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If you own a house and you own the land that house is on, it’s your own private property, right? Not necessarily. In some situations, there are cases where neighbors actually have the legal right to walk across your property to get to their property.

That sounds inconvenient doesn’t it?

It’s the situation the homeowners in this story had to deal with, and to make it worse, the neighbors that could legally walk through their yard were really, really annoying.

They decided to put up a fence, but that only created more drama.

The neighbors thought they had won, but that really backfired.

Keep reading for the whole story.

Fences make good neighbours.

My parents lived in a house where the neighbour had right of access across my parent’s back garden to get to their’s. (Standard U.K. Victorian end terrace rules.).

They were bad neighbours, they would let their grandkids run around our garden and drop their rubbish.

They would also come out and stand in our garden while my parents had family bbqs and stare at us.

My folks couldn’t do much about it because they had the right to be there.

OP’s parents made some big changes.

My parents were fed up of this, as well as them walking across the flower beds and leaving the gates open, so when the farmer who owned the land surrounding my parents house offered to sell about 1/4 acre of it, my parents jumped at the chance.

Imagine the original path to the neighbour’s back gate before the sale. They would walk up the path besides my parent’s house, across the yard (where they could look into our kitchen) and walk to their gate which was located on the boundary between our two houses, about halfway up the garden.

My parents bought the land and erected two 7 foot fences around the perimeter of the land. The fences were about 4 foot apart, the entrance was around 30’ away from the original gate and when you walked all the way around the new path, it led directly to the neighbour’s back gate.

Essentially they had their own path and didn’t need to enter our garden.

It may not have been convenient, but it was technically all they had to do.

The neighbours didn’t like this because it meant they had to walk much further to get to their back gate.

My parents reminded them they have fulfilled their legal obligation to give them access across their land to the neighbours back garden. It didn’t say anywhere that it has to be the shortest route.

The neighbours threatened legal action but didn’t follow it up.

The neighbors thought they had won.

The farmer sold the rest of the land to a developer. The neighbour contacted the developer to ask if they could create their own exit onto the developers land at the far end of their garden so they didn’t have to use our path.

The developer agreed as that area was going to be a pathway.

They gloated to my dad they didn’t need our path anymore and he’d wasted his money for nothing.

So my dad put a lock on the gates to ensure privacy as they no longer needed it.

It didn’t work out the way the neighbors had hoped.

When the foundations for the first buildings went up the neighbour complained to council and company that they were too close (by 2 metres) and had to be moved.

The fuss cost the developer a lot of extra money so they sent a letter to all the neighbours informing them a path will no longer be running along the back of our gardens as it will now be used as garages to offset the cost of reworking the foundations.

They built a garage block directly behind neighbours garden. The neighbours now had a gate at the bottom of the garden that led to an ugly concrete wall.

I’m sure this was humbling.

The neighbour then had to come cap in hand to ask my dad politely to removed the locks so he could start using the path again.

My father obliged.

The neighbours only stayed a few more years as it seemed that the son in law actually owned the house and when he divorced the daughter, he sold the house and kicked them out.

I wouldn’t want to own a house where my neighbors were legally allowed to walk through my yard to get to their house, and I wouldn’t want to own a house where I had to walk through my neighbor’s yard to get to my own house. This sounds messed up!

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.

There is a potential problem.

An American with an English wife weighs in.

It does seem odd.

Another person can’t quite picture it.

I honestly can’t quite picture it either, but surely there’s a front door the neighbors can enter and exit. Why do they have to walk through the yard of another neighbor? That seems ridiculous. I would hate to live like that.

I’m glad OP’s parents put up a fence and found a way to still provide the annoying but obligatory walking path.

Good fences definitely make good neighbors!