The only trouble is the noise we have to listen to when we are in our garden. Sunday morning - a beautiful sunny day - time to enjoy a peaceful day in the garden. Not so here. The power hosing of lorries would start up and go on for hours. The incessant sounds of rock being quarried and loaded onto lorries was such an unpleasant, intrusive and overbearing noise. Weekends were when Eddie and I would be together wanting to enjoy our new home, but always spoiled by the unrelenting activities next door. The sounds were unfriendly and aggressive and so alien to the environment surrounding us.
The weekends were now becoming fraught as we tried to stay positive about our plans but the interference in our lives from the neighbours was not improving. We have lived rurally for a number of years prior to purchasing here and know to expect the sounds of tractors coming and going, deliveries of feed and so on. However the disturbances we were putting up with were not those of farming they were industrial and blighting our quality of life. There seemed to be no consideration for us. Ann Gifford had also, quite obviously, found this disturbance intolerable as she had only been able to suffer it for a few months before selling - to us! The family before her had lasted only eighteen months before they too, moved out. We'd been living here for six months and were feeling miserable. We talked of the options we had, which were not good. It would be difficult to sell given the history of this property.
The neighbours horses were continuing to somehow escape from an extremely well-fenced paddock area onto my land, and I continued to put up with my neighbour walking onto my property to retrieve them without by or leave.
My phone calls to the council were proving to be more stressful than productive, as it was clear my concerns were falling on deaf ears.
The excuses
as to why the council's enforcement officers couldn't, hadn't or wouldn't, look into the lorry
business and it's associated operations was something I had now come to
expect from Mr. Canning. Mr. Canning was quite clearly supporting my
neighbours by his deliberate delaying tactics. I couldn't understand why this would be, especially as several other local people had complained before we came to live here. It was quite clear that Blaenpant was being developed for the haulage business and something the council should be taking seriously.
July 04
My neighbour, Andrew Thomas, had
now taken to driving his JCB, (which Karen Thomas referred to as his
'toy') up and down the boundary line directly opposite my veranda. This is where I would enjoy sitting in the sunshine in the early mornings, but not now.
He would drive
this machine up and down up and down the fence line for up to two hours at a time for
seemingly no reason whatsoever at different times of the day. I couldn't fathom this man out at all.
It seemed such a pointless exercise, unless it was to deliberately
annoy. I would be woken at the crack of dawn at the weekends
by this same machine or sometimes their tractor, being aimlessly driven around their yard
areas, more it seemed, to create noise than for any purposeful reason. On a few mornings the tractor would be dragging a slab of concrete up and down their roadway. Bizarre behaviour indeed. This,
together with their horses regularly ending up on my land, led me to
question if in fact my neighbours were being deliberately provocative. Were they attempting to drive us out in the way they had driven others out before us.
On
another occasion when my neighbour was using his 'toy' to uproot trees
on his land, one fell across my fence. I waited a while and when it
became clear he wasn't going to remove it from my fence, I asked him
politely if he would do so. He became most unpleasant and shouted
"your side of the fence Trish, your problem". I told him 'I wouldn't be
able to move it and would have to ask someone to do it for me', and 'as
he had pushed the tree over would he please remove it from my fence'.
He did eventually remove the fallen tree, but there was no apology for the damage to my fence. We now had two large areas of damaged fence which the Thomases were responsible for, but no apology forthcoming. He mumbled and swore but did remove it. I was
determined not to get into any confrontation with them even though it
was beginning to feel as though this was something they had planned and
very much wanted. All I wanted was a peaceful existence, to enjoy my home and to be on good terms with my neighbours. which our conveyance should have ensured.
I couldn't bear the noise any more. The council clearly were not going to help, and I was feeling under a great deal of pressure. The dream cottage and our plans were disappearing from sight. Our retirement plans were not going to happen. I was also feeling very intimidated by the neighbours, especially knowing how they had threatened people and would obviously threaten us if they found out that we too had spoken to the council. This put me in a state of permanent worry and stress, and I wasn't sleeping well any more. The horses coming onto our land was still a problem, and my fears that they were doing this on purpose were increasing. They were clearly not neighbours the average person would choose to live next to.
I'd been away for a few days visiting a friend in Bournemouth, and on my return discovered a huge muck heap had been created within meters of my bedroom window, which was then added to each day with more stable manure being thrown down onto it. Old feed bags would also be tipped there. This was going to become a nuisance during the hot weather as it was going to encourage flies and I would no longer be able to open my bedroom window. Were they doing this on purpose too. Burning tyres at night was becoming common place and on a couple of occasions I had to rescue my horse from her stable as it filled with acrid smoke. The shed used as a workshop seemed to be in operation every weekend and was being used by welders now. Maybe they were hiring it out? I began to feel now that they were actually intentionally trying to drive us out as they had with the previous owners.
Karen Thomas had remained perfectly friendly but not so, Andrew Thomas
I was beginning to suspect that Mr. Canning or someone from the council, was telling them that I had been in contact with them.
Walking around the back of our barn one sunny morning, and up towards our top field, my heart sank as I couldn't help but notice that the row of trees at the bottom of the very steep bank bordering part of our land with the neighbours had had rows of barbed wire wrapped around each and every one. The mere sight of it was aggressive and left me feeling quite sick, wondering if this was a message to me in the same way as the Thomases had intimidated Ann Gifford by tying scrap into the trees near the stables, and had erected fencing around the cottage to intimidate Mr. and Mrs. L. I do believe the neighbours must know that I have been speaking to the council about them.
Mr. Canning was proving to be difficult to communicate with and had made it perfectly obvious he was not taking my concerns seriously and wasn't going to investigate the neighbours activities. I didn't know what to do. It was not an option for me to speak to the neighbours, nor was their unauthorised business my responsibility. There was only one thing I could do now, and that was to meet with my M.P.
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