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. But the case then went to the High Court, with the hotel owners arguing that their ground should remain at the level it is and a stronger retaining wall built — and the couple claiming that would only result in staff continuing to tower over them on the other side, 'smoking and chatting' and breaching their privacy. showing the site of the disputed wall and the hotel smoking area where the couple say staff members smoke and chat The Priory in Iffley, Oxford, the Grade-II listed six-bedroom property owned by Professors Nick Stargardt and Fernanda Pirie 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. 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. Hawkwell House Hotel in Iffley, Oxford, the hotel at the centre of the dispute, describes itself as 'Oxford's best kept secret' An exterior view of the Priory, a six-bedroom home which dates back to the 1830s and is valued at £1.8m The ground would then have to be maintained at the rough level that it had been when the wall was originally built, with a 45 degree slope back up to the hotel itself.