An eccentric property owner who painted her multi-million-pound townhouse in red and white stripes today compared herself to St George being attacked by the dragon as she tried to overturn a court order to repaint it.
Zipporah Lisle-Mainwaring, 67, was accused of painting the property to “get her own back” on neighbours who objected to her planning application - an allegation she denies.
But residents in Kensington branded the property an “eyesore” after it was painted with red and white stripes.
Now she is appealing against an order issued by the council to repaint the front of the three-storey house white, and to also carry out repairs to windows, as it falls inside the Kensington Square Conservation Area.
Hammersmith magistrates heard the red stripes were painted on to the house on March this year in “around five-and-a-half hours”.
Ms Lisle-Mainwaring, who appeared in court wearing a long multi-coloured dressing gown-like coat, claimed the council’s order forcing her to repaint the house was “a response by the council to a press campaign.”
She claimed a neighbour had “waded in” to the dispute.
She said: “I have had a neighbour who has certainly waded in as if they are St George on the dragon; perhaps the dragon rather than St George.”
But Andrew Parkinson, representing the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, said: “There is nothing at all to suggest that the press campaign played any part in the council’s actions.”
He added: “The council would have taken action even if the story had never made it to press.”
David Wright, a senior planning enforcement officer who drafted a report on the house, said the council was contacted by a “large number of people” after a story about the house being painted in stripes appeared in the press.
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