Lawyer loses bitter legal row with neighbour as she's 'not entitled to quiet'
A high-flying lawyer has been told she is "not automatically entitled to peace and quiet" at her £1.3 million country home by a judge as she lost a bitter neighbour dispute.
Zoe Bucknell clashed with game-shooting pedigree beef farmer Mark Stoneham over his plans to convert a barn into two houses next door to her farmhouse in Kent, while using her drive as access for heavy construction traffic.
The corporate lawyer, a keen horse rider with her own stables at home, said "noise disturbance, vibration (and) fumes" from traffic passing up the 55 metre driveway past her "quiet and secluded forever home" posed a threat not just to her peace but to the fabric of the driveway and the home itself.
She claimed her enjoyment of horse riding would be "adversely affected" because of increased traffic from the new houses when completed and that vibrations from building trucks could damage the foundations of her Grade-II listed home, Holywell Farmhouse, near Sevenoaks.
The lawyer sued, claiming she was entitled to preserve the peace that surrounded her home when she bought it nine years ago.
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Zoe Bucknell's home circled in red next to the property owned by Mark Stoneham in blueBut High Court Judge Paul Matthews has now thrown out her bid to ban the extra traffic, saying she "is not automatically entitled to the maintenance of the same rural peace and quiet that she enjoyed when she bought in 2014."
London's High Court heard that Mrs Bucknell and her family moved into Holywell Farmhouse in 2014, while Mr Stoneham's company bought the next door yard and barns from his family, with plans to develop them, in 2020.
Mr Stoneham now breeds pedigree shorthorn beef cattle on an 800 acre estate in Oxfordshire and describes himself as "a keen game shot," but grew up on the family farm in Kent.
Nicholas Isaac KC, for Mr Stoneham's company Alchemy Estates (Holywell) Ltd, told Judge Matthews that a right of way over Mrs Bucknell's drive to the barns was granted "for all time and for all purposes" to Mr Stoneham's father and uncle in 1972 and that he wanted to use that right to complete the build and provide access to the new houses.
But Richard Clegg, for Mrs Bucknell, told the judge this would be "wrongful use" of the right of way over her driveway, and would put her "forever home" in "jeopardy".
The disputed driveway (Champion News)In 2021 she went to court and obtained an interim injunction banning construction vehicles from using the driveway to access the barn conversion site.
But Mr Stoneham pressed ahead with the barn conversion despite the lawyer's objections, making an alternative access track to the site over fields.
Mrs Bucknell then sued at the High Court, seeking a permanent injunction to ban building traffic from her driveway and stop anyone living in the two houses from using it, as well as forcing the farmer to pay her damages.
But through his company Mr Stoneham fought the claim, insisting the lawyer was "catastrophising" the situation.
Dismissing her bid for an injunction and handing victory to Mr Stoneham's company, the judge said: "Demolition and construction are facts of everyday life, and there must be give and take in relation to them.
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"It is clear from the evidence of the traffic management experts that the additional use imposed on the driveway by the habitation of two houses built on the yard would be very small in comparison with the existing use.
"There is no evidence that any damage would be caused to the (driveway) surface by the increase in traffic movements as a result of two extra houses being inhabited.
"Use by the occupants of two houses on the yard would, in my judgement, not interfere unreasonably with use by others having the like right, nor with the enjoyment by the claimant of her land.
"I do not consider that it would amount to excessive use or that it would cause an actionable nuisance, even in the locality as it was in 2014, or indeed 1972.
"The claimant is not automatically entitled to the maintenance of the same rural peace and quiet that she enjoyed when she bought in 2014.
"A grant of a right of way is not to be restricted to access to the land merely for such purposes as were reasonably required at the date of the grant," the judge concluded.
The ruling means that the build can be completed using the driveway as access and the occupants of the new houses can also use the drive.
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