A COUPLE face having their home repossessed and sold by their neighbour after a heated row over a garden hedge.
Ron and Wendy Long were devastated when they found workmen chopping down a hedge between their home and neighbour Diana Lambeth’s house.
Workmen later installed a large fence to separate the two homes in Swanage, Dorset, but Ron claims he was not consulted.
The 72-year-old also said the fence posts they half-installed were on his land, and wrote letters asking Ms Lambeth to inform him of her plans.
But instead she took the grandparents to court, in pursuit of an injunction to stop them interfering with the work.
An independent expert decided the boundary was in the middle of the old hedge – and the Longs agreed in a bid to end the matter.
But despite the Longs representing themselves in court, the judge ordered them to pay Mrs Lambeth’s court costs – £13,792.
Without any money to pay, they were hauled back to court and the charge was placed on their £650,000 three-bed home.
They have now been told Mrs Lambeth intends to take them to court for an order of possession and sale of their home.
Her lawyers have warned Ron and Wendy, 61, they’ll ask the judge to make the couple pay the legal costs incurred.
When you say all this is over a garden fence, people can’t believe it. I’m not out to get revenge. I don’t want to give my neighbour grief.
Ron Long
Retired flooring contractor Ron, said: “We’ve done nothing wrong, we’ve broken no laws, and we followed all the advice we could find – yet we find ourselves in this situation.
“When you say all this is over a garden fence, people can’t believe it. I’m not out to get revenge. I don’t want to give my neighbour grief.
“I don’t want to shame my neighbours, but I want to make people aware of what can happen to you.
“We never thought this could happen to us. We never thought someone could take our home over a hedge.
“All I want is some help to bring this to a close. We don’t want someone else to sell our home.”
Keen gardener Ron happily maintained his side of the hedge between their homes after he moved in in 2001.
But he claims he came home in May 2015 to find three workmen in his garden.
He said they had cut down half the hedge and piled it in the middle of his garden and were replacing it with fence posts, some of which he said were on his side.
Ron added: “I hadn’t given permission for anyone to come on my garden.
“And if she was putting up a fence to keep her dog in, it wasn’t the right sort of fence to do that anyway.
“It was only a metre high. I told them to stop.”
Wendy added: “We’re exhausted. I think about it every day. I wake up every day and I feel sick – I think it’s the stress.
“We thought this would be a nice place to retire and relax. But it just hasn’t been anything like that.”
Mrs Lambeth declined to comment.
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