THE future of a Victorian novelist’s country mansion remains in doubt after a last-ditch bid to turn it into a private home and build an exclusive estate in its grounds was thrown out.

Robert Smith Surtees, best known for the Jorrocks stories, inherited Hamsterley Hall, near Consett, County Durham, in 1838 and wrote all his novels there.

But the Grade II*-listed hall, which once boasted some of the country’s finest Georgian Gothic architecture, has fallen into severe disrepair in recent years.

Tyneside property magnate Steven Spry has been trying to restore the 47-room mansion as his family home, in a project valued at about £6 million, for nearly a decade.

The restoration would be funded by David Wilson Homes building exclusive homes on the 170-acre estate.

But Durham County Council has twice thrown out the scheme – firstly in December 2011 and again in July 2014.

An appeal against the first decision was rejected in June 2012 and now the same fate has met Mr Spry’s challenge to the 2014 vote.

Following a two-day local hearing last June, a planning inspector has formally dismissed the appeal, saying the project would harm the landscape and the hall as a heritage asset.

The inspector accepted that 35 homes would be the minimum required to repair the hall to the point where it could be removed from the Buildings At Risk register, but he was not satisfied, in the absence of a marketing exercise, that it had been demonstrated that an “enabling development” such as the housing estate would be the only means by which the future of the hall could be safeguarded.

There has been a settlement at Hamsterley Hall since medieval times and a manor house on the site since the 14th century.

Robert Smith Surtees’ (1805-1864) work has been compared to that of Charles Dickens. Among the treasures at the hall is a pinnacle that was formerly part of the Houses of Parliament.

The mansion was later home to the Vereker family and Standish Vereker, the 7th Viscount Gort, lived there until his death in 1975.

Durham County Council’s county planning committee will have the opportunity to discuss the appeal dismissal when it meets at County Hall, Durham, on Tuesday (February 2).