The axe factor for Robbie as council cuts down his trees

Given Robbie Williams’s ill-tempered battle with his London neighbour, rock-god Jimmy Page, he must be tempted to seek out the idyllic setting of his country estate, 17th-century Compton Bassett, in Wiltshire.

But its tranquillity has just been shattered, i can disclose, by the howl and growl of chainsaws sent into emergency action this week on the orders of Wiltshire Council.

Alerted by a keen-eyed tree surgeon who spotted five rotten trees — ash, beech and holly — close to a public bridleway on X Factor judge Williams’s land, and aware of threatened winds of up to 50mph, the council sanctioned the trees’ immediate removal.

‘The five were classified as dead and dangerous. Permission to fell was granted within 24 hours,’ says a council spokesman.

Williams’s spokeswoman declines to comment. But the super- crooner is now required to find replacement trees ‘of a suitable species and of similar stature’, and plant them ‘within the first available planting season’.

it is a further lesson in the challenges of country life for Williams, who was brought up in Stoke-on-Trent where his father ran Port vale FC’s social club.

He bought Compton Bassett House for £8.1 million a decade ago, no doubt reassured by the fact that fellow rockers such as Peter Gabriel and Midge Ure have country residences nearby, as do Pink Floyd’s nick Mason and John Taylor of Duran Duran.

But within five years Williams, who has three children by American wife Ayda Field, was contending with the noxious stench from a landfill site half a mile away.

After that was neutralised, he sought permission to shield his house behind a 6ft 6in fence, only for locals to decry it as an eyesore.

Perhaps it’s all enough to propel him back to his £ 17 million, 46- room, Holland Park mansion — and his neighbour, Page, to whom Robbie was obliged to apologise after suggesting that the former Led Zeppelin star was ‘mentally ill’.