Get off my land: Drying green row set for court

A BITTER row over the rights of flat owners in one of the most affluent streets in Scotland's capital to hang out their washing is set to be settled in the nation's highest court.

The owner of a basement flat in Edinburgh's New Town is at loggerheads with her neighbours after barring access to a "drying green" she has turned into her own garden.

Despite other owners in the Fettes Row property having historic rights to dry their washing in the back garden, they have been refused access for more than 40 years.

The pensioner who owns the basement flat has been backed by a land tribunal after asking it to scrap the "drying green" rights put in place when the townhouse was broken up into several flats in 1944.

However, Mary McKenzie faces having to go to the Court of Session to defend her exclusive use of the manicured garden she claims to have spent several thousand pounds on since moving into Fettes Row in 1966.

For more than 40 years, Mrs McKenzie has been devoted to creating and enhancing her "little oasis in the New Town", while blocking off the only through-route for other flat owners and refusing access via her own property.

She has fended off various attempts to secure access to the garden over the decades and has faced the threat of court action since 2005, when lawyers were called in by other flat owners unable to negotiate with a developer building mews houses in the area.

However, Mrs McKenzie has been backed by the findings of a land tribunal, after she asked for the historic rights to access the garden to be scrapped.

But it is thought the two neighbours, Hilary Scott and Joyce Kim, who defended the action and hired an advocate to fight the case, are not prepared to let it drop and are considering an appeal to the Court of Session.

Mrs McKenzie was adamant yesterday that she had done nothing wrong, insisting that a previous land tribunal hearing in 1967 had effectively established she and her husband were sole owners of the garden, which was not used by neighbours.

But she admitted recent rows had "soured" relations with her new neighbours, one of whom told The Scotsman she had decided to rent her flat out, having become so fed-up over the row.

Mrs McKenzie, who is now divorced, said: "No-one has ever used the garden to dry their clothes and it's always been our garden since we moved in. We've spent thousands of pounds on it over the last 40 years and it's now a little oasis in the New Town.

"I do feel vindicated by the tribunal findings, although we always felt we were in the right all this time."

Ms Kim, who said she had just moved to a flat on the Royal Mile and let out her Fettes Row flat last month, said: "As far as we're concerned, all the owners in the block have equal rights to use the garden and have been blocked from doing so. We're very disappointed in the ruling but there's obviously the prospect of an appeal. It's been a long story so far and I've decided to move out I'm so fed-up with it."

The two-day tribunal was told that the 1967 hearing found in favour of the McKenzies on condition that other owners in the block had a "right of common interest" to access the garden through a door at the bottom of the back stair.