A COUPLE has lost a £160,000 fight to force their neighbours to tear down a six-foot fence.
Gary and Kerry Hambling claimed the wooden fence wiped thousands off the value of their dream country home, and were battling to have it ripped down.
But, after spending an estimated £160,000 on a hearing and appeal, the Hamblings have lost their fight.
The couple had been feuding with neighbours Garry and Jenny Wakerly over access to their Suffolk £600,000 home for about six years.
It all kicked off between the couples when the Hambings started using their own field as a “car park” for “vans and trucks”, a court heard.
The field sits opposite their house, known as Garden Cottage, but on the other side of the Wakerlys’ driveway.
The neighbours then told the pair they were no longer allowed to cross the driveway to access their field and house as they had their own right of way to get to their home.
In 2017 the Wakerlys accused their neighbours of “trespassing” on the drive and then had the six-foot fence installed.
It lined their driveway, and went along one side of their neighbours’ front garden.
The Hamblings said this effectively boxed them in and forced them to access their field by driving out their own driveway, onto the main road, and then back up the Wakerlys’ drive.
In 2021 judge Judge Karen Walden-Smith ruled in favour of the Wakelys and allowed them to build the fence.
At the time she called the row 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”.
She said the Wakelys were entitled to put up a fence as the right of way was only for the use of the field.
But the Hamblings’ lawyer Dermot Woolgar argued they had the couple had the right to use the front door of their home if they had travelled up it front the road to their field first.
Charles Irvine, for the Wakerlys, disagreed, saying: “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.”
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.
“The grant actually forbids access to and from the cottage, and that must mean wherever one is coming from. There is no scope for arguing for ‘ancillary’ use in those circumstances.
“It follows that this appeal is dismissed.”
