We're taking our millionaire neighbours to court after they boxed us in with 6ft fence – we can't get to our front door | The Sun

A FUMING couple have said they are taking their millionaire neighbours to court after being boxed in with a 6ft fence.

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



The four bedroom house boasts massive gardens, its own stable block and a two-acre field just yards away, across a drive owned by neighbours Garry and Jenny Wakerly.

But they had a row with the Wakerlys in 2016 – whose luxurious £1m house lies on the same former farm as their property.

It led to their neighbours erecting a fence and blocking off steps the Hamblings had built from their front door to the track.

The fence travels along the edge of their drive and down one side of their neighbours front garden and effectively boxed them in.

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Gary and Kerry claim this not only prevented them leaving their property in that direction, but decimated the value of their home.

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

They added that the massive fence has cut off the views across the field previously enjoyed from their living room and making the ground floor of their house dark.

Gary and Kerry are now asking a High Court judge to force their neighbours to reopen their "front door" access, labelling their actions "deliberately and unpleasantly antagonistic".

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While the Wakerlys say the Hamblings have been using the door to unlawfully "trespass" on their driveway whilst going between their cottage and the field, and that they put up the fence to stop them.

Judge Sir Anthony Mann heard that the Wakerlys were upset and "friction" grew about plans the Hamblings had to make changes to their rural property, and in particular when they turned part of their field into a "car park" for "vans and trucks".

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 court heard that the Hamblings had inherited a right of way to access their field up their neighbours' track from the main road when they bought the property.

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

But in June 2017 the Hamblings were accused by their neighbours of "trespassing" on the drive, leading the Wakerlys to hire contractors to put up a 1.8m high close-boarded wooden fence, with concrete posts and gravel boards.

The legal row now centres on the wording of the right of way, granted stating that the Wakerlys' driveway could be used "for access to the field not to Garden Cottage”.

And in 2021 Judge Karen Walden-Smith ruled in favour of the Wakerlys and allowing the fence blocking off Garden Cottage from the track and the field to remain.

Giving her judgment, 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.

"The complaint is that the fence blocks off the opening to the stables, effectively stops them from having access to and from – what they consider to be – the front door to Garden Cottage and interrupts their views and the natural light into the property.

"The behaviour of Mr and Mrs Wakerly has been described by counsel to Mr and Mrs Hambling as being '… monstrous conduct. It was deliberately and unpleasantly antagonistic. It must have been intended to intimidate.'"

Finding for the Wakerlys, she said they were entitled to put up the fence because the right of way up the track was only for the use of the field, while Garden Cottage had its own access on the other side of the property.

"The effect of the fence has been to make the front door to the cottage redundant."

Challenging that finding in the High Court, 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.

Mr Woolgar said: "The effect of the fence has been to make the front door to the cottage redundant, and to make it impossible to go from the stables through the gate, across the track, and into the field.

"The issue is whether the transfer permits that right of way to be exercised only to and from the highway…or whether it also permits that right of way to be exercised to and from Garden Cottage.

"Even if it does not, Mr and Mrs Hambling contend that the right of way enables them to make use of it to go to and from Garden Cottage for purposes which are ancillary to their use of the field.

"The right of way was not happily drafted. Given its textual weaknesses, and having regard to the geographical and practical realities, its meaning is not as straightforward as the judge found.

"Perhaps above all else, it is a stretch too far to suppose that the objective intention of the parties to the transfer was to render the front door to the cottage redundant forever after.

"No one would suppose that the seller would have wanted to prevent the buyers and their successors in title, having driven a vehicle along the track and into the field, from leaving the vehicle and walking across and/or along the track to the front door of the cottage, or indeed any other part of Garden Cottage, and returning back along the same route to get into the vehicle and to drive it out onto the highway again.

"All of these activities are obviously reasonable. If they were not to be permitted, the transfer needed to say so in clear words. It did not."

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," he said.

"Contrary to Mr and Mrs Hamblings' case, its meaning is as straightforward as the judge found. There is an express prohibition to, at any point, be on the track to access to or egress from the cottage.

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"A car park is situated on the field, leaving little room to ride horses and the appellants have never used the field for horses."

The judge reserved his ruling on the case at the end of a day long hearing and will give his decision at a later date.


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