25 January 2024 , 14:19
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JK Rowling has faced the wrath of her neighbours after trimming her hedge.
The Harry Potter author has required access to the road next to her Edinburgh mansion to be restricted so gardening works can take place. She is said to have asked for the road block for up to a week while the leylandii hedge is cut back. However, parents have claimed the move to implement a road closure is making children late for school.
The hedge trimming at the author's £2.2 million home occurs every three years and has seen a temporary four-way traffic lights installed. Sections of the road have been closed while a cherry-picker gets to work. The job is being carried out between 7:30am and 3:30pm, which is said to have frustrated parents.
Traffic delays have been caused by the temporary four-way lights (Edinburgh Live)Speaking to The Times, one parent asked why the work couldn't have taken place in half term and added: "No-one else gets the street shut down to cut their hedge." Another said: "To cause traffic to come to a standstill at rush hour to cut a hedge doesn't make sense. [It has resulted] in my child and many others being late."
A spokesperson for JK Rowling told The Mirror: "The hedge cutting at J.K. Rowling’s residence is annual maintenance that involves necessary traffic management for the safety of the general public. The intention is always to carry out the work with least disruption and the timing requires co-ordination and agreement with Edinburgh City Council. The work would ideally be scheduled in July, during the summer holidays, but due to other maintenance work in the area, it was agreed to take place this week instead."
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Back in 2015, JK Rowling faced the same criticism from her neighbours when she got her 30ft hedges cut back. In 2012, she also angered residents when she built two 40ft high Hogwarts-style tree houses in her back garden for her children. Furious neighbours lodged complaints but the star successfully won planning permission.
Many Harry Potters fans also regularly stop along the path to take photographs of themselves outside the high walls to post on social media sites. JK Rowling famously wrote her first Harry Potter books on an old typewriter in an Edinburgh cafe while she was a struggling single mum.
She was able to finish the series from her stunning Edinburgh mansion in one of the city's swankiest neighbourhoods. The period property, which has a writer's room in the picturesque walled garden, sold in 2009 after being on the market for just six weeks, clocking up more than 16,000 views on the estate agent's website.
The 58-year-old rakes in massive amounts from not only her series of Harry Potter books, which has spawned a hugely successful film franchise, theme parks, toys, games and many other merchandise. She is also the brains behind another super successful series of films, the Fantastic Beasts movies, and has a sell-out West End play, The Cursed Child. JK Rowling has proved herself as one of the country's most popular crime authors, writing as Robert Galbraith.
Her worth has now been estimated as a gigantic £875 million, according to The Sunday Times Rich List 2023. The best-selling author has donated to many charities over the years and during the coronavirus lockdown she gave a massive £1million to homeless charity Crisis and Refuge. The Harry Potter creator is also the president of Gingerbread, a chairy that helps one parent families.
In 2005, JK Rowling founded the charitable group, Lumos, which works to promote the end of the institutionalism of children around the world. So far it has helped more than 17,000 children and young people.