Gruelling journey to an idyllic country mansion

"I haven't answered your question yet". It's been two hours since I arrived at Goldsborough Hall and Mark Oglesby has talked, almost without pause, while giving me a tour of the building, answering the phone, speaking to his wife and fielding visitors.

It's been a mazy tour through his own history – building a business, staving off collapse and a David versus Goliath High Court battle – and that of the 17th century home which he has taken over.

The hall, near Knaresborough in North Yorkshire, was Princess Mary's stately home in the 1920s.

Its tale has even more twists and turns than Mr Oglesby's story, and has seen spells as a country house and hunting lodge, a school, during the Second World War, and a nursing home.

Its interior features have ranged from an assisted bathroom for the elderly to stained glass windows, given to the princess by the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem in the 1920s.

Private health provider Bupa had closed the home in May 2003 and there had been no central heating or maintenance for two years, Mr Oglesby said.

When he and his wife, Clare, bought the building in October 2005, it was a mess.

The gravel in the drive had turned to grass and the estate was more like the cobwebbed home of Miss Havisham than that of an Edwardian royal.

"The place was really falling apart. There was no kitchen and no running water. The place was disgusting. We set about trying to find a way for the building to exist," said the 39-year-old father of two.

What it did have, however, was a roof, a lift and a lift shaft. So a very long journey began.

So far, the Oglesbys have spent 2m on renovating Goldsborough Hall and expect to spend the same amount again.

It has been paid for in part by the profits from the sale of technology firm Efax and now it is an exceptionally upmarket guest house.

Each bedroom is named after one of the owners – including an Oglesby suite – but they are all different, featuring luxuries such as a four-poster bed, a 150in remote-controlled cinema screen and a huge sunken whirlpool set in the bay window.

It won five gold stars from the AA and now it has its own chef too. Last year it staged 40 weddings, including a meal for 165 people, and it expects to do the same again this year.

Sitting in a tweed jacket in his wood-panelled living room Mr Oglesby, the son of an renowned angling expert, who is married to a former journalist on shooting and fishing magazine The Field who is the daughter of a captain in the Black Watch, might sound like an archetypal member of the landed gentry.

In fact, Mr Oglesby is far from the Bertie Wooster stereotype. Although he came from an affluent family – which could have been even better off had Mr Oglesby's great-grandfather, who made a fortune from selling gripe mixture to small children, not left all the money to the Church – he chose not to make a career in the City or in the law, but to work in marketing and printing.

It was during this time that he created the technology to automatically convert fax to email in 1997.

The firm he was working for at the time was not particularly interested in fostering this innovation, so he and the company agreed he would leave and then be re-hired as a freelance. E-fax.co.uk was born.

"Back then everybody had a fax, " Mr Oglesby said. I came up with the idea – why doesn't email talk to fax and tax talk to email?"

Mr Oglesby did not even have the money to buy the domain name for Efax initially but eventually he mustered the 50 needed and got started in Brough, East Yorkshire.

He hooked up with a business partner and together they built the business, getting up, starting work at breakfast time and often staying in their pyjamas all day. It if it sounds an unglamorous life, then it was. It was intense and work was only broken up by boil-in-the-bag and microwave meals.

The business was picking up slowly, with law firms and hotels prominent among their customers, when it all very nearly came to a sudden halt.

An American company called Efax.com tried to buy Mr Oglesby's domain name in 1999 and after he refused to sell, it took him to court, trying to get an injunction against his use of the British version of the name.

The problem was that Mr Oglesby's business was dwarfed by that of Efax.com, which had far more subscribers.

"It was a multimillion pound company branding itself as automated fax to email conversion which is exactly what we were trying to do," says Mr Oglesby, aghast.

The Yorkshire entrepreneur's venture was still a fledgling one so, in order to fund his defence and keep the business alive, Mr Oglesby took on numerous debts.

"I had every credit card going. By 2000 I was probably 200,000 in debt. To keep the banks happy I always paid off more than the minimum amount.

"I remember one morning when were going to have to give up and then I got a letter from the bank saying they were going to increase the credit limit. So we could keep going for a few more weeks."

Mr Oglesby was struggling to find a solicitor who didn't "want 2,000 just to come and talk to us" but then he met Andrew Clay, an intellectual property specialist at Hammonds, who was prepared to take a risk on this young businessman.

His business was virtually on hold for six months but then, in February 2000, the case made it to the High Court where the American company's claims were thrown out.

Four years later Efax.com was sold to rival Jfax.com and then Mr Oglesby finally sold up as well – although he says a confidentiality agreement prevents him from revealing how much he got for his business.

Clearly, it was enough for him to begin a new chapter in his life, as well as to turn another page in the long and meandering tale of Goldsborough Hall.

Building with a place in history

Goldsborough Hall was built between 1601 and 1625. Sir Richard Hutton, a prominent London lawyer, bought the village and began construction on raised land close to the medieval church.

It was constructed on three stories, which the building retains today.

Sir Richard died in 1639 and the estate passed to his son, who was also called Sir Richard Hutton and became MP for Knaresborough during the 1620s and also High Sheriff of Yorkshire.

The younger Sir Richard was Governor of Knaresborough Castle when the Civil War broke out and took the King's side, fighting at the Battle of Marston Moor in 1644.

While he was fighting, Oliver Cromwell's army occupied Goldsborough Hall under Cromwell's cousin, Lt Col Edward Whalley, while they destroyed Knaresborough Castle.