Helicopter noise put Tess off buying our £4m home
Mansion owners suing aerodrome for £700,000 in compensation
WHEN businessman Norman Peires and his wife Lorna bought a country mansion, they spent £1.5million revamping it into the perfect home.
Five years later, celebrity househunters were queuing up to view six-bedroom Shepherd’s Holt, with a tennis court in its 2.5 acres.
Strictly Come Dancing’s Tess Daly and husband Vernon Kay were keen to purchase the £4million property until they went into the garden, a court heard.
The ‘shattering’ noise of helicopters at a nearby aerodrome halted the deal and has deterred other buyers, the owners say. The couple accuse the aerodrome of not doing enough to reduce the racket – and are claiming £700,000 damages.
Mr Peires, 69, told the High Court the roar of aircraft near his home in the village of Denham, Buckinghamshire, left the TV stars ‘horrified’, adding: ‘Tess Daly said later that they loved our house but that they couldn’t live with those helicopters.’
Another potential buyer was sports broadcaster Gabby Logan, who pulled out of a viewing when she ‘got to the gate and was put off by the noise’. Mr Peires said: ‘We decided to stop selling it in the end … it was a lost cause.’ Mrs Peires, who once took flying lessons at Denham Aerodrome, told the court that after buying in 2006, ‘ we made that house exactly the way we wanted it – we wanted to live there for ever’.
But they put it on the market five years later – with estate agents suggesting a £4million price tag – because the noise was ‘driving us crazy’.
The couple, who l et the house between 2013 and 2015, are suing airfield owners Bickerton’s Aerodromes Ltd. They want a court order restricting noise, or £700,000 compensation for loss of their home’s value.
Mr and Mrs Peires, also 69, claim ‘loud drumming and shattering noise’ disturbs the drawing room and master bedroom even with double-glazed windows shut. Their barrister, Edward Denehan, said they had no quarrel with ‘general’ aviation at the airfield.
Their complaints focus on helicopter training manoeuvres. Travel tycoon Mr Peires said normal aircraft noise and that of the M25 blurred into the background, but the helicopters’ unpredictable ‘hovering and 360s’ could not be blotted out. ‘You have some peace and then you have this shattering noise,’ he said, telling Mr Justice Peter Smith: ‘Our main request of the court is to help us live in peace.’
The aerodrome’s QC, Richard Harwood, asked Mr Peires about an allegation that he rang the airfield in 2013 and ‘shouted’ at an officer to remove a helicopter. Mr Peires said: ‘I was probably in the middle of a game of tennis … embarrassed, with our friends having come to play and not being able to hear.’
The couple claim they are regularly disturbed for up to half an hour. But Mr Harwood said the flights were ‘approximately 1.5 times a week … less than ten minutes each’. The hearing continues.
‘Driving us
crazy’