We could never describe the village of Dunsfold as a ‘peaceful, tranquil place to live.’
Over the past 15 years, its residents have fought developers over the prospect of a new garden village at the nearby airfield, gone into battle with UK Oil and Gas, and suffered a huge traveller invasion, leading to a massive expansion of the largest settled traveller site in the UK … we could go on but you get the picture.
But even we couldn’t make this one up! One of Dunsfold’s residents – a member of the Dunsfold & Hascombe Horticultural Society no less (!), has been battling it out in the High Court! shades of PoW – v- Dunsfold `Park, we hear you cry… Well not quite. Not so much a case of sour grapes as rotten apples!
Here at the Waverley Web, we know there are a fair few rotten apples in and around Dunsfold – we could name names but we won’t – regular readers know who we mean, their names and sobriquets have regularly graced these pages.
But Antoinette Williams, who was described in court as ‘vindictive and obsessive’ and acting like a ‘school bully’ was pulled up by her Hunter wellie straps when a Judge slapped her with a £250,000 bill for allowing her 40ft Bramley apple tree to dump quantities of its contents on her neighbour, Barbara Pilcher’s, lawn.
Mrs Pilcher, who was hospitalised after suffering multiple wasp stings, also had to put up with Mrs Williams dumping her ‘smelly compost’ right next to their shared boundary into the bargain. Whoever called country living, living the good life, was wide of the mark in Dunsfold!
Following a five-day hearing at Central London County Court, Judge Lawrence Cohen QC ruled in favour of Mrs Pilcher and awarded her £12,00 for harassment, whilst ordering Mrs Williams to pay costs estimated at between £135,000 and £180,00 towards Mrs P’s legal fees, on top of her own legal fees of some £100,000! Talk about a triple whammy!
We won’t be around here at the Waverley Web for a few days because we’re out there pruning our apple orchard – just in case! Because there are a few odd bods around here in Farnham, Godalming & Haslemere too!
P.S. Cannot help wondering why Mrs Pilcher didn’t prune her half of the tree? Just a thought.
Fascinating stuff! Reading the full story in the Mail it appears Mrs Pilcher did actually exercise her right to cut the tree back in 2014 but this resulted in a barrage of complaints from Mrs Williams (no surprise there we guess) and didn’t seem to have the desired effect on stopping apples dropping in Mrs Pilchers garden anyway. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10087267/Woman-forced-pay-250-000-neighbour-sued-tree-dropping-rotten-fruit-lawn.html
Whatever happened to neighbourly negotiation.