What would James Bond have made of it all?

The modern-day owners of the English spy's famous home – Mereworth Castle – have some changes planned.

The Mereworth Castle estate wants to knock down a barn in the grounds of the Grade I-listed castle and erect a modern machinery barn and workshop in its place – at three times the size.

The property was the home of James Bond, then played by David Niven, in the 1967 Bond movie Casino Royale.

The movie opens with the heads of various international secret service agencies – played by John Huston, Charles Boyer, Kurt Kasznar and William Holden – arriving at the castle in an attempt to persuade Bond out of retirement.

The film was a spoof on the mainstream Bond series, coming out after You Only Live Twice, which starred Sean Connery in the Bond role, and before On Her Majesty's Secret Service, which had George Lazenby as Bond.

It had all the usual characters M, Miss Moneypenny, Q, and the evil SMERSH, and a host of stars who included Peter Sellers, Woody Allen, Orson Welles, Deborah Kerr, Charles Boyer, Peter O'Toole, George Raft, Terence Cooper, Ronnie Corbett and Derek Nimmo.

Glamour was provided by Ursula Andress, Barbara Bouchet and Jacqueline Bisset.

The film gave David Prowse his first movie role – later he was to play Darth Vader in Star Wars.

In the film, Mereworth Castle is blown up.

Fortunately, it did not happen for real, as it is considered the premier example of Palladin architecture in England – a copy of the 16th Century Villa Capra Rotonda designed by Andre Palladio in Vicenza, northern Italy.

The castle estate already has a machinery store but it is not large enough for all the equipment and the applicants say they are suffering security issues when leaving the equipment outside.

Some 230m from the castle, hidden in woodland, is a slightly decaying open-sided concrete and steel-framed barn with a corrugated roof, thought to date from the late 20th Century.

The application seeks to demolish that barn and build a larger secure store to hold the 155-hectare estate's plant.

The applicants say the barn is sufficiently distant from the castle and its two listed pavilions as to cause no harm to the heritage setting, although the castle's parkland is itself listed Grade II* and the site is within a conservation area.

Mereworth Parish Council has raised no objections.

The application can be viewed here, the listed building consent application number is 22/02227 and the planning application number is 22/02226.

For more details about the movie Casino Royale, the history of the castle and its architectural merits, visit here.

The castle is now owned by Mohamed Mahdi Al-Tajir, a United Arab Emirates-born billionaire, who also owns the Highland Spring bottled water company.

The Sunday Times has previously estimated that he is the 44th richest man in Britain.