Tycoon and neighbours in High Court battle over £8.5m mansion gate

A multi-millionaire property tycoon who paid £8.5million for an aristocrat’s mansion is now fighting his neighbours in court after being blocked from using the back gate.

Mark Harrison, CEO of £1.2billion property management and investment company Praxis, bought the former home of the late Lady Grantchester in 2020.

She was one of the heirs to the Moores family’s Littlewoods pools empire fortune and died aged 93 in February 2019.

Mr Harrison went on to carry out extensive refurbishments to the 10-bedroom mansion, in Kingston-upon-Thames in Surrey – including a £500,000 makeover of the 3.5-acre garden, which features a pool and tennis courts.

But 58-year-old Mr Harrison has now found himself at war with some of his neighbours over using their private road to access the back of his property.

The row has now reached London‘s High Court, with Mr Harrison suing the residents’ company which owns the private road named Coombe Ridings over whether he can pass over it to and from the back of his house.

Mr Harrison claims he has a right to use Coombe Ridings to get to local parks on foot and for non-residential vehicular traffic, such as gardeners coming to his home which is known as the Gate House.

However, Coombe Ridings Residents Association Ltd rejects his claims and insists he has no right at all to use its road to get to the Gate House.

Mr Harrison’s barrister Oliver Radley-Gardner has now told the High Court’s Judge Alan Johns that the early-20th century Gate House pre-dated Coombe Ridings, which is a private road and estate of multi-million-pound houses built in the 1950s.

The house is accessed from the front via an archway from Coombe Wood Road, which operates as a ‘pinch point’, preventing larger vehicles from passing through.

That means they instead come via Coombe Ridings and an access route to the back garden.

Mr Radley-Gardner said: ‘Anything larger can therefore only be brought in through the rear access, and it is obviously more convenient to bring materials or remove debris etc through the rear access.

‘The rear access also affords easier access to nearby parks, and is used as a pedestrian access from time to time.’

The rear entrance to the Gate House had always been ‘secondary’, he added, used by those working there and as pedestrian access for occupiers and guests.

Issues over its use emerged when Mr Harrison was doing work on the house – with some neighbours becoming ‘antagonised’ by increased traffic and the residents’ company claiming he had no right to use the road at all.

The right of way over Coombe Ridings was only to a piece of land which had been sold off by Lord and Lady Grantchester in the 1960s, the company claimed.

But Mr Radley-Gardener told the judge that the ‘commercially sensible interpretation’ of historic documents relating to access was that they allowed a ‘general right of way to the Gate House’.

And he said that, through the past use of the road by occupiers and workers, the Gate House now has the benefit of a ‘prescriptive easement’ allowing use of Coombe Ridings.

He added: ‘We know that there was a gate. We know that there was use by gardeners, that there was use associated with the pool, and that there was pedestrian traffic to the rear of the Gate House by residents of the Gate House.

‘We know that several owners proceeded for almost 60 years on the presumption that this right existed and could be used in connection with the Gate House.

‘Many documents have been entered into on this premise, by members of the defendant, including directors.

‘In those circumstances, a prescriptive right can be said to have arisen over Coombe Ridings – that there should be access for non-residential vehicles alone, but also access on foot by the occupiers of the Gate House, their licensees and contractors.’

For the residents’ company, barrister Nathaniel Duckworth accused Mr Harrison’s lawyers of asking the court to ‘rewrite the contractual bargain’.

He said the claim was in relation to a different strip of land, sold off by the Grantchesters many years ago.

Mr Duckworth told the court that the ‘nature, frequency and circumstances’ of use of Coombe Ridings by owners of the Gate House were ‘not such as to give rise to a prescriptive right’.

He added: ‘At most, Coombe Ridings was used for the purposes of access for gardeners, attending the grounds of the Gate House, when the size of their vehicles would not have enabled them to gain entry via the main entrance.

‘If the claimant holds a prescriptive right at all, it is one which entitles him to do the same thing, but no more.’

The hearing continues.

Mr Harrison’s mansion has already been at the centre of a High Court fight after a dispute with a landscape gardener working on the grounds earlier this year.

After a disagreement over bills, Mr Harrison was said to have issued ‘menacing and intimidating threats’ to Devon-based gardener Alasdair Cameron, suggesting he would ‘thrash it out’ in front of Mr Cameron’s ‘fragrant wife’ Tor.

Details of the exchange were shared with others, resulting in Mr Harrison suing to find out who had received them.

He claimed Praxis had lost £10million by missing out on a deal to build a shopping centre with a company controlled by the Duke of Westminster, Hugh Grosvenor, who is godfather to Princes George and Archie.

Mr Harrison admitted that he ‘allowed his anger to get the better of him and made a number of ill-judged comments’ to the gardener which made him ‘sound like a gangster’ – but denied ‘that any such comments amounted to a serious threat’.

Mrs Justice Steyn rejected Mr Harrison’s case in June this year, finding that Mr Cameron had been genuinely scared by the tycoon’s ‘sustained and menacing behaviour’ and was within his rights to share the communications.

She said: ‘I agree with Mr Hopkins’ characterisation of Mr Harrison’s behaviour during those calls as seriously and persistently menacing.’

Mr Harrison said he would be appealing against the ruling.