Hi,
Long thread! I’ll start from the beginning so as not to drip feed...
Myself and OH bought our house 7yrs ago. Very quiet road, all of our immediate neighbours are our parents age or older and have all lived “in the village” for over 40-50yrs.
The day after we moved in, the elderly lady next door casually mentioned that she had a solicitors letter for us regarding the boundaries as apparently 20yrs ago the driveway had been laid a few inches into her land. When we asked why she didn’t query it at the time she said it was “gypsies doing the driveway and she didn’t want the hassle”
Keen not to fall out with our next door neighbour as soon as we moved in, and being a fair bit younger and greener then, we didn’t say too much and waited for the solicitors letter she mentioned. This never arrived, but she would regularly mention the boundaries/ make passive aggressive comments about “her hedge” every time I so much as stepped outside to put the bin out. It irritated us, but again we didn’t want to fall out with our new neighbour who is by all accounts a pillar of the community. Months later, the (also elderly and been living here forever) neighbour on our other side was taking fences down in the back garden and painting them. As neighbour 1 had made such a fuss about the hedge being hers etc, we presumed the other side’s fences were our side to maintain, so I politely went outside to say hello and gain confirmation of this. neighbour 2 abruptly told me they were his fences and he also had solicitors paperwork to confirm this (!!!!!!!!)
Next time neighbour 1 started her “this is mine, that’s mine” etc comments, we politely mentioned the conversation we had had with our other neighbour and said as we had been confused by this, we had dug out our initial plans and they didn’t match with what she was saying. She began shouting at us that we could talk to her through a solicitor if we wanted to talk about it (after her having talked about this boundary nonstop!!!)
In an act of admittedly childish defiance, OH then decided to cut back the hedge right back to what appeared to be the boundary line (it was apparently her hedge but all the weight of it was on our side)
Neighbour went mad, told me if I want to live in harmony in this village to leave the hedge alone, she would get a harassment order served on OH etc
We then got a surveyor in to ascertain exactly what was going on with this bloody boundary (that we didn’t actually give a shit about, but felt that we had to get some sort of advice as both our neighbours were being such dicks)
Surveyor basically said it was a free for all and he couldn’t be sure, funnily enough neighbour 1 hasn’t said a word about boundaries since we had a surveyor come round and her solicitors letter still hasn’t arrived.
I said we should just put fences up then and there, but OH dilly dallied and now 7yrs later, we have a garden which is completely insecure as huge gaps in this hedge, so I don’t like DD playing out there too much and we usually go to the park. Obviously this needs sorting and fences need to go up to make the garden safe for DD, I don’t think we would be in any way unreasonable to do this but I just know neighbours on both sides are going to give us hell about it.
We have honestly been made to feel like naughty children since the day we moved in!
How would others handle their neighbours when their shitty comments and threats of solicitors letters etc start?