Sorry this is in the wrong topic. Couldn't find a legal section. Any lawyers about, I would appreciate some guidance. Having difficulty finding the right person as it involves mild harassment and a right of way. I've tried to condense but it's clearly not my strong point.
We recently moved into a home accessed by a lane belonging to a farmer. We have access over the farmer's part of the lane and he has right of way over the part of the lane on our land. It's the only way he can access the fields at the end of the lane. The lane ends on our land, with a field. The farmer ceremoniously drives up the lane every Sunday afternoon and reverses slowly back, without acknowledging us. Strange but fine. Beside our home is a cottage belonging to the farmer. It's occupied by a tenant of the farmer who is 'warden'. Technically he also has access over our land because he 'cares' for the land. (He doesn't care for the land, didn't care for the horses there over the winter and never needed to go down this lane until the weather got nice enough for walks, but that's beside the point). This warden seemed over-involved from the start and he's clearly lonely. He generated drama by encouraging us to go into one of the farmer's fields for a walk, then making out we were in trouble because we had done this. There were variations on this theme and we realised it was just drama being generated by someone who likes drama. Eventually we told him we would communicate directly with the farmer in future and we backed off. Then the trouble began.
We have to walk/ drive past his home to get to the road. He allows his dog to intimidate my children (who love dogs so this was quite difficult to achieve), rushes out with weedkiller if we walk down the lane, stands waiting for me at the top if I'm out on my own, throws our wheelie bins over the hedge and eventually blocked the lane completely with his car one night to rant at my partner. Much swearing, vague threats and apparently he has a side we don't want to see and we should feel warned. We haven't dealt with this before in our lives and yes, we felt threatened and worried.
He walks into the trajectory of my car when I drive past and then uses his outrage (because I don't slam the brakes on - why would I when he's not on the path?) to come and rage at us in front of the children as we're getting out of the car. He will 'accidently' swerve his wheelbarrow into our path as I'm walking the children up the lane. It seems mostly a cry for attention. He will now go and stand in our lane to have a smoke, just because he can. It doesn't sound like much and we've established that there's not enough here for police or civil action. Someone has mentioned a 'binding over of the peace' - does that sound like a possibility? We have horses, small children, dogs that could easily be harmed. I'm concerned he'll do something to my children's ponies and break their hearts. We found an elastic band around the neck of our dog the other day that had to be cut off by the vet and while it was probably our own fault, I hadn't seen that elastic band before. It's reached the point where we're quite happy for him to vandalise the wheelie bins if it keeps him occupied but obviously it's escalating because we continue to be a happy family going for walks and not bowing to him as monarch of the lane. I feel extremely stressed knowing he can pop up anywhere on our land and he doesn't stick to the lane, either. There's no point putting up a gate because he can just walk through it, as warden. He has also announced that if we meet his car when we're driving up the lane, we must reverse out onto the main road again if he's more than halfway up it. Sounds fair enough but the opening is on a blind corner that needs a mirror to get out with, even going the right way. I will not be reversing out of it but I'm concerned he'll scare the children and force us to abandon the car in the lane if we do meet him (it hasn't happened yet because he never goes anywhere).
So we're spending a fortune on CCTV, as the police advised, and keeping a harassment diary. We'd like to build a stone wall around the front of our property. It would be around 8 foot high and would border the part of the lane we own (which we're happy to write off for the sake of peace). It would cut off a great view but at this point, the only view we have is this man striding around anyway. I just want it all to stop. We spoke to the farmer to try and resolve this without a result. My partner has a condition that makes him vulnerable to COVID-19 if he's experiencing a flare-up and as these are related to stress, we'd like to move on from this issue as quickly as we can.
My questions:
- If you have right of way over a property for the purposes of caring for the land beyond, can you go there just to loiter and have a smoke?
- Is there a legal process whereby a judge could order that the lane be used for the purposes of accessing the land beyond only and not for going back and forth over our land (as he is currently doing)?
- Is there any legal reason why we wouldn't be able to build an 8 ft stone wall bordering the land on our own land? There would be no dwelling near it except our own home (and the warden's cottage, which is link detached to our farmhouse).
- Minor side issue - is the farmer within his rights to drive a half wild stallion up? He clearly can't get a headcollar on it and just drives it in front of him, at a gallop, from his quadbike. Without a heads up. Did I mention we have young children.
I'll continue to hunt for the right solicitor to help with this but everyone seems to have experience of either right of way or harassment, but not both.
Thanks so much if you have read this far.