Van Hoogstraten’s palace is a monstrosity – but it’s not an insult to the homeless | Jonathan Jones

Neighbours are calling for empty Hamilton Palace, built by a notorious slum landlord, to be turned over to the homeless. But all property is equally theft

The British landscape is marked with grandiose architectural indulgences, from the ruins of gothic towers built by slave owners to columns that commemorate long-ago battles. Eccentric architecture is such a national tradition – kept very much alive today by Grayson Perry’s House for Essex with its gingerbread Hansel and Gretel nuttiness – that the English language even cherishes the formal architectural term, “folly”: an extravagant, decorative, apparently useless building. Apparently useless because Greek temples on aristocratic estates often turn out to be water towers in disguise.

Nicholas van Hoogstraten’s Hamilton Palace in Sussex is a folly – a colossal country house begun in 1985. Yet to judge from recent photographs it sits still unfinished and unlived-in, a vast cold husk of a place with scrappy builders’ debris scattered on one side while the other facade glares at a wintry English countryside. It is a singularly macabre structure, with a golden domed mausoleum for Van Hoogstraten at its centre. Is it a mansion or a tomb?

Related: Lynn Barber meets Nicholas van Hoogstraten

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