Friday 24 June 2022 01:54 PM Couple are sued by neighbours over a '3ft land grab' between two million-pound ... trends now
An artist and her lawyer partner are locked in a fight with their neighbours, after being accused of taking three feet of their back garden and paving over it.
Wendy Mszyca, 58, and her partner Amanda Uziell-Hamilton, 65, are accused of staging a land-grab over the narrow strip of ground between their million-pound house and the £1.4m Victorian home of their neighbours, Jay and Hannah Stirrett.
The neighbours' houses in Camberwell, south London, are built with gardens backing onto each other and the Stirretts say that while re-doing their garden in 2018, the other couple removed a fence and paved another three feet back towards the Stirretts' house.
They are now suing at Central London County Court for return of the strip, which - despite its size - they say is 'significant' in an area of London where properties are expensive and gardens small and valuable.
However, their neighbours deny the land belongs to the Stirretts and say they were simply reclaiming what used to be their flower bed before it was temporarily fenced off by builders in 2013.
The disputed three-foot strip of land is at the back of two properties in Camberwell, south London, and separates the embattled neighbours' gardens
Amanda Uziell-Hamilton (left), 65, and her partner Wendy Mszyca (right), 58, claim that the fence they removed was erected purely for privacy reasons, and that the true divider between the properties is a block wall that stands three feet behind where the fence was - a strip of land that they have now paved over and claimed as their own
Jay and Hannah Stirrett (pictured) are suing their neighbours over an allegation that they seized a three-foot strip of land by removing the garden fence and paving over the disputed ground behind it. Pictured: The complainants outside Central London County Court
Outlining the case, the Stirretts' barrister, Tom Morris, told Judge David Saunders that the couple had bought their four-bedroom house in Camberwell and moved in 2015.
Mr Stirrett is an engineer, while Mrs Stirrett is a vice president at a US-based human resources company.
Ms Mszyca is a fine artist specialising in multimedia and photography whilst Ms Uziell-Hamilton is a law lecturer training support lawyers.
When the Stirretts moved in, there was a rendered wall at the back of their garden, but they insist that it was not on the correct boundary line, but had in fact been built about three feet inside their garden area.
The true boundary, they say, was a wooden fence three feet behind the wall, marking the end of the other couple's garden until they had controversially removed it and paved up to the Stirretts' wall in 2018.
Mr Morris told the judge: 'In around August 2018, the defendants caused the fence to be removed, and paved over the strip of land between it and the block wall, incorporating that land into their garden.'
Mr Morris claimed that the wall constructed by builders on the Stirretts' property before they bought it is entirely within their garden and only put there to avoid a clash with Ms Mszyca and Ms Uziell-Hamilton.
Despite the wall being there, the true boundary was the fence in Ms Mszyca and Ms Uziell-Hamilton's garden, which had been removed by their neighbours when they laid the paving.
'The claimants' position is
