High-flying lawyer is in legal war with her wealthy farmer neighbour trends now

A high-flying corporate lawyer is locked in a bitter row with her wealthy farmer neighbour she says is ruining the peace at her 'quiet and secluded forever home' in the country.

Zoe Bucknell is fighting game-shooting pedigree beef farmer Mark Stoneham's plans to convert a barn into two houses next door to her £1.3million farmhouse in Kent, while using her drive as access for heavy construction traffic.

Mrs Bucknell, a keen horse rider with her own stables, says 'noise disturbance, vibration [and] fumes' from traffic passing up the 55-yard driveway past her house to the construction site poses 'a threat' not just to her peace but to the fabric of the driveway itself.

She says her enjoyment of horse riding will be 'adversely affected' because of 'increased traffic' and claims vibrations from building trucks could be damaging the foundations of her Grade-II listed home, Holywell Farmhouse, near Sevenoaks.

Last year she went to court and obtained an interim injunction banning construction vehicles from using the driveway to access the barn conversion site, which Mr Stoneham bought through a company in 2020.

But Mr Stoneham, who has a right of way over the drive, pressed ahead with the conversion despite the lawyer's objections, making an alternative access track to the site over fields.

Mrs Bucknell is now suing at the High Court, seeking a permanent injunction to ban building traffic from her driveway and stop anyone living in the two houses from using it, as well as forcing the farmer to pay her damages.

But through his company Alchemy Estates (Holywell) Ltd, Mr Stoneham is fighting the claim, insisting the lawyer is 'catastrophising' the situation and in reality would only be inconvenienced by traffic 'once in a blue moon'.

London's High Court heard Mrs Bucknell and her family moved into Holywell Farmhouse in 2014.

Mr Stoneham breeds pedigree shorthorn beef cattle on an 800-acre estate in Oxfordshire and describes himself as 'a keen game shot,' but grew up on a family farm in Kent.

Nicholas Isaac KC, for Alchemy Estates (Holywell) Ltd, told Judge Paul Matthews a right of way over the drive to the barns was granted 'for all time and for all purposes' to Mr Stoneham's father and uncle in 1972 and that he now seeks to use that right to complete the build and provide access to the houses.

But Richard Clegg, for Mrs Bucknell, told the judge that she says this would be 'wrongful use' of the right of way, which would put her 'forever home' in 'jeopardy'.

She claims that noise, disturbance, vibration and fumes from increased traffic moving along her

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