Ron’s Place: cash loan saves palace of outsider art at last minute

Ron Gittins transformed his rented flat into an ornate classical villa featuring sculptures, murals and artefacts depicting ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome. Photograph: Christopher Thomond/The Guardian

An extraordinary palace of outsider art secretly created in a ground-floor flat in Birkenhead has been saved after a last-minute cash loan offer from a benefactor.

Campaigners had feared the flat, known as Ron’s Place, would be stripped of its art and lost forever after the house it is in was put up for auction.