It was the Christmas present to end all Christmas presents.

Present company: Nigel and Kathryn Kissack look forward to moving into their new house, rear, a £400,000 Christmas gift from Mr Kissack to his wife.

When top lawyer Nigel Kissack set his sights on a £400,000 dream house in York, he decided it would make the ideal festive surprise for his wife Kathryn.

So Mr Kissack, a partner at leading law firm Pincent Curtis, which has offices in Leeds, London and Birmingham, got his own company to handle the deal - and had a team of people at work on Christmas Eve to push it through by the Christmas deadline.

While the family were having dinner at home, the call finally came through that contracts had been exchanged and the property, one of The Mount School's former boarding houses, was officially theirs.

Mr Kissack said: "I wanted to exchange before Christmas because we were going away on holiday for Christmas and I wanted to know it was all sorted.

"They actually exchanged contracts at about 8.30pm on Christmas Eve as we were having dinner.

"I'm a lawyer and my conveyancing department was working very hard on my behalf, in fact I think my conveyancing lawyer had to leave a carol service early to deal with it.

"My wife was very happy, she had been hoping and hoping and hoping and I had been trying and trying and trying, as were my conveyancing staff and Savilles the estate agent and Ebor Developments and everybody, but it all happened in the end."

Mr Kissack, his wife Kathryn and his two teenage children Annabel and Richard had moved to York from Manchester in September, when the children started the new term at St Peter's School.

They had been looking for a suitable property to buy ever since and after months of searching, finally set their hearts on the three-storey Georgian property in The Mount.

Mrs Kissack said: "It was a nerve-racking day because we really wanted to get the thing sorted out before Christmas as we were going away and if something isn't signed you are not contractually bound and we really just wanted to be settled and have a home.

"It was a very complicated conveyance because it is part of a larger package and it was just lovely to get it all tied up in the eleventh hour.

"It was a nice Christmas present."

Mrs Kissack said it was advisable to visit the property, which at the moment is just a shell, wearing wellies as it resembles a quagmire and needs a lot of work.

But there are big plans afoot including the installation of five bathrooms and a large kitchen.

And it is comforting to know Mrs Kissack would not have had to go without a Christmas present if the deal had not gone through. She said: "I got my bag of goodies from Harvey Nichols as well."

£400,000 is only the price for the shell of the house.

Mrs Kissack estimated they will have spent in excess of half a million pounds on the property by the time all the building and decorating work has been done.

see COMMENT 'What a surprise'

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.