Get off our land! Neighbour from Hell, 86, is banned from walking on couple’s grass
A COUPLE have taken legal action to stop their 86-year-old neighbour walking on a strip of land outside his home.
Jon and Sara Webb, who met while working for the police, obtained a court order stopping great-grandfather Phil Taylor from setting foot on the 100-yard grass verge that they own.
It comes after Taylor used a sledgehammer to smash a boulder blocking his rear gate entrance in 2014, which saw him spend a night in the cells. But since then his behaviour is said to have ‘escalated’.
The row began eight years ago after the Webbs bought a property in Whitby, Yorkshire and acquired the strip of land bordering the road next to Taylor’s home. He had previously planted rows of bulbs, cut the grass, drove his car across it and used it to access his caravan and rowing boat.
But when the Webbs began mowing the verge themselves, they told him to stop driving across it and planting flowers.
They were stunned when the elderly man not only ignored their requests but parked his silver Ford Focus on the verge.
The Webbs then placed 40 large ornamental rocks along the strip, including four which blocked access to Taylor’s rear gate.
The retired housebuilder responded by smashing up one of the stones with a sledgehammer, resulting in his arrest for criminal damage and a night in the cells. Yesterday York magistrates were told the humiliation of being taken away in handcuffs in 2014 failed to curb his behaviour.
That summer he was given a harassment notice and as a precaution, officers confiscated his 12 bore shotgun and .22 rifle.
But prosecutor Neil Holdsworth said with one rock destroyed and three more in front of the garden gate having mysteriously disappeared, Taylor’s behaviour ‘escalated’.
He began driving his car back and forth across the verge almost daily, doing wheel spins and churning up the grass.
The Webbs also complained to police he would sit in his car for hours staring at their house. Mr Webb, 43, told the court he and his wife, who is said to have left the police, had become ‘virtual ‘ prisoners’ in their home because of Taylor’s actions.
The pensioner, who has lived in his detached house for 27 years, denied harassment, claiming he was trying to protect his ‘right of way’. But he was handed a two-year restraining order, forbidding him from contacting the Webbs or going on their land until July 2018.
He was also ordered to pay £620 court costs, banned from driving for six months, and fined £225 with a £30 surcharge. He has hired a lawyer to challenge his driving ban.
Taylor, who has a son, granddaughter, and three great-grandchildren, said yesterday: ‘I daren’t set foot on the grass because there is a CCTV camera trained on the verge all the time and if I just step off the patio on to it I will be arrested.’