‘Oh god, I’m going to die’.
‘Also I was aware that the car was taking just such a beating.’
He added: ‘What was probably going through my mind was ‘well this is it’. I thought ‘I’ve had it’.’
Hammond said he was conscious all the way through the crash, saying: ‘You’re aware of sky, ground, sky, ground, sky, ground’ and comparing it to ‘being in a tumble dryer full of bricks going down a hill’.
He was left with a knee injury from the crash, and said: ‘I do remember saying to drag me by my arms not my legs because I think I’ve broken that leg.’
However, the injury did not alarm his daughter Isabella, who told him: ‘Daddy it looks like you’ve fallen over in the playground,’ he said.
Mindy had also previously shared in a newspaper column that she and Richard only enjoyed two minibreaks together throughout their marriage.
Writing for The Daily Express in 2017, she said: ‘In our 22 years together we have managed precisely two ‘romantic mini-breaks’ – one in the first year of our relationship when we camped in Buttermere and woke to soggy bottoms and four inches of water and the other a quick trip to Rome a couple of years ago when we were both so exhausted we found ourselves nodding off after lunch and missing most of our sightseeing time.’
Richard shared the news of his marital split on X, writing: ‘A little update from us; this Christmas we were together as a family and this year we will still be a family but just structured a bit differently.
‘Our marriage is coming to end, but we’ve had an amazing 28 years together and two incredible daughters.
‘We will always be in each other’s lives and are proud of the family we created.
‘We won’t be commenting further and sincerely hope that our privacy and that of our children will be respected at this time. With Love, Richard and Mindy.’
The couple, who married in 2002, share daughters Isabella, 24, and Willow, 22, and it’s thought that newspaper columnist Mindy has asked to keep the £7million Bollitree Castle estate as part of their split settlement.
Richard’s 2017 crash, which left his co-stars Jeremy Clarkson and James May fearing he had been killed, came 11 years after he suffered life-threatening head injuries following a high-speed crash as he filmed Top Gear in 2006.
The presenter was in a coma for two weeks following the 288mph accident, but made a full recovery.
Richard also recently raised fears that his injuries might have caused onset dementia.
Talking on The Diary of a CEO podcast, he said: ‘I worry about my memory because it’s not brilliant. I can still read a script and deliver it but my long-term memory is not brilliant.
‘I have to write things down and work hard to remember them sometimes. It might be the age, it might be the onset of something else, I worry about that. I do, I do. I should probably have a look and find out, because I do.’
Host Steven Bartlett asked him: ‘Are you scared of finding out?’
He said: ‘I am because it was a bleed on the front. It could mean there is an increased risk. I need to find out. I’ve been too scared to do it. I need to do it.
‘Weirdly on the way here, I had to stop off for a medical for a production. They ask ‘Have you been involved in any accidents?’ I’m like ‘Woooah! Can I have another piece of paper please?’
‘I need to book myself in for one of those mid-life MOTs and check everything. I wanted to ask them to check there is nothing going awry up here [pointing to his head]. But I chickened out. Didn’t.
‘That means I probably need an MRI scan but at 53, your memory does start to get a bit… they call it lost key syndrome.
‘I am quite forgetful, generally thinking about something else, the next thing and therefore I do drop the ball, I forget stuff a lot. That’s just me. That’s who I am.’
Mindy had also previously shared in a newspaper column that she and Richard only enjoyed two minibreaks together throughout their marriage (pictured in 2006)
After the crash, which saw his Vampire jet car lose control and flip upside down after a tyre burst, he admitted to suffering from depression.
He said: ‘I have no recollection because there was the frontal lobe bleed. I was just decelerating upside down, using my head as a brake, which isn’t good for you.’
He added: ‘Mindy [his wife], was told by the doctors that a frontal brain lobe injury would possibly lead to me having a greater propensity for obsessive compulsion and depression and paranoia.
‘Mindy was like, ‘You didn’t meet him before the crash, did you?’ which is quite funny to be fair. I think I did suffer a bit, I suffered all of those things to a degree.
‘Some of them were really weird moments and I still get an echo of it.
‘I remember having been institutionalized for a really long time in hospitals and in recovery… I would be coming into London to do something.
‘I would open the wardrobe door and just look at all the shirts and just trying to work out.. it was too much. I found choice really difficult for quite a long time.’