Here we go again. This week’s celebrity-neighbour-from-hell fallout (actually there are two) involves Geri Halliwell and Christian Horner, who could be made to tear down a gazebo and pergola built without planning permission; and Ant McPartlin and his wife, Anne-Marie Corbett, who are leaving their £6 million property having been prevented from felling trees to accommodate some garden rooms by opposition from angry neighbours. (To be clear, they resubmitted their application but now it seems they’ve decided to move elsewhere.)
Just business as usual, then, in warring neighbours world, where there’s always someone trying to build something horrible, or tear down something that shouldn’t be torn down, or getting rumbled for having done something already without planning permission. We’ve increasingly come to expect these neighbourly disputes, big and small, and we like to keep abreast of the major ones (Jimmy Page and Robbie Williams, Ed Sheeran and the council, Kelsey Grammer and the people of Portishead, north Somerset) because what the neighbours are doing their side of the fence preoccupies most homeowners to a greater or lesser degree.
It’s true that some of us are more neighbourhood watch on their building plans than others, and some of us have zero interest in our neighbours’ home improvements until they concrete over their front garden and install a carport, but we all have a pretty good understanding of what’s behind these angry neighbour disputes.
• Geri Horner: ‘Christian and me? We’re quite silly’
You’re rich and you can’t stop building so we’re going to stop you
No idea if this is the case with the McPartlin dispute but what we do know is that the six healthy trees that were going to be put under the chainsaw were making way for “floating” garden rooms. And while these trees could also have been blocking out light that might then fall on the ancient fig tree, for example (in other words there may have been a good case for felling them, healthy or not), you can be fairly sure that the Wimbledon neighbours who put a stop to McPartlin’s plans were thinking more along the lines of a) can you just stop building stuff, and b) don’t come here with your fancy ideas and develop the hell out of a house just like ours. (McPartlin had already built a swimming pool with Victorian-style changing rooms and two single-storey extensions.)
The problem for the neighbours is the noise and the dust. We’ve all been there. The continuous building activity, the digging down that could affect everyone’s foundations, but also the feeling that if it’s not good enough for the new occupants then why don’t they go somewhere else? Is there envy at play here? Not necessarily. Not everyone wants a floating garden room for “occasional leisure activities”. But if there are Crittall windows and a deck involved, then probably, yes.
We know best and you’re ruining it
This one is more about taste, class and — if you’re putting a generous spin on it — the resale value of your own property. But the overall gist is pretty straightforward: you have joined a club and you do not know how we do things here in Lovely Authentic Street. This was no doubt the real issue in the case of Grammer versus Portishead. He wanted to pull down an eminently pull-downable grim old cottage and build something liveable and eco-friendly, ideally with an indoor loo, but this was considered horrifyingly out of kilter with the spirit of the place. Not so much about money in this case as holding back encroaching metropolitan ways.
• Oh Kelsey, your trouble with neighbours is just beginning
It definitely will not have helped that Grammer is American (although Frasier!) but if you drill down (and there’s almost always drilling down involved), these kind of neighbour disputes are generally about flash cash versus old-school standards. When Page complained that his neighbour Williams’s drilling was threatening rare mosaics, glass and tile work in his grade I listed Holland Park mansion, it became a straightforward battle between established rock god and pop upstart. Page bought his house in 1972. He wouldn’t know what to do with a basement swimming pool any more than he would hang out in a tank top, briefs and a knee-length “Guccy” cardigan. These two were never going to see eye to eye.
Confusingly it works the other way round too. David Gilmour’s Hampstead neighbours recently complained about an “overbearing” and ‘intrusive” garden shed he built to replace an old garden shed. The Pink Floyd frontman fell foul of NIYBY (not in your back yard) sticklers for footprint and scale who are almost certainly thinking that he’s got a bit above himself over the years and needs pulling back into line and reminded that he’s no different from the rest of us.
Come to think of it, that’s what quite a few of these neighbourhood wars are about.