Neighbours go to war over a six-inch strip of land

Neighbours have gone to war over a six-inch strip of land after one family built a new 7ft fence between their driveways on posts that jut onto next door’s property. 

Anne Hilton, 78, from Willerby near Hull, claims the alleged loss of part of her 1,816-square-yard boundary has given her weeks of sleepless nights after worrying about her neighbours ‘stealing land’.

‘I was angry and distressed when I realised what had happened. I was shocked to my core,’ she said. 

Mrs Hilton, along with her 82-year-old husband Derick, noticed their neighbours had extended their driveway by two inches before adding the new posts. 

‘I believe that our neighbours tried to do it underhand and do it without asking permission – or even mentioning it at all,’ she said. 

‘We’ve always been good neighbours over the years, fantastic in fact, but the fence needed replacing because it was deteriorating. It sounds petty, but it is just not right.

‘We’ve had sleepless nights over this. It’s the principle of it – you can’t just steal land and amend a boundary line.’

The original posts were removed after the wood became rotten and broken, and it is not clear from 30-year-old photographs the exact position they were previously. 

Her neighbours say they are following a line agreed between themselves and Derick to build a straight fence for a permanent border at the address in Willerby.

But the Hiltons are adamant the new fence is not following the boundary line agreed and encroaches onto their space, and say they are not ‘going to take it lying down’.

Mrs Hilton, who moved into the property in 1981, said: ‘We feel our neighbours have not respected us because of our elderly age.

‘But we are not letting this lie, but we would like to do this peacefully.

‘If we can avoid it getting really, really nasty – we obviously will. We don’t want people to think they can just build on our land and take what they want from us.’

Her neighbours, who have lived at their property for 27 years, said they have tried to work with the pair of pensioners to solve the problem.

They have already started laying the concrete posts out despite their neighbours unimpressed with the positioning of the line.

The neighbour constructing the fence said: ‘It is very disappointing it has come to this over the straightening of an uneven, zig-zag boundary line.

‘All boundary lines are uneven and all boundaries are very difficult to go within that area because it doesn’t go

‘We are not grabbing any land, we don’t need to – we already have a lot of space as you can see.

‘All we want is a straight line for our fence to go across and we have not asked Anne and Derick for a penny towards the cost. It’s sad that after 27 years of being good neighbours that is has come down to this.’