When the developers came knocking on the door of a Castle Hill grandmother, they made her a stunning offer.

They’d like to develop her corner block, just over the road from the shops and 200 metres from the site of the upcoming rail station, they told her. And in a rezoned neighbourhood where so many of the other home-owners had banded together to sell amalgamated parcels of land, they’d pay her handsomely.

“But I told them no,” says 82-year-old retired schoolteacher Ruth, who’s asked that her surname not be used. “Then they kept coming back. You’ll never believe what they ended up offering me – $26 million!”

To one side of Ruth, across the road, a consolidated block of five properties on Garthowen Crescent sold in late 2014 to developers for $20.5 million. With Ruth sitting on a 2500-square-metre slice of land in a choice position with double the density potential, she’s become a prime development target. Not surprisingly another neighbour has just decided to sell too.

“I don’t care if they offer me $50 million.”Ruth, Castle Hill homeowner

Ruth, however, is a lady not for turning. In a suburb where large swaths of land are set to be transformed from a series of large detached dwellings on sizeable blocks to medium and high-density living with row after row of tower blocks, she recognises life will never be the same again, but she will not give in.

“I don’t care if they offer me $50 million,” says the sprightly, white-haired woman who just loves tending her sprawling garden, collecting eggs from her chickens and crocheting rug after rug for the Hamlin Fistula Hospital charity in Ethiopia.

“I have no intention of leaving. Of course it’s a lot of money, and my children would love me to sell, but it’s irrelevant to me. Things are changing, I can see that happening, and I think I will be lonely here in a way when the neighbours move out and they pull their houses down. But money isn’t everything.”

It’s a masterclass in old-fashioned community values holding fast against big business dollars. “Why would I leave?” she says. “Where would I go? I’m very happy here. There’s nowhere else I’d rather be. This is my home.”

Tamworth-born Ruth and her late shopkeeper husband Elli bought the land 55 years ago, and she designed the house they built on the plot. It turned out smaller than she’d intended; she wrote down the measurements she’d planned for the interiors – which ended up dictating the exteriors instead.

But she loves it, and points out the towering pin oak tree to the front of the house that she planted 51 years ago, her grandsons’ favourite mulberry tree they spend hours climbing and the trees that yield the biggest quantities of oranges, lemons, grapefruit and cumquats every year.

Then there’s the mass of agapanthus, violets, jonquils and hibiscus, and the church nearby that she later discovered had been where her great-great-uncle married in 1874.

“I’ve been glad that other people have done well selling,” says the grandmother to six and mother of six with her eldest child 56 and her youngest, 46 – as well as to some state wards she took in.

“But this has always been a lovely place, with a great community spirit. I went to the Girl Guides at the end of the road, we set up a soccer club here, there was the pony club and the yearly shows, and all the neighbours used to get together for lunch.

“It was about working together to help each other out and I couldn’t walk down the street without seeing people I knew. It always had a lovely atmosphere. It used to be paddocks and people rode their horses along the street.”

The local real estate agents can’t help admiring Ruth’s stand, either. A lot of people hold out for a while against developers, they say, in the hope of extracting a higher price for their land, but Ruth genuinely doesn’t want to sell.

“Ruth probably has the highest-value property in Castle Hill, but she won’t sell,” says Ray White Castle Hill agent Kieron Stedman, who said the interest from developers was “even higher” than $26 million.

“The site that Ruth is on can achieve, according to draft plans, more than double the density of the neighbouring blocks that sold and hence the value is substantially higher,” Stedman says.

“She just prefers to stay in a place she can walk across the road to the shops, and soon, the station. She’s quite forthright about it.”

CBRE’s Matthew Ramsay feels similarly. “Certain people refuse to sell out of greed, wanting to get a special deal,” he says. “But that doesn’t apply to her.

“But I think people have to understand that this is going to be an ongoing situation all around Sydney into the future. And when we explain the benefits of selling most people usually agree.”