Couple lose £160,000 court battle against ‘monstrous’ neighbours over 6ft fence

A couple have lost a seven year court battle against their ‘monstrous’ millionaire neighbours in a bid to make them tear down a 6ft-high fence and now have to pay £160,000 damages.

Gary and Kerry Hambling thought they had found a perfect country idyll when they bought Garden Cottage, near Polstead, Suffolk, in 2015.

The four-bed home chocolate box home came with its own stable block and a two-acre field just yards away, across a drive owned by neighbours Garry and Jenny Wakerly.

But the couple soon found themselves embroiled in a bitter row with the Wakerly’s after they obtained planning permission to turn the field into a ‘car park’ for ‘vans and trucks’.

The Wakerly’s however were not pleased at the prospect of their driveway being turned into a through-road for large vehicles, and responded to the development by erecting a large fence which blocked off steps the Hamblings had built from their front door to the track, preventing them leaving their property in that direction.

The Hamblings say the fence has wiped £100,000 off the value of their £600,000 house, as well as blocking access from their stables to the field.

The duo eventually decided to sue their neighbours, asking a High Court judge to force them to reopen the ‘front door’ access and labelling the Wakerly’s actions as ‘monstrous’ and ‘deliberately and unpleasantly antagonistic’.

But judge Sir Anthony Mann instead ruled that the Hamblings have no right to get to their field from the cottage, said the fence can stay up and left the couple with  hefty court bill of at least £160,000.

During the trial of the case, the judge heard that the ‘unfortunate’ neighbours’ squabble started in 2016, about a year after the Hamblings had moved into Garden Cottage.

The Wakerlys were upset and ‘friction’ grew between the two parties about The Hamblings’ plans to turn part of their field into a car park.

They responded by telling Mr Hambling, 48, and Mrs Hambling, 44, that they were no longer permitted to cross over the driveway – which lies between the Hamblings’ front door and their field – to access the field from their house.

The Hamblings – who own a utilities installation company – had inherited a right of way to access their field up their neighbours’ track from the main A1071 Hadleigh Road when they bought the property, the court heard.

They were forbidden from getting to the cottage the same way under the right of way, but had been permitted to cross the track by their neighbours whilst relations were still friendly.

But in June 2017 after a frosty exchange of lawyers’ letters, during which the Hamblings were accused by their neighbours of ‘trespassing’ on the drive, the Wakerlys had contractors put up a 1.8m high close-boarded wooden fence, with concrete posts and gravel boards, along the edge of their drive and down one side of their neighbours’ front garden.

The fence effectively boxed them in, leaving them having to access their field via the driveway on the other side of their property and then along the 60mph main road.

The legal row centred on the wording of the right of way, granted to the then owners of the property in 2001 and stating that the Wakerlys’ driveway could be used ‘for access to the field not to Garden Cottage’.

The case reached court initially in 2021 when Judge Karen Walden-Smith at Norwich County Court ruled in favour of the Wakerlys and allowed the fence blocking off Garden Cottage from the track and the field to remain.

Giving her judgment in September 2021, she described the row as a “highly unfortunate case where owners of two country properties have not been able to find a way in which they can co-exist without friction.’

But challenging that finding in the High Court last month, Dermot Woolgar, for Mr and Mrs Hambling, said the judge in the county court had misinterpreted the wording of the right of way.

He argued that the Hamblings had the right to use the front door of their cottage from the track if they had travelled up it from the road to their field first, or were going to the cottage for reasons connected to activities being carried on in the field.

But Charles Irvine, for the Wakerlys, asked the judge to throw out their neighbours’ case and let the fence stand as it is.

‘The transfer wording is clear that the track should only be used ‘for access to the field not to Garden Cottage’, i.e. for access to and from the field and not to and from the cottage.

‘Contrary to Mr and Mrs Hamblings’ case, its meaning is as straightforward as the judge found,” he said.

Ruling in the Wakerlys’ favour, Sir Anthony Mann said: ‘The grantor of the (right of way) did not want the track blocked by domestic and delivery vehicles as being a reason why it was framed so as to exclude the possibility of the right of way being used for access to the cottage at all.

‘I agree with the judge that the natural meaning of the words is as she said.

‘It follows that this appeal is dismissed,’ the judge concluded.

The Hamblings previously disclosed that the original county court trial cost them £100,000 and the appeal another £60,000.

Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.

For more stories like this, check our news page.