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  "path": "/2026/05/26/couple-say-neighbour-hell-has-made-lives-a-nightmare-15-years-28531088/",
  "publishedAt": "2026-05-26T20:29:12.000Z",
  "site": "https://metro.co.uk",
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    "News",
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    "Court",
    "Wiltshire",
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    "check our news page",
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  "textContent": "Corrine and Peter Rotherham thought they had found their perfect home in the £675,000 bungalow in Urchfont (Picture: Solent News)\n\n**A couple has described how their dream life in a beautiful village was turned into a ‘living nightmare’ by a neighbour from hell.**\n\nCorrine and Peter Rotherham thought they had found their perfect home in the £675,000 bungalow in Urchfont, Wiltshire, which has twice been recognised in the Best Kept Village awards.\n\nBut they now say they are on the verge of being driven out of it after being subjected to a campaign of harassment by next-door neighbour Zoi Hayes.\n\nHayes ‘made our lives absolute hell for 14 or 15 years’, Mrs Rotherham said, adding: ‘It was like living with a Peeping Tom who was absolutely obsessed with you.’\n\nSpeaking to the Daily Mail, she described how Hayes cut a hole in the hedge to spy on them, hurled dead moles into their garden and loudly clattered the bins to wake them early in the morning.\n\n##  Sign up for all of the latest stories\n\nStart your day informed with Metro's **News Updates** newsletter or get **Breaking News** alerts the moment it happens.\n\nHayes was given a restraining order ‘to not contact, pester or annoy’ the couple after she damaged some of their property in 2021.\n\nShe admitted breaching that order two years later and received a six-week prison sentence, suspended for 12 months.\n\nHayes has now admitted breaching it again by leaving her lawnmower running to ‘annoy’ the Rotherhams while they hosted a dinner party for friends.\n\nProsecutor Christiane Finlay told Salisbury Magistrates’ Court: ‘The brief facts of the matter are that Mrs Rotherham had been Mrs Hayes’s neighbour for 15 years with a long-standing history of a neighbourhood dispute between the parties.\n\nCorrine and Peter Rotherham moved to Urchfont – winner of a Best Kept Village award for two consecutive years -in search of a quiet way of life\n\n‘She had a previous conviction on February 23, 2021, and she had a restraining order in place until February 22, 2026, after she damaged property.\n\n‘The conditions were to not contact, pester or annoy Corinne Rotherham or Peter Rotherham.’\n\nShe continued: ‘This is a matter which is, at best, a deliberate breach, as what she’s done effectively is pestering the victim by leaving her lawnmower on while the victim Mrs Rotherham was having a dinner party with six of her friends.\n\n‘She hasn’t been able to do that for a number of years but, to frustrate and annoy her, Ms Hayes has put her lawnmower on and just left it there.\n\n‘One of the party attendees spoke to her about it and asked her to switch it off, which she did.’\n\nMrs Rotherham told the Mail Hayes moved out in January ‘and now we have lovely neighbours but she keeps looking for excuses to come back’.\n\nShe said they spent thousands on new fence panels ‘to keep her out’ but the pensioner’s menacing behaviour persisted.\n\nZoi Hayes outside Salisbury Magistrates’ Court (Picture: Andrew Croft/Solent News)\n\nMrs Rotherham said they had to stay on the other side of the garden and play music so Hayes couldn’t eavesdrop.\n\n‘It was one thing after another,’ she said.\n\nLast July’s summer gathering was their ‘first in years’, she said, adding: ‘It was a lovely evening and it was so warm that we could sit outside. Most of the people there knew about her and knew what she was like.’\n\nWithin an hour and a half of the group chatting in the garden Hayes started up her lawnmower.\n\nMrs Rotherham told the paper: ‘I said it was a breach of the restraining order and I was going to call the police because I was so angry.’\n\nAfter saying she could not get into any disputes with her neighbour, Mrs Rotherham’s guests ‘went round with a hidden camera’ to confront Hayes.\n\n‘They got her to admit that she was doing it because she knew I was out there and she wanted to wind me up,’ she added.\n\nThe footage ended up forming part of the case Hayes eventually admitted to.\n\nHayes will be sentenced at a later date.\n\n******Get in touch with our news team by emailing us atwebnews@metro.co.uk.******\n\n**For more stories like this,** check our news page.\n\nComment now Comments \nAdd Metro as a Preferred Source on Google\nAdd as preferred source\n",
  "title": "Couple say neighbour from hell ‘has made our lives a nightmare for 15 years’"
}