"Klara" wrote in message
...

Our next-door neighbour has a very large house and some 7 acres of
derelict orchard behind it, some of it extending behind our house and
garden. He also runs most of his heating on a wood-fired boiler. In the
past he had his wood store and saw bench halfway down the orchard, but in
the last fortnight he has built a very large woodshed out of derelict
asbestos sheeting right at the bottom of our garden, in full view of our
house (though not his). In the course of building it, he has hacked (his)
laurel hedge between us more or less to the ground and replaced it with a
few tiny saplings. We are becoming reconciled to the thought that we might
have to put up a fence to hide some of the eyesore (it's about 10-12 feet
tall), at least from the ground floor....

But the second problem is, he has, in the past, spent a lot of his time
cutting logs on his bench saw, and it used to be bad enough from halfway
through the orchard. Now the woodshed is the obvious place to do it. But
we work from home, and our windows face the back....

We are on friendly terms, and I did ask about the sawing, but I didn't get
an answer and he went ahead with it anyway.

I don't suppose there is much we can do: his land is classified as
agricultural land, so sawing wood is part of the brief, and in any case we
would not like to fall out with them - but short of planting a forest
instead of our garden, is there anything we can do to hide the eyesore and
minimise the noise?


You could try writing to the "Property" section of the Saturday Telegraph
(forget your politics) and explaining your problem. They are very good
about property and legal issues. Have a look, since yours sounds like one
of the problems they may be able to help you with.

someone