176 upvotes, 1 direct replies (showing 1)
View submission: What’s going on here then?
Ah, reminds me of when our new neighbours moved in (from London of course) and immediately disputed the boundary because it looked like the fence line had been moved over to their side halfway down the garden.
I was broadly in agreement since it did look odd and it was only six inches or so, so we agreed to go halves on a boundary surveyor.
Full on compoface from the neighbour when the surveyor confirmed that not only was the far boundary correct, but in fact the near boundary was encroaching on *our* property and needed to move.
Luckily this was just before the new fence was due to be installed since they'd unilaterally decided that the perfectly good existing fence wasn't tall enough (one of the first signs of a Londoner infestation in your town is the sudden appearance of eight foot walls and fences everywhere)
So they paid for a brand new fence to remove half a foot of their own garden. Galaxy brain move
Comment by Texuk1 at 09/03/2025 at 10:10 UTC
33 upvotes, 2 direct replies
This is classic British culture - the boundary dispute, reporting people to the council, etc. There was a Spanish writer in the 40s who commented after spending time here that basically all British people are policeman.
I have three brick walls demarcating my property, one was rebuilt by the previous owners under a dispute with the Church of England where my property is responsible for the upkeep. The other side is occupied by a man who has lived on the property since 1950 and when some bricks fell of the wall he said oh just wanted to let you know that some bricks fell of yoooourr wall, just so you know that there is a problem with yooourr wall, and so on. But what he doesn't want to talk about is that he has a derelict conservatory spanning the whole of the wall and I can't repair or reinforce it it because he occupies the wall. On the other side there is a newish wall but if there were anything wrong with it the owners would insist it was my wall. Ultimately responsibility for boundaries often comes down to who has the money or the curtesy to make the relationship work. When you get two miser stubborn assholes living next to each other this is what we get in OP's picture.