Woman wins £800,000 country manor with £2 raffle ticket

Now that's called luck!

An 18th century country house worth £800,000 becomes home to a finance worker after she purchased a winning raffle ticket for just £2.

Marie Segar, the winner learned on Tuesday that she was the new owner of the Lancashire house, reports The Guardian.



Segar will also receive the title of Lady of Melling, which was raffled off alongside the property. She joked that she would be changing the name on her bank card to Lady Marie.

The six-bedroom semi-detached manor in Lancashire was raffled off by Dunstan Low, who was struggling to sell it on the open market.

He bought the Georgian six-bedroom property, where he lived with his wife Natasha and their two children for £435,000 in 2014 and spent £150,000 on refurbishments.

Low received no offers for its asking price of £800,000, so came up with the idea of selling enough £2 tickets to recover his money.

The draw attracted entries from as far as China, Russia and Mauritius by those hoping to win the mansion, which has a ballroom, cinema room, wood-burning stove, parking for six cars and far-reaching views of the Lake District and Yorkshire Dales.

When he called Segar, from Warrington in Cheshire, to inform her of the good news, she accused him of messing around.

"I'm just in shock. I can’t believe it, I just can’t. I don’t have a plan, I entered and I never thought for a moment, you know I haven’t even told anybody! Thank you so much!," she told Low.



The title of Lady of Melling was given to the raffle as a prize by its previous owner, St John’s Hospice in North Lancashire, as a thank you for a £30,000 donation the Low family gave from their competition earnings.

Low said he has raised almost £900,000 from the raffle and that Marie had purchased 20 tickets for £40.