Oxford dons win £200,000 neighbour row with hotel over a broken wall and staff smoking too near to their £1.8million home's door Two Oxford dons have won a £200,000 row with the owners of a neighbouring hotel over a collapsed garden wall and claims its staff are 'smoking and chatting' too close to their £1.8million house.
showing the site of the disputed wall and the hotel smoking area where the couple say staff members smoke and chat] The academic couple bought their Grade-II listed six-bedroom former priory home in Oxford in 2018 and began doing it up.
History Prof Nick Stargardt, who appeared on the BBC, and his anthropologist partner, Prof Fernanda Pirie, sued the owners of the Hawkwell House Hotel for damages after a part of the wall between the two properties gave away.
After a trial, a county court judge last year declared the soil buildup a legal 'nuisance' and said the hotel owners would have to pay about £200,000 to the couple for the problem to be solved.
But renovations of their 1830s house hit a major setback in 2019 when a section of the garden wall adjoining the collapsed inwards.
