legends · 4 min read ·
The Fence Agreement
A boundary fence agreement is signed by an owner who does not exist, and the fence moves toward the house.
**BOUNDARY FENCE AGREEMENT**
**Between:** Mr. Colin Ashdown, 12 Meadow Rise (the Owner of No. 12) and the Owner of No. 14 Meadow Rise (the Neighbour)
**Date:** 3 September
1. The parties agree that the close-boarded fence on the eastern boundary of No. 12 shall be replaced at shared cost.
2. The Owner of No. 12 shall obtain quotes and the Neighbour shall approve.
3. Each party shall pay half.
4. The fence shall be 1.8 m high, treated softwood, concrete posts.
*Signed: C. Ashdown. Signed: [illegible].*
· · ·
**Letter 1 (Mr. Ashdown to his solicitor, J. Pryce, 8 September)**
*Dear Mr. Pryce,*
*I enclose the fence agreement. I'd be grateful if you could check it. My neighbour was out when I called, so I put the draft through his letterbox. The next day it was back on my mat, signed. I can't read the signature.*
*I'm not sure I've ever met the man at No. 14. The house has been quiet since the previous owners left in 2019.*
· · ·
**Letter 2 (Mr. Pryce to Mr. Ashdown, 12 September)**
*Dear Mr. Ashdown,*
*The agreement is in order, but I note that the signatory's name is missing. I have checked the Shire Land Registry. No. 14 Meadow Rise is registered to a company, Meadow Rise Holdings Ltd, which was dissolved in 2020. The house has no registered owner.*
*Who, then, signed? I would hold off paying anything until we know.*
· · ·
**Letter 3 (Mr. Ashdown to Mr. Pryce, 20 September)**
*Dear Mr. Pryce,*
*The fence was erected on Tuesday by a team I had not hired. They came at seven and finished by noon. Beautiful work. The posts are set deep. The boards are tight. I paid the invoice, which was on my doorstep, for £740, and I assume the neighbour will reimburse half.*
*One odd thing: the new fence is two feet nearer to my house than the old one. It has been put up inside my boundary, along a line that cuts across my lawn. I walked the line. It is straight. It is exact.*
· · ·
**Letter 4 (Mr. Pryce to Mr. Ashdown, 25 September)**
*Dear Mr. Ashdown,*
*This is a boundary dispute. I'll write to the registered owner. If there is none, we shall apply to the court. In the meantime, please keep a record of the position.*
· · ·
**Letter 5 (Mr. Ashdown to Mr. Pryce, 4 October)**
*Dear Mr. Pryce,*
*The fence has moved. It was two feet inside my boundary on 20 September. It is now four. I measured it with a tape. Every morning it is a little nearer. It does not move in the night with a sound. It is simply nearer.*
*I stood by it and put my hand on a board. It was warm, and slightly damp, the way a plank is when it is alive. I could hear a faint noise from the other side. Breathing. Slow and heavy. I called out. It was not the sound of one person. It was the sound of a household. A house full of people in the next-door rooms, in the dark, quietly breathing.*
· · ·
**Letter 6 (Mr. Pryce to Mr. Ashdown, 11 October)**
*Dear Mr. Ashdown,*
*I have been to look at No. 14. The house is derelict. The front door is boarded up. There are no lights. The back garden is overgrown, and there is no fence at the back, only a gap in a hedge. But I went round to the east side, as you described, and I looked over the new fence into the garden of No. 14.*
*It is not a garden. It is another house. A second house, built where the garden was, in the same style, with a lawn, and a path, and a tall fence at its far side. A fence that looks very like the one on my side.*
· · ·
**Letter 7 (Mr. Ashdown to Mr. Pryce, 25 October)**
*Dear Mr. Pryce,*
*The fence has reached my back door. I can touch it from the kitchen step. I moved the car to the road. I'm sleeping in the front room.*
*I think I understand the agreement. Clause 1: the parties agree that the fence shall be replaced at shared cost. The cost is shared. That is what they are collecting.*
*I read it again this morning. The agreement says the Owner of No. 12 shall obtain the quotes. I did. The Neighbour shall approve. He has.*
*The part I did not read is at the foot of the page, in small type, below the signatures. It says: "On completion, the fence shall become the boundary of both properties, and the properties shall be one."*
· · ·
**Letter 8 (Mr. Pryce to Mr. Ashdown, 3 November, returned)**
*Mr. Pryce's letter was returned by the postal service. Marked: Addressee gone away. The house at No. 12 Meadow Rise has been combined with the neighbouring property at No. 14 for the purposes of Council Tax and the electoral roll. The combined property is registered as 12–14 Meadow Rise. The new occupier is C. Ashdown, and the other.*