Lawyer loses legal fight against farmer neighbour over his plans to convert barn into houses next to her £1.3M farmhouse and use her drive for construction traffic – as judge rules she is ‘not automatically entitled to peace and quiet’
- Zoe Bucknell was fighting neighbour Mark Stoneham’s barn conversion plans
- High Court judge told her she was not ‘automatically entitled’ to peace and quiet
A lawyer who took her neighbour to court over his barn conversion plans amid fears the work would disturb her ‘forever home’ and horse riding has lost her case.
Zoe Bucknell was told by High Court judge Paul Matthews she was not ‘automatically entitled’ to the peace and quiet she enjoyed when she moved in back in 2014.
She had clashed with game-shooting pedigree beef farmer Mark Stoneham over his plot to make two homes out of his storage building.
Mr Stoneham had submitted the plans for his site next door to her farmhouse in Kent, which meant using her drive as access for heavy construction traffic.
Mrs Bucknell, a keen horse rider with her own stables at home, said ‘noise disturbance, vibration (and) fumes’ from traffic passing up the 55 metre driveway past her ‘quiet and secluded forever home’ posed a threat not just to her peace but to the fabric of the driveway and of her home itself.
She claimed her enjoyment of horse riding would be ‘adversely affected’ because of increased traffic from the new houses when completed and that vibrations from building trucks could damage the foundations of her Grade-II listed home, Holywell Farmhouse, near Sevenoaks.
The lawyer said her enjoyment of horse riding will be ‘adversely affected’ because of ‘increased traffic’ and claims vibrations from building trucks could be damaging the foundations of her Grade-II listed home, Holywell Farmhouse, near Sevenoaks
Mark Stoneham outside High Court after hearing in barn conversion dispute, which he won
Mrs Bucknell, a keen horse rider with her own stables at home, said ‘noise disturbance, vibration [and] fumes’ from traffic passing up the 55-yard driveway past her house to the construction site poses ‘a threat’ not just to her peace but to the fabric of the driveway itself
The lawyer sued, claiming she was entitled to preserve the peace that surrounded her home when she bought it nine years ago.
But High Court judge Paul Matthews has now thrown out her bid to ban the extra traffic, saying she ‘is not automatically entitled to the maintenance of the same rural peace and quiet that she enjoyed when she bought in 2014.’
London’s High Court heard that Mrs Bucknell and her family moved into Holywell Farmhouse in 2014, whilst Mr Stoneham’s company bought the next door yard and barns from his family, with plans to develop them, in 2020.
Mr Stoneham now breeds pedigree shorthorn beef cattle on an 800 acre estate in Oxfordshire and describes himself as ‘a keen game shot,’ but grew up on the family farm in Kent.
Zoe Bucknell (right, on her wedding day) was fighting game-shooting pedigree beef farmer Mark Stoneham’s plans to convert a barn into two houses next door to her £1.3m farmhouse
Mr Stoneham (pictured with his wife, Hayley) has a right of way over the drive, pressed ahead with the conversion despite the lawyer’s objections
Nicholas Isaac KC, for Mr Stoneham’s company Alchemy Estates (Holywell) Ltd, told Judge Paul Matthews that a right of way over Mrs Bucknell’s drive to the barns was granted ‘for all time and for all purposes’ to Mr Stoneham’s father and uncle in 1972 and that he wanted to use that right to complete the build and provide access to the new houses.
But Richard Clegg, for Mrs Bucknell, told the judge this would be ‘wrongful use’ of the right of way over her driveway, and would put her ‘forever home’ in ‘jeopardy’.
In 2021 she went to court and obtained an interim injunction banning construction vehicles from using the driveway to access the barn conversion site.
But Mr Stoneham pressed ahead with the barn conversion despite the lawyer’s objections, making an alternative access track to the site over fields.
Mrs Bucknell then sued at the High Court, seeking a permanent injunction to ban building traffic from her driveway and stop anyone living in the two houses from using it, as well as forcing the farmer to pay her damages.
The disputed driveway at Holywell Farmhouse in Kent which belongs to Zoe Bucknell
But through his company Mr Stoneham fought the claim, insisting the lawyer was ‘catastrophising’ the situation.
Dismissing her bid for an injunction and handing victory to Mr Stoneham’s company, the judge said: ‘Demolition and construction are facts of everyday life, and there must be give and take in relation to them.
‘It is clear from the evidence of the traffic management experts that the additional use imposed on the driveway by the habitation of two houses built on the yard would be very small in comparison with the existing use.
‘There is no evidence that any damage would be caused to the (driveway) surface by the increase in traffic movements as a result of two extra houses being inhabited.
‘Use by the occupants of two houses on the yard would, in my judgment, not interfere unreasonably with use by others having the like right, nor with the enjoyment by the claimant of her land.
‘I do not consider that it would amount to excessive use or that it would cause an actionable nuisance, even in the locality as it was in 2014, or indeed 1972.
‘The claimant is not automatically entitled to the maintenance of the same rural peace and quiet that she enjoyed when she bought in 2014.
‘A grant of a right of way is not to be restricted to access to the land merely for such purposes as were reasonably required at the date of the grant,’ the judge concluded.
The ruling means that the build can be completed using the driveway as access and the occupants of the new houses can also use the drive.
Source: Read Full Article