A pensioner evicted from her home after losing a five-year legal battle with her neighbour over a 1ft strip of land has described her life as a ‘nightmare’ after being forced to spend the night on the streets.
Jenny Field, 77, was removed from her house by bailiffs on Monday after a judge ordered that her property be sold to pay the £113,000 she owes neighbour Pauline Clark in legal fees.
The pensioner was given enough time to pack a few bags of belongings and get her mobile phone before the locks of her £420,000 bungalow in Poole, Dorset, were changed.
Ms Field said she spent Monday wandering around with her possessions before spending the night on the streets.
She has since attended BCP Council offices to try and secure emergency housing.
The grandmother said she has been told she has three weeks to move her furniture and belongings out of the three-bedroom property – which she has owned since 2016 – before it is sold.
Despite her dire situation and the fact her case against Mrs Clark has been rejected by the courts, Ms Field has vowed to continue her legal battle.
She said: ‘It’s just a nightmare. I’m waiting to speak to someone at the council about emergency housing. It’s a long drawn out process.
Jenny Field, 77, stands on the street with a few bags after she was evicted from her bungalow in Poole, Dorset
The boundary between Ms Field’s bungalow on the left and neighbour Pauline Clark’s on the right has been at the centre of a five-year dispute
Neighbour Pauline Clark is pictured leaving Bournemouth County Court last September
‘I’ve got 21 days to collect all my belongings or they will just take it out and dump it. But I’ve got nowhere to put it; I’ve got a lot of stuff – I’ve got three bedrooms.
‘I’m going to contest it. I just need to prove that [Mrs Clark] has committed fraud.’
The row in an otherwise quiet residential cul-de-sac in Hamworthy, Poole, centred on a boundary fence that Mrs Clark erected in 2020.
Divorcee Ms Field claimed her neighbour moved the fence 12 inches onto her land when she did so.
She hired her own contractors two months later and had the 6ft fence taken down. She later repositioned it to reclaim ‘her land’.
Mrs Clark took her to court and won, with Ms Field ordered to cover the cost of the fence she took down and two thirds of Mrs Clark’s legal fees, about £21,000 at the time.
But Ms Field refused to accept the outcome and the case went back to court multiple times, sending the legal bill skyrocketing to six figures.
Last September, a county court judge said Ms Field’s claims that Mrs Clark’s case was fraudulent were ‘totally without merit’ and made an order to have her home sold.
She was given a deadline of December 6 to pay the £113,000 bill or her home would be sold from under her to settle the debt.
Judge Ross Fentem said the ‘draconian order’ was a last resort but that Ms Field had had every opportunity to pay.
After the deadline passed, Mrs Clark’s solicitors successfully applied for an eviction notice.
Ms Field has failed to put her home up for sale and instead besieged the courts with emails and letters insisting her neighbour was in the wrong.
She stuck a sign on her front door stating that any attempt to evict her was invalid and that she was being harassed.
Ms Field was heard shouting at bailiffs to leave her alone before a locksmith used an electric saw to remove the lock and gain entry to the property
Ms Field was evicted after refusing to accept Mrs Clarke’s legal victory over the boundary
The pensioner will be allowed to return to the house to remove her belongings
The bungalows overlook a green with trees in the quiet cul-de-sac
After being removed from her home, Ms Field repeatedly rang the doorbell and asked to be let in.
Mrs Clark’s solicitor Anna Curtis said there was ample equity in Ms Field’s property for her to pay the debt and still be able to buy a comfortable retirement property mortgage free and and have cash leftover.
In passing his judgement at Bournemouth County Court last September, Judge Fentem said: ‘This is a very long-running boundary dispute. The defendant [Ms Field] has, in various ways, sought to relitigate the original case.
‘Her case is fundamentally that… the original fence was a boundary fence and that it was entirely on her land.
‘Every attempt to relitigate has failed. She appears to be convinced some form of fraud has taken place. There appears to be no reasoned basis for the allegation.
‘There is no evidence in the documentation any wrongdoing was committed.
‘I have no confidence at all the claimant [Mrs Clark] will be paid what she is owed except by an order for sale.
‘This matter needs resolution, the parties need to find a way of putting the entirety of this dispute behind them.
‘The order for sale is a last resort and Draconian remedy but taking all the factors into account I should make an order for sale in this case.’
