£250k bill for wife in apple tree row
A ‘VINDICTIVE and obsessive’ gardener has been hit with a £250,000 bill after losing in court to her neighbour in a row over rotting fruit from her Bramley apple tree.
Antoinette Williams acted like a ‘school bully’ during a campaign of ‘creepy’ harassment targeting her neighbour Barbara Pilcher, a judge ruled.
The pair had clashed over the 40ft fruit tree dumping hundreds of rotting apples onto Mrs Pilcher’s lawn each season, leaving her at risk of attack by wasps attracted to the fruit.
Mrs Pilcher sued, claiming her neighbour – a member of the Dunsfold and Hascombe Horticultural Society – plagued her by staring at her through her windows, failing to prune the tree and by keeping a smelly compost bin at the bottom of her garden adjoining her own property. Her barrister Oliver newman told a judge that Mrs Pilcher, who was hospitalised in 2018 after being stung multiple times by wasps from a nest, said she had been unable to use the bottom of her garden and felt like ‘a prisoner in her own home’. Relatives stopped visiting as the feud – which began in 2014 – intensified.
Mrs Williams moved into her £600,000 cottage in Dunsfold, near Godalming, Surrey, almost 40 years ago, while Mrs Pilcher bought the adjoining three-bedroom £500,000 cottage in 2010.
Following a five-day hearing at Central London County Court, Judge Lawrence Cohen QC ruled in favour of Mrs Pilcher, criticising her neighbour’s ‘completely abnormal and disturbing’ behaviour. Mrs Williams denied the claims, but the judge awarded Mrs Pilcher £12,000 for harassment, also ordering Mrs Williams to pay costs estimated at between £135,000 and £180,000 towards Mrs Pilcher’s legal fees, on top of her own bills of more than £100,000.
The judge however rejected the claim that Mrs Williams had been negligent in dealing with a damp issue.