Revealed: The actual purpose behind bitter neighbour warfare that led to house owner ‘stealing’ couple’s again backyard whereas they have been holidaying in Australia

This is the Surrey homeowner who waited until her neighbours had gone off on a trip to Australia before hiring builders to ‘steal’ a strip of their back garden.

Victoria Huyeng Myers took the extreme action after three years of feuding with the couple living next door to her £800,000 detached house in the suburban commuter belt.

Retirees Rosa, 67, and Murray Bell, 71, only found out what was happening when they logged in from their trip-of-a-lifetime Down Under – to CCTV footage showing Myers’ builders at work in their own garden.

Now MailOnline can reveal how that encroachment marked an escalation in a bitter row between the two households over where the boundaries lay – and how the feud was initially sparked by an apparently trivial disagreement over the position of a gutter on an outbuilding.

It was the bitter row that developed from that guttering dispute that saw battle lines drawn between Mrs Myers, a company CEO, her engineer husband Michael, and the Bells who lived next door to them in Tadworth, Surrey.

The feud between the two married couple neighbours began in 2020 after the Bells were given planning permission for a small extension.

The boundary issue first arose when the Bells raised concerns about the Myer’s overhanging guttering, which would have affected their extension plans.

It was then both families had their individual land boundary survey carried out which showed different results.

These inconclusive findings are down to the ‘crude’ nature of the deeds which originate back to the 1930s and fail to clearly portray the actual boundary lines of the house.

The result was that both couples have since apparently believe that their one interpretation of their right to a wider garden was correct while their neighbours’ similar belief was wrong

At this point, the Bells, who had bought the house as their forever home in 2019 for £670,000, decided not to go through with the extension. They claimed, ‘wasn’t worth it after all the aggro’.

Since then, police officers have been called to the homes multiple times, the family’s have had a face off in county court and the contested fence has been pulled down and re-erected three times.

Mrs Bell told MailOnline: ‘What frustrates me is that if these people thought what they were doing was correct, and the law, why did they do it when we were always abroad? Why not do it while we are here? Why wait until we leave to let people invade our property?’

Instead, they converted their garage into a home office where their teacher son could work from home in the pandemic.

Over the next two years, the Bells were accused of ‘trespassing’ on the contested rat run between the two houses.

It was not until December 2022, when the Bells were abroad for Christmas, that the first panels of the fence started to be removed by contractors.

For the next few weeks over the festive holidays, the couple watched as builders continued to remove the fence in the snow, leaving the boundary between the two houses exposed.

Over that time, the Bells’ claim ‘their beautiful shrubs and tulips’ were all dug up, with their maple tree being constantly pruned back.

‘We had not seen our daughter for four years so we went to spend Christmas with her, but it was spoiled by this,’ Mrs Bell said.

‘We saw everything they were doing on camera when we were on the other side of the world.

‘One day they would do one thing, then they would do something else. It was like they were teasing us knowing we were so far away.’

As they returned home in January 2023, the couple found more contractors at their property, putting up a new fence, apparently trying to encroach on 1.2 metres at one end of their garden and 76 cm at the other.

The fence had been half-completed and the Bells stopped the builders by sitting out in the cold on their patio in protest. It meant the contractor was unable to finish building the new fence.

‘I sat out there for nearly a whole day freezing, with Mrs Myers and the contractor just standing there laughing at me,’ Mrs Bell explained. ‘But we did stop them’.

‘Another time we had to call the police, because she hired someone to carry on with the fence, because where our patio at the back was, it was still open after we stopped them.

‘At this point they started bullying us, she was throwing stuff at my husband and at this point the police came and told them ‘you have to stop’.

At that point, the Bells engaged a solicitor, who tried to mediate with them.

By May 2023, however, nothing had been achieved so the Bells decided ‘enough is enough’ and decided to put their own fence back up on the ‘original’ line.

In June, the Bells headed off on their annual long summer holiday but as soon as they left the Myers hired new contractors.

‘Mrs Myers got the contractors here, threw our fence down, broke our patio at the back, left a big mess, moved our shed and put this sturdy fence up and it’s been like this ever since,’ Mrs Bell added.

‘We were left with the mess at the back, all the fence panels lying here, the patio smashed up and she even cut the fence panels at the front of our house, leaving our house unsecure when we were away.’

Despite their protestations to both the local council and police, the Bells were unable to reclaim their land and were left pursuing the matter through civil court.

The Bells took a damages claim to Kingston-Upon-Thames County Court, which took place in October 2023.

Mr Bell said: ‘We took them to court because of the damages and trespassing. The damage was unbelievable. They killed the apple trees and Japanese maple trees – the damage was an absolute mess. I am just beginning to try to clear up the mess now.

‘Everything’s been done when we are away abroad and they have completely wrecked the patio at the back.’

The judge, however, decided to throw the case out for technical reasons – stating the Bells, who had not hired a lawyer to assist them, had not clearly laid out the loss of £10,000 they were claiming.

The Bells had also said they had suffered from ‘significant financial and emotional harm’ as well as ‘mental distress’, however, the judge said no medical report had been provided in support of this.

The court’s decision left the Bell facing having to pay for the Myers’ legal costs.

Although the Myers have technically won the dispute, the Bells still insist that they are in the right.

The judge had concluded that the Bells had raised the claim over the ‘damage to trees’ in their garden and said ‘such a claim has no basis in the law if the trees were on the Defendant’s side of the boundary.’

Since then, the Bells have carried out a court-compliant land survey which they claim proves they legally own the boundary, which has been in place since the houses were initially built decades ago soon after World War I.

Describing the ‘stressful situation’ she and her husband have had to endure, Mrs Bell said: ‘We both retired and bought this lovely house that was going to be our forever home.

‘But we have encountered such a nasty situation with the neighbours who decided to move their boundary fencing to our property without an application to court or agreement with us.

‘We were away visiting our daughter in Australia and could see them invading our property, cutting plants, trees, shrubs.

‘We have tried to do everything to rectify. We have had surveys done and spent a lot of money – but these people have just taken the law into their own hands.

‘There have been no consequences for them – they broke into our garden, moved the shed and dumped everything in front of our kitchen patio doors.

‘I don’t understand. This is a living hell. Our only option seems to be spending a fortune on solicitor’s fees to fight it.’

Mr Myers added: ‘It is too stressful with all the mess they made.’

The Myers, who are originally from New Zealand and bought their home in April 2018, have been approached to comment on the ongoing issue but did not respond.

Earlier this week, Mrs Myers, who runs Ice Phoenix Consulting Engineers, declined to respond to questions on the dispute.

But she said that they had been the ones who had been ‘harassed’ and reiterated they had ‘won a court’ ruling on the claim for damages.