How’s this for a whole new level of cheeky fuckery - someone has token our allotment!

[YaMuvva]

Moved into our new house in January. Bought off a lovely lady who was a widow and something of a popular figure in the street (relevant).

We were pleasantly surprised to find that in the deeds it came with a garage across the road (which we’d seen at the viewing but it wasn’t clear it belonged to the house) and an allotment plot. We’ve actually been on an allotment waiting list for years so it was nice news.

We’ve already had aggro with the garage - when we got the keys we went to open it and found that it was rammed full of full boxes! I called previous owner directly as she gave us her number (as assumed they were hers) and she said she allowed our next door neighbour for years to use it. He was most put out when we told him to clear his stuff as we needed to use it. This was 3 months ago, and only last week did he finally clear it out, and only did so when we had to get shitty with him and say if he didn’t clear the garage we would do it for him (don’t want to get off an a bad foot with the neighbours but he was taking the piss).

Anyway we have never checked out the allotment before now (it’s not far about a 10 min walk from here) just because of time constraints and illnesses and crappy weather but decided to finally today go and find it as the sun is shining here.

Anyway, when we got there we looked on the sheet of paper we’d been given and found the plot - and a person sitting next to a full and lush patch sitting on a chair having a cuppa! There is also a shed full of tools coffee cups newspapers etc in it too . We asked the person if we’d got it wrong as we are new owners of number 8 on X Street and thought this was our new allotment.

Apparently she is our neighbour down the road (never yet met her) and yes whilst it is the allotment belonging to number 8, the previous owner (a “very dear friend” of hers apparently) let her use it, she’s been using it for 10 years.

My DH, still stinging from the garage debacle, said well I’m afraid your very dear friend doesn’t live in no 8 any more we do and we are reclaiming the allotment, thank you for looking after it but it is OURS to enjoy.

She bloody said no! And that she’s cultivated this patch for several years, she grows all her veggies here and it’s her sanctuary so if we want it we will ‘have to fight for it’! She also said she paid for the shed.

DH said that’s fine, expect a fight then, and we shuffled away in shock. I then rang the old owner and she said “Oh yes it’s Barbara’s plot really she was good to take it off my hands and it would be awful to take it off her”. To be clear - the plot has NOT been sold to Barbara.

I just can’t believe the piss takery of this. DH thinks we should just go and take down the shed, leave it at her front door and dig up everything and chuck it all in a bin.

I feel like the neighbours just took the piss out of the old owner and think they genuinely have a claim to the stuff she was kind enough to let them borrow.

Not that it makes any difference but if that is the case why the belligerent attitude?

Allottments are really hard work! Sexist Allert!! They're really heavy graft and not just while it's sunny. The pensioners will be quite strict. If you can have someone take it over while you're at work. Let her get to it x

It’s OUR land.

Why do you assume she knows anymore about gardening than we do and could ‘teach us’? Granted I am not the green fingered one but DH is and grew up in a family of keen gardeners who taught him a lot

Its not an allotment, the op owns the land. Do keep up

I'm a lawyer 🤚

Not in the UK or this area of law though.

Lawyers are expensive. Avoid us if you can.

This could very well be solved with a conversation, £100 for the shed and a polite letter attaching the deeds.

Hiring a lawyer can escalate things and make them immediately scary and hostile. Do you want all your new neighbours to think of you as people who threatened poor Barbara with the law just because she was taking care of the veggie patch? Because that's how they'll see it.

Yeah, as I said it saves time later

So it's a 'patch of land surrounded by other patches of land all owned by various people' - a garden then? The fact that it's somewhat removed from the house it belongs to doesn't make it a lesser part of the property.

If Barbara had been growing veg in OPs new back garden right outside the back door, would all the Barbara fans here be supporting her? If not, why not?

And OP isn't 'lucky' to have this land & garage - she and her DH are paying for it!

An observation on the 'let Barbara finish this growing season' posts - if you are running a productive plot, there are plants in the ground all year round - a constant cycle.
<sidles away>

I don't see why her drinking tea next to a vegetable garden should enrage you. If you think about it rationally.

Because it was OUR vegetable garden. But yes in hindsight when we’ve calmed down and decided to inject a dose of humour into the situation, we are tonight giggling about the encounter.

Also I think your solicitor has a cheek asking to be paid so much for a common sense letter that they themselves said they don't have expertise in.

Well I wouldn’t expect them to do it for free

There's no need to be a dick about any of it.

I actually don’t think we have been dicks.
DH was a bit short with her because we didn’t expect to see someone lolling about in our allotment. But she was very combative and very confident in basically telling us to do one. I’d have expected a limitless understanding or humility. At least we said we appreciated her taking care of it!

I’m aware.

And no if it’s our allotment and our design I wouldn’t have anyone tamper with it.

And also an allotment is as hard work as you make it. Even if we did just want to put some little plastic windmills-on-a-stick, a few deckchairs and only grow potatoes then that would be our prerogative and the other plot owners can go whistle.

As a previous poster said, the seller needs a name. I’m going to call her Sally the Seller.

OP, in your shoes, I would be dreading this because of the hassle that is going to be involved. Personally, I’d be happy to be hated if it means I can just get on with life. I think that is teaching talking.

I would speak to both Barbara and Sally again and hope that I could engineer a situation that they could sort out.

Have a chat with Barbara - Hi Barbara, we were so taken aback to see you on our land the other day and got off on the wrong foot. I hope we can start again, Sally has really screwed us both over. She signed legal documents saying we had vacant possession of the allotment. Basically, she said we own all of your crops and your shed! She lied! We are trying to sort this out through the lawyers. It all her fault, did she have dementia or anything? She really should not have put either your or us in this position. I’m so sorry you will be caught up in our legal battle with her. Well, just wanted to give you a heads up of the situation because Sally’s lawyers will probably be in touch at some point.

Give Sally a call - hi Sally, we’ve spoken to Barbara again hoping that cooler heads will prevail but she has insisted that the we can’t have our allotment without a fight. I’m terribly sorry but you will dragged into this as the legally, you have sold it to us with vacant possession. Legally, we own all her crops and her shed! And because of that our solicitor has said that you will be responsible for our costs in enforcing that. Is there any chance you could talk to Babs and see if we could come to an agreement before the lawyers get involved? Our lawyer said the initial letter would cost £££. Barbara is quite feisty, can you imagine the costs if she wants to take this to court?

And if that didn’t work, I would absolutely go legal.

Yes, sorry. This is so boring...have you watched Cuckoo with Jill Halfpenny on Channel Five. It's quite shit but loads better than this 🎓

I find it mind boggling that people think you should allow Barbara to stay, or share with her, pay for her shed etc. Would they say the same if they bought a house, and on the day they moved in there was a lodger there, who’d kindly been given use of a room by the previous owners, and didn’t want to leave?!

Also, Barbara wasn’t all sweet and amenable. She told OP and her DH that they’d have to fight for the land. Their own land.

It’s outrageous!

I totally agree with this BTW. I’ve never been the neighbourhood watch type and in previous houses there have been some grumpy locals who took against us because he didn’t get involved in the scarecrow run or sign the NIMBY petition to stop new house being built (next to the new housing estate we all lived on) 😂 I tend to rub these people up the wrong way eventually may as well rip the band aid off 😂

Good plan.

But she was very combative and very confident in basically telling us to do one
I have to admit the way she fronted it out is pretty astounding!! Could she be one of those people who rarely gets told 'no' because they are so aggressive?

And yet you’ve stuck around for 900 posts?

I don’t know much about adverse possession but I hope it doesn’t apply here.

Im fairly confident but you know when someone is SO confident in what they say, and even when you know what they’re saying is wrong, but their confidence makes you doubt yourself? She’s one of those people. So yes either she’s never told no or she no longer gives a shit about anytbibg

You do knows she could sabotage your vegetable growing dream by sneaking in at night and ripping it all up… anything you do…

you’d have no proof…

What grows around comes around… sorry, I couldn’t resist 😆

I'm fuming for you! What an entitled b*h 😡

I wish for every batshit ‘you’re so mean’ poster on this thread that someone jimmies their car tomorrow and moves into it. They don’t take it anywhere, they leave it on the driveway, give it a good clean and move in.

i think some of the oddest comments are the ones assuming the op and her dh don’t know anything about gardening and they will learn that it’s too much hard work for them!

You think we’d deserve to have a hard worked for vegetable patch destroyed because we <checks notes> are using the land we bought and own?

Oh jeeze, I've been dealing with one of those. The executor of my mum's will, who didn't back down from an entirely erroneous position until I got four, FOUR! different lawyers to confirm that I was right and she was wrong.

Thank goodness for free legal advice through my house insurance. I thought I was going mad, and like you say, though I knew I was right, she had me doubting myself, even after two lawyers had already said I was right.

The "stick to your guns double down & never surrender tactic" is scarily effective isnt it😯
Seems that the more confident the other person is the more you are inclined to doubt yourself?