A 17th century country house filmed by Jacob Rhys Mogg is being used to house asylum seekers, the Daily Mail can reveal.
The former Brexit minister went viral this week when he was filmed being rebuffed by security as he tried to investigate suggestions that secluded Winford Manor in North Somerset is now accommodating illegal, small boat migrants.
That clip and his report on his GB News programme State of the Nation, Rees-Mogg, 56, ended inconclusively as guards blocked him at the wrought-iron front gates and he was unable to speak to the groups of men he saw wandering the grounds from over the wall.
But today the Daily Mail can reveal that the suspicions of the former minister were correct: the property in the sleepy village of Winford has been used as an asylum centre for some three years.
And we can plot the full story of the takeover of the 36-bedroom property – and how its change of use has infuriated locals.
Winford Manor was once a luxury hotel and wedding venue – and prior to that it had been a religious retreat, before being bought by investment firm IntSol.
But that changed in September 2022 when at a parish council meeting villagers were told that it was going to cease operating as a hotel and become an asylum centre with migrants being bussed into the countryside.
Villagers say that at no point were they given any prior notice. This change came without warning, they say.
At a parish council meeting held not long after the hotel temporarily changed use, residents were told ‘not to worry’ and that ‘it won’t be as bad as you think’ as the contract with the Home Office would last for two years only.
But two years has been and gone and as we approach the third anniversary of that meeting the non-paying guests are still there.
They are still continuing to turn up in minibuses and taxis nearly a year on from the supposed termination date.
They are from a variety of countries including Eritrea, Syria, Ethiopian, Kenya and Somaliland. Most are single men.
Operations at the manor are run by Clearsprings, a company owned by ‘migrant hotel king’ billionaire Graham King, on behalf of the Home Office.
Locals told the Daily Mail how a steady stream of police cars and ambulances enter the manor at all hours, migrants regularly encroach onto private land and start camp fires in nearby fields.
Tony Gould and Carly Gibbs live on a former poultry farm behind the manor house with their nine-year-old son and daughter, aged four.
Carly, 38, said: ‘This has affected us massively but nobody was given any notice by the Government or the local council that the hotel was being turned into an asylum centre.
‘There was no consultation beforehand which would have given us time to bolster our security arrangements, which we’ve had to do since.
‘We feel like we’ve been s*** on from a great height to be honest with you.
‘There’s a real sense of unease locally with such large numbers of undocumented men living on our doorstep. We don’t know who they are or what their intentions are.
‘There’s some families living there but hardly any, it’s almost exclusively single men.
‘I certainly don’t feel safe at home alone when my partner’s away. I don’t go out running any more because some of the men hang around in groups and they used to shout things out when I ran past them. I found it very intimidating.
‘You would think that living out in the countryside would be relaxing and give us freedoms that people in towns and cities don’t have.
‘But that just hasn’t been the case for the last three years. I don’t let the kids out of my sight.
‘I used to let my son play in the fields around the house but not anymore, no way. He suffers from anxiety and is very nervous in the evenings when it gets dark.
‘You can hear groups of men talking and arguing in the grounds. Some of them are very loud and we hear them right up until about 1.30am on occasion.
‘It’s very common for taxis to turn up at all times outside our home after taking the wrong turn and dropping off men. They get out the cab and say ‘hotel, hotel?’ thinking that my house is the asylum centre.
‘There was one time when a minibus drove up the driveway, parked outside my kitchen and six men got out. They all had cigarettes in their mouths and they were unloading their suitcases when I came out and said “no, no. Not here. Wrong place. Get back in the bus, get back in”. They looked at me as though I was mad.
‘For some reason police cars and ambulances are forever going into the hotel. We did hear rumours of a stabbing a few weeks ago but nobody ever tells us what’s going on there.
‘My daughter broke her leg in May while playing at home. I called for an ambulance but because she wasn’t unconscious and wasn’t bleeding they wouldn’t send one.
‘I had to take her to Bristol Children’s Hospital about half an hour away. It was awful because she was screaming in pain the whole journey yet not a day seems to go by that an ambulance isn’t arriving at that place.
‘We’ve had enough, the migrants were only supposed to be there for two years but it’s coming to three years and more are still coming every week.
‘I emailed the Home Office last September and asked them when is it going to end and how could they guarantee our safety.
‘The reply I got was that Home Office doesn’t know who exactly is in the asylum centre but that we were safe. They added that they weren’t able to be drawn on how long the migrants will actually be there. They just palmed me off essentially and there’s been nothing in the way of communication from anyone since.’
Tony, 66, who runs his own company buying and selling commercial catering equipment, said he had spent more than £2,000 on installing CCTV cameras and upgrading security lighting since the asylum centre set up operations.
He said: ‘We regularly have strange men walking onto our property, I don’t think they grasp the notion of land being private.
‘Earlier in the year, I was in my office when I saw one bloke come walking up the driveway as bold as brass and he sat down on my front lawn and started scrolling through his phone. I had to shoo him away.
‘They come onto our land all the time. I swear one of them went to toilet in the long grass the other day. I caught him walking out and hitching up his trousers.
‘The money they’re costing the taxpayer doesn’t bear thinking about.
‘I remember a car approaching the house about a year or so ago and I initially assumed it was a taxi dropping off another migrant especially as the driver wound down his window and said he was looking for Winford Manor.
‘But it turned out he was an interpreter. He told me that his business had never been so lucrative. He was earning £160 an hour.
‘The journey from his office in Bath to the manor was a two hour round-trip and he’d spend a hour or so with the migrant he was helping and so was claiming for three hours. We’re all paying for that.’
When the Daily Mail visited on Friday, just like Rees-Mogg, we were told by security that we would not be able to approach staff or migrants and that they had been prohibited from speaking to us.
However, several migrant men were seen relaxing in the sprawling grounds of the manor house soaking up the last of the late summer sunshine.
Clare Rippingale, 56, a self-employed gardener and cafe owner moved from Bagshot, Surrey to a cottage opposite Winford Manor four years ago.
She said: ‘The last thing I wanted when I escaped further into the countryside was for an asylum centre to open up on my doorstep.
‘I went to the parish council meeting along with other upset villagers and members of the parish council – who were sat with members of the county council- told us ‘not to worry…it won’t be as bad as you think’.
‘But the issue is that we live in a small isolated community where everybody knows everybody and all of a sudden without warning people start turning up who we know nothing about and who don’t know us and are not familiar with our culture.
‘When they first arrived, there was an issue with female horse riders being jeered at by groups of migrant men who would congregate in groups in the village.
‘Some of the migrants have visitors who drive up to see them but because the visitors can’t stay with them in the manor, they sleep rough in their cars parked up in the neighbouring fields. The migrants come over to see them and they start camp fires.
‘I’ve been forced on more than a few occasions to go over and say ‘look this is private property, you’re going to have to leave’. I’m always very polite and to be fair there’s never a problem, they leave the land without issue.
‘A few nights ago the police were called because one of the residents was roaming the grounds of the manor being drunk and abusive at 3.30am.
‘I think a fair few of them struggle to deal with the isolation out here and get bored and frustrated which in turn affects their mental health.
‘I always try to speak to the migrant residents if I see them out in the village. There is a language barrier a lot of the time but one man told me in broken English that they’d been told not to mix with locals as the locals don’t want them here.
‘I asked what he did and he said he was a cook in his home country. I told him that he should come work for me in my cafe when he could.
He was a decent man, as I’m sure most of them are, it’s the unfamiliarity and the lack of communication from the government and council that has been the problem.’
Ms Rippingale said that recently asylum documents were found shredded all along the country lane outside Winford Manor stoking fears that some migrants are fleeing to go live with friends or family elsewhere in the UK illegally.
The document belonged to a man who had recently arrived at the manor from another asylum centre in Cardiff.
She added: ‘We believe it could be that whoever the paperwork belonged to didn’t want to be processed but wanted to sneak off and work in the black market somewhere.
‘It’s a tough situation to be in. What we don’t want to happen is for violent protests to start erupting outside like they have done in Epping and Canary Wharf. That won’t do anyone any good.
‘There are rumours anyway that the asylum centre is due to close either later this year or early next and a newly refurbished boutique hotel will take its place…whether that will ever happen remains to be seen.’
When the Mail contacted Avon and Somerset Police they had no record of a stabbing taking place at Winford Manor nor of officers being called to deal with a drunken abusive resident.
A couple, who asked not to be named, are currently selling their stone cottage opposite Winford Manor.
They admitted they feared the asylum centre may hamper the sale especially as police visit the property regularly and an air ambulance landed in fields behind their home last summer to deal with an incident.
Less than a mile from the manor is the tiny village of Winford, which has just 1,316 residents.
When the asylum centre was first set up, groups of migrants would head up the dark country lanes to the Prince of Waterloo pub.
One regular said: ‘They haven’t been in for a few years but when the hotel was first converted into an asylum centre, there’d be a small group of migrant men who’d come in during the evening.
‘There’d be four or five of them and one had a bank card that he’d use to pay for the drinks. How someone in a migrant centre had access to a bank card I don’t know, but there was never any tension with any of the locals.
‘They sat by themselves mostly because their English wasn’t too good.’
Built in the 1600s with extensions added in the 19th and 21st centuries, Winford Manor is half a mile from Bristol Airport and under the flight-path but sits in seven acres of neatly manicured land surrounded by peaceful countryside.
When it operated as a hotel, guests paid £78 a night from a room and were offered a shuttle service to and from Bristol Airport.
Photographs from 2017 show lavish weddings taking place at the hotel and in gazebos set up in the grounds.
During his report for GB News, Eton-educated Rees Mogg, dressed in a tailored suit and peering comically over the wall, appeared to suggest that asylum seekers were being ‘hidden’ in the hotel.
‘You’re actually in the middle of nowhere… it seems perhaps a good place to hide illegal migrants in,’ he opined.
The former MP, who lost his North East Somerset and Hanham seat to Labour last year, poked his head over the wall and called out to what appeared to be security staff: ‘Hello! Is this an illegal migrant place?’ They did not reply.
‘No-one we’ve seen looks like someone who would’ve come over here on a boat,’ he added, as he watched a man talk into a walkie-talkie.
Noting signs in Persian, French and Vietnamese alongside some in English dissuading people from littering, Rees-Mogg defended his reporting on the hotel adding: ‘The public deserve to know who is living in their communities.
‘These hotels are appearing in remote locations and the authorities’ unwillingness to be transparent about them means it is left to us to do so.’
Documents published by the local parish council suggested Winford Manor is made up of mainly single men but had 18 children aged from three years old to 14.
An email sent to the parish council by North Somerset Council officers in August 2022 noted: ‘Winford Manor has been identified by the Home Office as a hotel for asylum seekers awaiting their application to remain in the UK to be processed.
‘The council was only alerted to this a short time ago and it has been made clear to us that we cannot object to the use of the premises.’
Official land records show the Winford Manor Hotel was sold to IntSol in 2022 via a holding company, Winford Holding Ltd.
The company’s director, Antonio ‘Tony’ Kounnis, also runs a security firm and heads up the UK arm of a facial recognition company.
Upon completion of the sale, acting agents Christie & Co said IntSol had begun a ‘sizeable’ refurbishment project, including a renovation of the existing rooms and the addition of several more.
The Mail has contacted IntSol, the Home Office and North Somerset Council for comment.