IT was meant to be a new start in her troubled marriage but Katie Price’s decade at her Mucky Mansion has been beset by feuds, fights, pet deaths, building disasters and eye-watering bills.
This week bailiffs finally took possession of the 11-bedroom West Sussex home after the glamour model’s long battle to cling onto the 12 acre property ended.
It was first given the nickname Mucky Mansion after the scummy swimming pool and overgrown grounds featured on an episode of Through the Keyhole in 2017.
Reports followed of her septic tank leaking, pet poo being left on her home’s floors, smashed windows and “empty drugs wraps” on dirty beds.
For Katie, 46 the dream home became a money pit and she has complained the house is “cursed”, bringing her “nothing but hell” over the last decade.
Once worth £45million she is now bankrupt.
She is said to have splashed out £10,000 doing up her bedroom in 2018 because then boyfriend Kris Boyson wouldn’t sleep in the spot used by her ex-husband Kieran Hayler.
The heating bills were £25,000 a year, £120,000 was spent on staff including gardeners and nannies and over £200,000 went on farm equipment.
But attempts to monetise the 1930s house, including a beauty spa, farm and ‘how to be Katie’ days, failed to stem the spiralling debts.
Katie was declared bankrupt for a second time this year and owes the taxman £750,000.
She has admitted the home near Horsham was a disaster zone, saying: “Nine years of hell I’ve had there.
“Fly-tipping, it’s haunted and I am living with it. And whoever buys that house, good luck. I hate it.”
The I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here star bought the house from former senior Conservative cabinet minister Francis Maude in 2014 for £1.3million a year after she married third husband Kieran.
The move was intended to be a fresh start for the couple after she forgave him for cheating with her best friend, Jane Pountney.
She splashed out on a tractor for £80,000, a milking machine worth £40,000 and a personalised £70,000 Land Rover.
Nine years of hell I’ve had there
Katie Price
He repaid her by sleeping with their nanny Nikki Brown in their marital home.
Kieran admitted: “This wasn’t a big love affair, I didn’t fancy Nikki. I’m a sex addict and needed a thrill.”
She began divorce proceedings in 2018 and then got engaged to Kris Boyson in July 2019.
But they split a month later after Katie admitted cheating on him.
Personal trainer Kris was then questioned by police following claims he’d threatened her new flame, electrician Charles Drury, at the home later that year.
Boyson allegedly arrived at her door with some pals and threatened to break Drury’s legs.
Katie split with Drury after a short fling and moved on with Carl Woods, who she split with in 2023.
A raid on the property by “three men in balaclavas” , in 2020, left Katie living in fear of kidnap attempts and police put her on “high alert”.
She also revealed she had three online kidnap threats and feared her kids would be put in danger.
Speaking of her string of bad luck she said: “While all of that was happening, my marriage failed.
“My friends were betraying me, we’ve had two dogs that have died here, a horse that has died here. I’ve even had kidnap threats here as well.
“Just a lot of horrible, horrible stuff here, you know? Sadness here. I can’t tell you how much I hated this house and it just all accumulates in your brain.”
It also became a magnet for fly-tippers who unloaded huge mountains of debris all over the 10-acre property.
She told recently how acid was thrown over her pink Range Rover and added: “What’s really scary is, a few months ago people vandalised my gates saying you ‘f***ing w***e, you s**g’.”
There was even more heartache over the menagerie of animals Katie kept on the sprawling property.
Her pets included horses, Sphynx cats, llamas, goats, pigs and sheep.
She admitted “My house is never quiet. It’s a madhouse. Dogs, cats, kids, horses,'”
Many didn’t survive.
It was reported that Katie thought that her pet chameleon Marvin died from a “broken heart” after her son Junior, 19, went to live with his dad Peter Andre, who divorced the former topless model in 2009.
Katie’s dogs Sparkle, Sharon, Queenie and Blade all died after reportedly being struck by cars on the road outside the mansion.
My house is never quiet. It’s a madhouse. Dogs, cats, kids, horses
Katie Price
In 2020, Katie’s pet dog Rolo suffocated at her home. The French Bulldog, who was a present for daughter Princess for her 13th birthday, reportedly died after getting stuck in an electric armchair.
She also lost a horse, in 2017, which had to be put down after being hit by a vehicle after escaping the grounds leaving Katie “devastated.”
Other horses were reportedly seen running along or close to busy A24 close to her home.
As the bills escalated Katie sold or gave many of her pets away.
Gradually, the mum-of-five’s brood slimmed down as well.
At the peak of her career Katie had an estimated fortune of £45m, thanks to her lucrative modelling career, book deals, and TV appearances.
The cash-strapped mum-of-five was first declared bankrupt in 2019 over unpaid debts of £3.2 million.
In a podcast interview earlier this year she blamed her exes who include Peter Andre, Alex Reid and Kieran Hayler and lawyers for her money woes.
She insisted that funding her exes’ lavish lifestyles with cars, watches, luxury holidays and homes left her finances in tatters.
She added: “I went through a breakdown, this is how mine started – lawyers and exes, that is my bankruptcy thing.
“And obviously a bit of HMRC.
“When I had my breakdown, if anyone has been depressed …. I don’t know if you’ve ever had depression…
“It starts with depression and you just want to sleep all day and not talk to anyone, the phone would ring and you wouldn’t answer it.’
Katie was declared bankrupt for a second time in March over an unpaid tax bill of £761,994.05.
The demand for payment was made by HMRC last October.
Katie was due to give evidence about her finances at the High Court but failed to turn up – holidaying in Cyprus with her new man JJ Slater instead.
Her Mucky Mansion was a bomb site for years after it was burgled, flooded and swamped by an overflowing septic tank.
She finally moved out at the end of May and is currently renting a four-bed mansion in Sussex.
Both Junior and Princess, 17, now live with pop star Peter, while Harvey, who has a rare syndrome, was placed in a specialist residential college in 2021 where he received 24 hours supervision.
Katie still has son Jett, ten, and daughter Bunny, nine, from her marriage to Kieran, living with her.
Her kids saw “ghosts” in the mansion, which she believes is haunted.
Katie said Jett wouldn’t stay in his bedroom because he “says there’s a boy ghost attached to him.”
Eviction threats
As she battled personal turmoil, she was also under constant stress over Mucky Mansion and fighting to stop her home being taken away during bankruptcy proceedings.
The pad, once valued at £2 million, would have been hard to sell due to its poor state.
Her eldest son Harvey, 22, broke three windows and a door, weeds sprouted from the patio and her cat peed in the fireplace.
Ex-caretaker Charlie Farthing claimed in 2020 that the house was littered with dog poo and he’d found “empty drugs wraps” under a mattress.
Katie made several attempts at a makeover.
She added a gym and beauty studio and a horse exercise area, but those developments faced planning red tape.
The council ordered her to halt the stables expansion in 2019.
Rightmove recently estimated the property recently at just over £1m – and Katie’s not helping the sale.
“I hate that house. Whoever buys it, I warn them, they will get bad luck there,” she has said.
“It is absolute cursed. My anxiety got worse with that house. There was a point when I couldn’t even walk up the driveaway without having a panic attack.
“I had therapy about the house. I should never have gone back there. Now I’m out of it it’s the best thing I’ve ever done.”
Katie and her two youngest children now live together nearby in a new home in Haywards Heath complete with underfloor heating.
She said: “I love my new home.”
Surely, it can’t be as hectic as her old one.
