Three siblings face losing their childhood home after a court ordered them to pay £209,000 for “bullying” their neighbours by felling their 33-foot cypress trees.
Building boss Robert McCarthy and his wife Amanda had previously co-existed “in relative harmony” with Foulla Bowler and her two siblings, who own the adjacent property in Nazeing, Essex.
However, a boundary dispute erupted in 2018, and the couple initiated legal action after Ms Bowler, alongside her brother John Barberis and sister Mary Englishby, removed their back fence and hired tree surgeons to fell a line of 33ft Leylandii trees, which the siblings claimed were “overshadowing” their garden.
At Central London County Court, the McCarthys testified that the “systematic destruction” of their garden had completely eradicated their home’s privacy.
This left them unable to use their back garden for years, forcing them to live in the front of their house and prohibiting their children from having friends over.
The court also heard that Ms McCarthy’s mental health deteriorated, leading to depression, as a direct result of the neighbours’ “oppressive behaviour”.
After a trial in 2025, Judge Alan Saggerson ruled in favour of the McCarthys on the location of the boundary, finding that the “bullying, high-handed” siblings had “trespassed” into their neighbours’ garden to hack down the trees.
The trio had taken “unilateral action to re-order the disputed boundary” between the properties amid what he called “fence wars” between the neighbours.
Now after another hearing this week, he has ordered the siblings to pay around £30,500 in damages, plus £178,668 for the McCarthys’ lawyers’ bills.
That bill is on top of their own significant court costs, with the judge saying that in the wake of their court loss the trio are now selling their childhood home.
Making the order, the judge criticised the “high handed, bullying” siblings, adding: “It seems clear to me that the claimants have been victimised by high-handed oppressive behaviour. It goes way beyond the ordinary course of trespass.”
During the trial last October, the judge was told that civil construction manager Mr McCarthy, 59, and his carer wife, Amanda, 61, bought their home in Common View, Bumbles Green, Nazeing, in 2001.
The house, which Mrs McCarthy said had an “immaculate, very pleasant garden” when they moved in, is bordered to the rear by the home of Ms Bowler, 61, known as Kormakitis.
It had been Ms Bowler’s family home as a teenager, but she now lives there with her own family and owns it with her two siblings, John Barberis, 63, and Mary Englishby, 59.
Barrister Christopher Coyle, for the McCarthys, told the judge that the two gardens were divided by a fence, with a row of Leylandii trees on the McCarthys’ side.
However, a bitter boundary dispute erupted around 2018, with Ms Bowler and her siblings claiming that the dividing line was actually beyond the fence, putting the Leylandii on their land.
And, despite knowing that there was a dispute, Mr Bowler had in 2018 applied for permission to fell 29 trees, before the family went ahead with the plan, cutting down most of them in January 2022.
Mr Coyle said the felling work had continued into a second day, even though the McCarthys wrote to the siblings via lawyers to request them to stop cutting.
Giving evidence, Mr McCarthy described it as an “invasion” and complained of a “relentless destruction of my garden”.
“I can stand upstairs in my house and they can see me walking around,” he said.
“I want my privacy back like I had.”
He said that, when the couple bought the house, they were led to believe that the fence beyond the trees was the boundary, making the trees part of their property.
“The trees were well-established when we moved in,” he told the judge.
“We thought the chain link fence was the boundary as it ran along. I had no reason not to believe that to be the boundary.”
Mrs McCarthy added that they and their children had stopped having friends around after being “shouted at” by their neighbours.
She said the family had “only ever used the front rooms of their house” since the trees were taken out and that she had become “depressed as a result of the stress that has been caused”.
“After the invasion it feels completely destroyed. There’s little or nothing left of what was our garden. Since the invasion we don’t use the garden at all,” she added.
The McCarthys sued for compensation, including money to plant new trees and restore their privacy, as well as a declaration that the true boundary is the line of the old fence.
But Ms Bowler and her siblings insisted that they had every right to remove the fence and trees as they were in fact on their land, and that they removed them due to “overshadowing” and potential damage to their land.
Giving judgment, Judge Saggerson said the siblings’ evidence was “less reliable and less accurate” than the McCarthys’, but did not find they were lying, but instead had “persuaded themselves of the righteousness of their own case.”
Awarding costs and damages this week, he said: “The defendants were responsible for trespasses over the boundary for a considerable period of time.
“The centre of gravity in this case is the cutting down of trees on or around the border, which in my judgment caused a trespass and had a serious impact on the claimants’ amenity in a number of ways.
“It opened up their rear garden to the unwanted attention of their neighbours.
“(There was) unfortunate acrimonious shouting and terms of abuse being hurled from the defendants’ garden into the claimants’ garden.
“For a number of years they stopped inviting people round and particularly their children stopped inviting people round.
“The loss of privacy was significant in a domestic situation such as this.
“From January 2022 I accept that the claimants had to live more and more, almost exclusively, at the front of their house.
“This all had a detrimental effect on the second claimant’s mental health.”
Criticising the “aggressive and somewhat bullying behaviour of the defendants”, he went on: “The defendants had persistently asserted rights over this small territory.
“It seems clear to me that the claimants have been victimised by high-handed oppressive behaviour. It goes way beyond the ordinary course of trespass. The high-handed bullying behaviour warrants additional damages.”
However he refused to order the neighbours to foot the bill for 8m tall trees to be put in to replace those cut down at a cost of £105,000.
“No reasonable person spending their own money would do this,” he said, handing the McCarthys £5,000 damages for smaller trees to be put in and grow.
“I am told that the defendants’ property is to be marketed if it is not being marketed already,” the judge added.
