Profs win battle over smokers' wall

TWO Oxford dons have won a six-figure row with a hotel next door over a collapsed garden wall and its staff "smoking and chatting" too close to their home.

- Paul Keogh

Leading history buff Nick Stargardt and his anthropologist partner Fernanda Pirie bought their Grade II listed, six-bedroom former priory in 2018 and began doing it up as their home.

But the revamp hit a snag a year later when part of a garden wall next to land belonging to Hawkwell House Hotel collapsed inwards.

The professors said build-up of soil on the other side had left the ground there 10ft higher than theirs, causing the wall to topple under its weight.