On paper, at least, The House in the genteel Buckinghamshire village of Bourne End is a very fine residence.

Estate agents trying to flog the £1.75m, seven-bedroom, eight-bathroom ‘outstanding individual home in a blissfully rural setting’ appear to have consumed an entire dictionary of superlatives in order to extol its virtues. The property is, by turns, fantastic, incredible, sumptuous, lovely, remarkable, idyllic, wonderful, decadent.

No mention, however, of the extraordinary, poisonous, vicious, vindictive family row which lies behind the attempted sale of the property; or the super-rich father and son who are currently at each other’s throats in the High Court in London, each claiming that they own The House, each accusing the other of lies and deceit.

The gate of ‘The House’ in the genteel Buckinghamshire village of Bourne End

Wealthy businessman Michael Parker, 61, who spoke exclusively to the Mail last week, said he transferred the ranch-style mansion to 31-year-old Tom for inheritance tax purposes as part of a trust agreement. It was done on the clear understanding, he said, that until his death he would retain a ‘lifetime interest’ in the property.

But Tom, who now goes by the name Parker-Bowyer, claims his father ‘gifted’ him the property in 2019 because he was so heavily mortgaged he risked losing the house. He claims to have used his own £200,000 savings and a £1.2 million mortgage to pay off his father’s mortgage, with his father gifting him the remaining equity.

Tom Parker-Bowyer in front of The House at the centre of the bitter family feud

Michael Parker, above, says he transferred the ranch-style mansion to 31-year-old Tom for inheritance tax purposes as part of a trust agreement

Tom says that the luxurious property is ‘rightfully mine’

‘He hasn’t just fallen out with me, he’s fallen out with the entire family,’ Michael Parker told me last week. ‘It’s all about money. He’s a brat and these are the consequences. There’s a line you don’t cross and he’s gone beyond it.

‘I don’t know why he’s behaving like this. It’s not the way he was brought up. It’s a totally disgraceful situation that nobody should be proud of. I actually said that to the judge in court last month.’

Meanwhile, Tom said: ‘I never wanted any of this but the house is rightfully mine. I have the title deeds and it is registered in my name. My father has no legal right to the house.’

Michael is also suing over the ownership of £300,000 worth of property left inside the house, some of which he accuses Tom of selling, including a £12,000 baby grand piano and a £7,000 glass statue, not to mention £40,000 to £50,000 worth of gym equipment and a portrait of the late Queen.

Tom, who claims the contents came as a package costing him an extra £10,000, is counter-suing his father, insisting on payment for a £24,000 energy bill and demanding an injunction banning his father from ‘trespassing’ by entering The House or its surrounding grounds.

The enormous light-filled kitchen at the grand design

Spacious and contemporary hallway leading to grandiose stairway

With what one lawyer described as ‘bitter and roaming’ accusations — including drunkenness, philandering and stalking — being flung around in court last month, relations between father and son have been left in tatters.

On one occasion, Tom called the police claiming that his father was looking through the windows of The House.

Michael, who lives next door to The House in a separate gated development called Babs Park, told me that in an act of spite, Tom had destroyed old family photographs left behind at the property. ‘He put photos of members of my family who are no longer with us into a skip and burnt them,’ said Michael.

Tom said this is ‘completely false’ and that all contents from The House are being held in long-term storage.

In court last month Michael accused his son of ‘wholesale character assassination’ and ‘mudslinging’, of making him out to be ‘a bad father, violent, threatening, devoid of emotional connection, a philanderer and everything else’.

The ongoing feud has also seen Tom estranged from his older brother. In court documents he has accused 35-year-old Eddie Parker of having a ‘mental health condition which results in compulsive lying behaviour’.

Other relatives have also been dragged into the affray after giving evidence on Michael’s behalf.

Michael Parker lives next door to The House in a separate gated development called Babs Park

Last year, when Tom married 31-year-old cake designer Kim, his father and brother were not at the ceremony. According to Michael, the only member of Tom’s immediate family who attended was his ex-wife Jane, Tom’s mother.

Tom, meanwhile, said that his father refused to return bespoke champagne with customised labels, ordered from France for his wedding and kept hidden at his father’s home before they fell out as a surprise for his future wife. ‘He refused to return it unless I agreed to his demands for settlement,’ he told me.

A hideous and messy state of affairs, indeed, then. Yet this isn’t the first time that the Parker family has turned to litigation to resolve a family dispute.

Back in 2017, Michael and his second ex-wife, Barbara, spent close to £3 million fighting over a luxury towel and bathrobe empire in what was dubbed Britain’s most toxic divorce. A judge warned they were in danger of frittering away their entire £10 million fortune. It was after this costly marital dispute, claimed Tom in court last month, that Michael ran into financial problems and faced having The House repossessed for failing to keep up with payments on a £1.4 million mortgage.

Tom, who runs his own floatation therapy business, said he offered to help out by taking out a £1.2 million mortgage on the property and putting in £200,000 of his own savings.

The property deeds were transferred into his name as the new legal owner. But when he decided to sell, Michael tried to stop him, insisting that he still had rights over the property.

The financial difficulties claim is hogwash, said property developer Michael, who once ran a company specialising in equipment for obesity surgery. According to his own account, transferring The House to Tom was done to minimise future inheritance tax.

He planned to do the same by giving neighbouring Babs Park, his other palatial home in the village of Bourne End, to his elder son, Eddie. ‘I didn’t want to leave my sons with problems when I died by not doing any tax planning,’ Michael told me last week. ‘Why would anyone leave their children with a tax nightmare to sort out when they’re dead?’

The arrangement, he said in court, included making monthly payments to Tom of £8,500 from one of his companies, solely to help him meet the mortgage repayments on The House.

The payments, which on paper were for the commercial rental of an outbuilding on land around The House, were made, said Michael, as part of an understanding that he would retain lifetime control of the property. Without them, he said, Tom would never have obtained such a huge mortgage on the property.

Seven years ago, Michael hit the headlines after racking up huge legal bills while divorcing his second wife, Barbara Cooke, above, as they fought over ownership of BC SoftWear,

According to court documents, several discussions about the plan were held, including one at the August 2019 funeral of Michael’s stepmother, Mary, which was overheard by other relatives including Tom’s 83-year-old grandfather, former RAF serviceman John Parker. A cousin also claimed in court that Tom was ‘nodding, smiling and agreeing’ throughout.

According to a statement given by Michael’s brother-in-law — and Tom’s uncle — Andrew Welch: ‘It is a funny old family, and whilst the conversation does not always centre on money, it often does.’

Which begs the questions: shouldn’t Michael, who now wants a declaration from the court that there was a ‘constructive trust’ agreement between him and his son, have been more careful when making arrangements?

‘It was common sense,’ he told me. ‘He and his brother were the only ones benefiting from the arrangement. It was my desire to help my sons long-term. If, at the end of the day, you can’t trust your own son then who can you trust?’

Tom denies that there was any such plan. He said that relations with his father broke down in 2020. ‘We had a fallout over how the businesses we ran should proceed and it just got worse from there,’ he said.

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Once his father’s company stopped paying rent for outbuildings on land around The House, Tom struggled to meet his mortgage repayments. He claims to have been driven to financial ruin and despair by the row and said he has been forced to borrow £200,000 and sell his former home in Ascot, Berkshire, as well as his car, just so that he can take his father to court. He said he has been forced to move in with his in-laws because living next door to his father became unbearable.

‘I just want to sell [the property] and move on,’ he told me.

Meanwhile, The House languishes on the market. The property is surrounded by two acres of landscaped grounds and boasts a 20ft games room, an Aqualift swimming pool with adjustable floor, a cinema and a bespoke kitchen built from American black walnut and Orissa blue granite.

‘This has taken over my life,’ said Tom. ‘I had to take out a second mortgage to pay the legal bills and my repayments are now £11,000 a month. I am being driven into financial ruin and although the house is up for sale, I wonder who will buy it when they know a legal fight is going on?’

Michael said his son is the architect of his own suffering and that their relationship will never recover. ‘He has chosen to go down this road,’ he told me. ‘He could have had a deal that would have seen him alright for the rest of his life. Instead, he’s going to have to spend the next 20 years recovering from this. He’ll get nothing from me when I die.’

Tom also said that his father will ‘never be a part of [his] life once this trial is concluded’.

He added: ‘I would have sold The House and moved on with my life if it were not for Mike taking litigation against me in the High Court.’

So is Tom really the ingrate his father paints him to be? Or is Michael, as his son puts it, a man who simply ‘likes legal action’?

‘Someone said he is at the High Court so often he has his own parking space,’ said Tom. Certainly, seven years ago, Michael hit the headlines after racking up huge legal bills while divorcing his second wife, Barbara Cooke, as they fought over ownership of BC SoftWear, a company that supplied towels and bathrobes to hotels and spas across the UK and Europe.

Tom Parker-Bowyer and his wife Kim on their wedding day

And in July 2012, a High Court judge found, on the balance of probabilities, that Michael had arranged an arson attack on a £1 million house which belonged to Barbara, as part of a failed insurance fraud. No criminal prosecution was ever brought.

At the same hearing, it was revealed that Michael had also made a fraudulent claim in relation to two watches he said had been stolen from his luggage. He was ordered to pay £55,000 to his insurer, the National Farmers Union Mutual Insurance Society.

Michael, who said the past is ‘old hat’, told me last week that ‘litigation is only for rich people and idiots, of which I’m neither’. He added: ‘The only winners are lawyers and barristers.’ Why on earth did he launch legal action against his son, then?

‘If he would have talked and been sensible and negotiated,’ he said, ‘there would have been another choice. Families shouldn’t be doing this in public.’

No doubt Deputy Master John Linwood, who, after a three-day trial, now faces the unenviable task of giving judgment on the matter, would agree.

But, as is so often the case when families fall out over money, all reason vanishes. Anger runs so deep that some would rather face financial ruin than compromise or give in.

Given the wealth the Parkers have enjoyed for decades — the luxury homes and cars and holidays, the private education — it should have been otherwise.

But as Groucho Marx once put it so succinctly: ‘While money can’t buy happiness, it certainly lets you choose your own form of misery.’