An Oxford hotel and its neighbour are locked in a £200,000 court dispute over a collapsed garden wall and claims over staff behaviour. 

History Prof Nick Stargardt, who appeared on BBC TV show ‘Lost Home Movies of Nazi Germany,’ and his partner, anthropologist Prof Fernanda Pirie, bought their Grade-II listed six-bedroom former priory home in Oxford in 2018 and began doing it up.

But the academic couple's renovation of the 1830s house hit a major setback in 2019 when a section of the garden wall adjoining the land of the neighbouring Hawkwell House Hotel collapsed inwards.

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A short section of the stone wall collapsed under the weight of a build-up of soil on the hotel side which was at that point roughly level with the top of the wall. 

A disagreement over liability led the professors to sue the hotel's leashold owner, Hawkwell House Hotel Ltd, and freehold owner Obbligato Hotels Ltd. 

During the initial Oxford County Court trial last year, Judge Melissa Clarke heard that the couple bought the historic priory, in the leafy Iffley suburb, in 2018, next door to Hawkwell House.

As one of Britain's top experts on Nazi Germany, Magdalen College vice president Prof Stargardt  featured on a BBC documentary based on lost home made footage from Nazi-era Germany and the Second World War. His partner, Prof Pirie, is a former barrister and now professor of the anthropology of law at Oxford.

Hawkwell House was the birthplace of explorer, polar medalist and treasure hunter Francis Howard Bickerton, but is now a 77-bed four-star hotel, which describes itself online as “Oxford’s best kept secret.”

The gardens of the two properties were separated by a stone wall, but over time the ground level on the hotel side had been raised so that it was roughly level with the top of the wall, the court heard.

After moving in, a short section of the wall collapsed under the weight of the soil next door in 2019, prompting the couple to rebuild and sue the hotel’s leasehold owner, Hawkwell House Hotel Ltd, and freehold owner, Obbligato Hotels Ltd.

But before the case got to court, another larger section of the wall also began to fall apart, with them then suing to have the hotel’s ground level lowered and about £200,000 compensation to pay for a wall rebuild.

Following the trial, Judge Clarke found that the soil buildup was a “nuisance,” probably caused by previous owners, and that at the time the wall was built the ground level on the hotel side had been no more than 1.5m higher than the Priory garden.

She said the higher ground level was a “continuing danger” to the stability of the wall and made an injunction ordering that the hotel owners "batter back" the land, reducing its height on their side.

The ground would then have to be maintained at the rough level that it had been when the wall was originally built, with a slope back up to the hotel itself.

And she also awarded Prof Stargardt and Prof Pirie about £200,000 in damages to allow them to rebuild the crumbling wall as a “garden wall.”

But the neighbours' fight is continuing, with Profs Stargardt and Pirie demanding that the ground be lowered back to its original level on the hotel side to prevent staff in a smoking area from overlooking their front door.

The hotel owners' barrister Benjamin Faulkner appealed the decision in High Court, arguing that a cheaper solution is the ground remain the same and a stronger "retaining wall" is built. 

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“The judge was wrong to order the appellants to maintain the land at a particular level and at a particular slope in perpetuity,” he told appeal judge, Mr Justice Adam Johnson.

“This is an exceptionally onerous order. It restrains the use that the appellants can make of their land.”

Professor Pirie, a former barrister and now professor of the anthropology of law at Oxford, represented herself in court and said the judge was correct that allowing the hotel to keep its land at that height would allow them to continue with a nuisance. 

She told the judge: “This wall is right outside our front door - it is very close to it.

“The hotel employees will walk around on top of the wall. It’s their smoking area and they will chat.

“Really, it’s not an ideal long-term solution.”

She argued that the retaining wall solution wouldn't work even if a hedge was planted on top.

"It's always been our least favourite solution, primarily because of the privacy concerns and maintaining the hedge," she argued.

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For the hotel owners, Mr Faulkner said the judge had gone wrong because she had not fully taken account of the difficulties that would be caused by having to reduce the level of the ground on their side.

It could potentially cause issues for drainage systems and buildings on the hotel side and would necessitate protected trees being uprooted, he told the judge.

And he accused the couple of trying to gain an advantage from a case that was never about privacy by bringing up concerns about screening their property.

“They have no right of screening, and they certainly have not pleaded the basis for any such right,” he said.

Urging the judge to overturn the injunction compelling the ground to be lowered, he said: “The appellants say that the judge should not have granted a mandatory injunction in such terms.

“Instead, she should have opted for the retaining wall solution, by permitting Prof Pirie and Prof Stargardt to replace the wall with a retaining wall, such that the earth on the hotel side did not need to be permanently battered back.

“The damages ordered should have then reflected the costs of building that retaining wall.”

The hotel owners argued that either the solution of the retaining wall, or them doing the work on the wall themselves instead of paying the couple, would have been cheaper solutions. 

Mr Justice Adam Johnson reserved his judgment to a later date.

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