THE family of Ian Fleming, the author of James Bond, won a costly boundary dispute yesterday with their neighbours, the family of Lord Lucan, over a strip of land where the writer is said to have penned his first 007 novel.
A judge at Oxford County Court ruled that the Lucans, descendants of the fugitive aristocrat, must replant trees they felled on a narrow strip of land to which both sides lay claim.
Immediately after the court decision to award the Flemings £7,000 in damages on top of a total legal bill estimated at £120,000, Lord Lucan’s cousin, Victor Bingham, 40, vowed to fight on. “Many people lose at County Court level: the High Court is much more fair,” said the publishing director from Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire. “We are planning to appeal. There is nothing in the judgment that’s beyond overturning. There is always the second bite at the cherry.”
For the past 18 months, two of Britain’s best-known families have been embroiled in the dispute over a strip of land beside the cottage where Ian Fleming is reputed to have dreamt up his first Bond novel, Casino Royale.
Kiln Cottage in Oxfordshire was bought in 1960 from the author’s brother Peter by the family of Lord Lucan, who disappeared mysteriously in 1974.
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The run-down 17th-century cottage, inhabited most recently by Mr Bingham’s aunt and co-defendant Rosemary Mackenzie, 63, borders Nettlebed Estate, which the Flemings bought in the early 1900s.
But neighbourly relations soured. At the centre of the grievance is a 5ft-wide strip of muddy grass running between the two properties. The dispute began in January last year when Mr Bingham, as part of a £150,000 renovation to prepare the dilapidated Kiln Cottage for sale, felled a number of trees to the north and west of the property.
He also levelled ground near the £650,000 cottage. Mr Bingham claimed that the toppled trees were in danger of falling on the cottage.
But the Flemings maintained that they were not his to chop. In March last year they won an injunction banning the Binghams from setting foot on to the strip, which they said was common land owned by the Nettlebed Estate.
In May this year, they took the Binghams to Oxford County Court to claim for damages. Yesterday the Recorder, Guy Hungerford, ruled in the Flemings’s favour, granting £1,128 to replace the felled trees, up to £6,000 to remove soil tipped on the land, which is roped off, and an additional £2,000 in “exemplary damages” from Mr Bingham, who was labelled as the “prime mover”.
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These sums are expected to be dwarfed by the fee for legal costs, a combined total for both sides of about £120,000. A hearing to decide costs will take place at a later date.
The Recorder said in his written judgment: “The damage to the claimants’ trees and to the configuration of their land was part of a deliberate and sustained trespass carried out for gain. In my judgment, this was an opportunistic trespass by the defendants, carried out with the plan of enhancing the attractions of Kiln Cottage to potential purchasers.”
During the week-long hearing the court was told how Mr Bingham had told a local dog walker to get off his land in February last year.
When asked what he meant, he replied that he was “taking possession” and the estate could not stop him, adding that it was “payback time” for the land in Ireland which Britain had taken from his family.
Mr Bingham said after the hearing: “A snowflake can turn into a snowball, which can cause an avalanche, and this has avalanched out of control.
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“This is ridiculous for a boundary dispute. The land in question is worthless to the Nettlebed Estate and it’s worthless to us.”