A parish councillor is at the centre of a four-year court fight after his neighbour’s workmen began tearing out a ‘dog-proof fence’ around his £1.2million country home.
Dog lovers David Todd, 69, and partner Caroline Hodge, 65, bought their ‘substantial’ house Wyland Wood, set in 2.7 acres of East Sussex countryside, in 2018.
They say they had been assured by estate agents that it was enclosed by a dog-proof fence to keep their two Labradors safe and secure.
But amid a row over where the boundary of their property lay, a legal battle erupted when new neighbour Richard Marsh ‘unilaterally decided to take down’ the fence, London’s High Court heard.
Mr Marsh is said to have replaced it with another in a different position, enclosing part of what Mr Todd and Ms Hodge say is their garden.
Mr Marsh, 44, and his wife Rebecca, 40, bought a neighbouring parcel of ancient woodland and meadow in May 2021.
They say this included half an acre of land inside the fence which the neighbouring older couple claim is part of their garden.
Mr and Mrs Marsh say the fence was in the wrong place and, as well as enclosing part of the land they purchased, caused the meadow – bought through a company owned by him – to be effectively ‘landlocked’ and inaccessible.
Dog lovers David Todd, 69, and partner Caroline Hodge, 65, bought their ‘substantial’ house Wyland Wood, set in 2.7 acres of East Sussex countryside, in 2018
Richard Marsh, 44, and wife Rebecca, 40, bought a neighbouring parcel of ancient woodland and meadow in May 2021 – the two couples have since been engaged in a court battle
The neighbours went to court last year when Mr and Mrs Marsh won a ruling that the fence does not mark the true boundary and that the disputed half acre and a vital access strip belongs to them in accordance with the paper boundary on Land Registry records.
But Mr Todd, who sits on Salehurst and Robertsbridge Parish Council, and his partner are now challenging that ruling at the High Court.
They say they should be handed the land because a ‘reasonable purchaser’ would have thought the fence marked the boundary when buying it.
They also they made a ‘boundary agreement’ over email with the previous owner of the Marshes’ land, confirming everything inside the fence was theirs.
But Mr and Mrs Marsh are resisting, insisting the fence had to move because it is ‘utterly improbable’ the previous owner would have made an agreement landlocking his own land.
The court heard that dog-loving Mr Todd and partner Ms Hodge bought their ‘handsome’ 19th century four-bedroom, three-bathroom detached stone-built country house, near Robertsbridge, East Sussex, for about £1.2million in 2018.
The property features a drawing room, dog and boot room, and is set in 2.7 acres of gardens and woodland, with its own ‘excellent treehouse’.
During the trial last year, the couple told Hastings County Court in East Sussex they were assured by estate agents that the property was surrounded by a ‘dog-proof fence’ to keep safe and secure their pets, described by Ms Hodge as ‘sweethearts’.
Pictured is Mr Todd and Ms Hodge’s Wyland Wood home in Robertsbridge, East Sussex
But they later found themselves in a dispute with Robertsbridge neighbours Mr and Mrs Marsh after the pair bought an ancient woodland next to the councillor’s home and an adjoining meadow through one of Mr Marsh’s companies.
Mr and Mrs Marsh insisted they had bought about half an acre of land inside the dog-proof fence and in what Mr Todd and Ms Hodge believed was their garden.
A bitter court war erupted when Mr Marsh ‘unilaterally decided to take down’ the fence, planning to replace it with another on the line of the boundary on the paper title, Mr Todd’s barrister Evan Price told the High Court.
It led to Mr Todd and Ms Hodge obtaining a court injunction, requiring Mr Marsh to stop removing the fence, not to erect a new one and to replace the parts already removed.
At the county court, Mr Todd told the judge they believed that everything ‘in the fence was what we were buying’.
He added that the property was described in the estate agent’s particulars as ‘dog-proof’ by virtue of the fence.
The fence should be regarded as the boundary as it was the most obvious physical feature on the ground, he said – claiming in any case the previous owner agreed via email the boundary lay there during talks about sharing costs to repair the fence.
But Judge Caroline Parker last year ruled in favour of Mr and Mrs Marsh, saying that part of the dog-proof fence sat 6m to 8m outside the paper boundary of their land, which is marked by a tree line and the remnants of an old wire fence.
The judge said: ‘The claimants wanted a dog-proof garden. The sales particulars said that was the case. They were shown round the garden by an estate agent on two visits.’
She added that the couple ‘believed that the fence marked the boundary, it is more obvious as such than the line of trees’.
Rejecting their case, she said the woodland and meadow had been offered separately to the councillor and his partner when they bought the house but they had declined to buy them.
‘The fact that the estate agent particulars state that the garden is “dog-proof” is not sufficient to establish that a reasonable purchaser would have understood that to mean that the fence marked the boundary,’ she added.
Judge Parker dismissed their claim and declaring that Mr and Mrs Marsh were allowed to fence off the half acre of land, slicing it from the councillor’s garden.
She also awarded Mr and Mrs Marsh £3,174 in damages.
Mr Price, appealing the ruling this week in the High Court on behalf of the councillor and his partner, said they had thought they were buying a ‘dog-proof property’ with an easy to see boundary.
He asked a judge: ‘If you can’t rely on what’s there, what can you rely on?’
He argued that, even if the boundary on paper did not follow the fence line, Mr Todd and his partner had secured a binding ‘boundary agreement’ from the previous owner Stephen Baldwin during discussions and in emails relating to repairs to the fence after they moved in.
‘A chat over a garden fence can amount to a boundary agreement’, he told High Court judge Mr Justice Michael Green.
‘Oral agreements are becoming more important. ‘For there to have been a boundary agreement, there doesn’t need to have been a dispute about the boundary.’
But Philip Sissons, for Mr and Mrs Marsh, said the councillor and his partner had known the land next to them was not included in the sale of their house and could have checked the paper boundaries.
They had been offered the other land when they bought Wyland Wood but declined, he said.
He also rejected their alternative argument based on a ‘boundary agreement’ with Mr Baldwin.
Mr Sissons said: ‘The appellants asserted that in August 2019 an agreement had been reached between Mr Todd and Mr Baldwin to the effect that the dog and deer proof fence marked the end of Wyland Wood.
‘This argument was based on a handful of emails in which Mr Todd pointed out that the fence which he described as a boundary fence was in need of repair and Mr Baldwin agreed to contribute to those repairs.
‘In her judgment, the judge accepted Mr Baldwin’s “straightforward and honest” evidence that he had not agreed the deer and dog proof fence was the boundary. The judge was entirely correct to conclude no boundary agreement was made.’
The meadow would have been ‘landlocked and inaccessible’ when sold to Mr and Mrs Marsh in 2021 if the fence was truly the boundary, he said.
Mr Sissons added it was ‘utterly improbable’ that the previous owner would have entered into an agreement to landlock his own meadow.
The judge commented that cutting off access to the meadow land was something ‘no one in their right mind would have done,’ adding: ‘Now four years later we are still in court’.
He reserved his judgment in the case, at the end of a two-day hearing, to be given at a later date.
