External walls finished, but we smell a Rat....

Its been a busy week. Dean and his team have now finished the external brickwork, nicely finished off with the alternating red half bricks in a sort of inverted castellated design. Roy had his chippy come down to site on Friday when he fitted the wall plates - basically, planks of wood that are clamped to the top of the inner block wall and to which the roof trusses are fixed. As you can see to the right, the roof trusses arrived (on Thursday) and they are due to be fitted by crane on Tuesday by Pete Brooks and his team.

So we steam on, but there have been a couple of developments that were unwanted. Firstly, when I went to site on Thursday, two of the temporary pegs, sited to delineate the boundary of our land, had been knocked over. As they were the ones nearest to the driveway I didn't bother with them. However, it appears that someone working on our build committed a heinous crime - they parked on Mr Hyde's grass! Worse, they were seen. I therefore had a visit from Mr Hyde's representative, Peter Philips, who had put two more posts in the ground to replace those that had been removed. According to Peter, Mr Hyde was a very unhappy man due to the trespass on his land and had supposedly said "Not showing me much goodwill, is he" (referring to me of course). Although I thought it pathetic in the extreme I imagined it was the rant of a rather sad old man and agreed to make sure that no-one dared to park there again. So today I have put that bright red plastic fencing right the way along the boundary and put a couple of long bits of wood across the end of Mr Hyde's access track to stop our guys parking there. (There is a danger of course that I will be accused of trespass in so doing!).

Anyway, the second development is that the same Peter Philips now appears to be working for Aidan who lived at No 1 Brookvale. He still owns the house but lets his workers use it rather than pay hotel charges. Peter is trying to get planning permission to build two houses in Aidan's garden. One of these is only viable if access can be achieved along the existing driveway and this would require each of the owners of the cottages at Brookvale, including us, to agree to the owner of this house using those parts of the driveway that we each own. Given the opposition to our build this ain't gonna happen! The same Peter Philips has also written to the owners of 2 - 4 Brookvale and suggested that they, and Gillian Walton at number 5, together with ourselves should each pay Mr Hyde £2000 to purchase the drive from him. Whilst the letters have been received by numbers 2, 3, and 4, Gillian Walton and we have yet to hear from him. As you might imagine, no-one can really understand the logic of paying £12,000 in total to acquire joint ownership of a liability, (the drive) which all of us have a right to use anyway. It does seem odd that these two things are being handled by the same person at the same time. So, given that Peter Philips used to be in business with our old friend, we all smell a rather large Rat(aj). Could it be that Mr Hyde is still the innocent in all this and that the two old business partners are trying to work a flanker?

As yet there is still no sign of the title deeds that show that Mr Hyde owns the drive, despite my solicitor being on the trail with Land Registry. The plot thickens.....

Jan & Rog