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A bitter 15-year dispute between neighbours has climaxed with a guilty plea to charges of breaching a restraining order in a village which has twice won Best Kept Village awards. Corrine and Peter Rotherham purchased their £675,000 bungalow on a private road in the village of Urchfont, Wiltshire in 2011, believing they had found their ideal countryside retreat. However, neighbour Zoi Hayes, 68, "made our lives absolute hell for 14 or 15 years," Mrs Rotherham told the Daily Mail, "It was like living with a peeping tom who was absolutely obsessed with you." Hayes' campaign of harassment took numerous forms over the years, including cutting a hole in her hedge to spy on the couple, forcing them to grow out the foliage for privacy. TRENDING Stories Videos Your Say On five separate occasions, she hurled rotting mole carcasses over the fence into the Rotherhams' garden and would bang her wheelie bin outside their bedroom window to wake them in the early hours. Frequent verbal attacks included phrases such as "you're a witch" and "crawl under a stone and die" over the boundary fence. In one instance, the pensioner switched on her lawnmower and kept it going while the Rotherhams hosted friends for drinks and tapas in their garden, and threw a jug of water over Mrs Rotherham, prompting a call to police. Zoi Hayes appeared at Salisbury Magistrates' Court, where she admitted harassment by breach of restraining order following the lawnmower incident last July. Mrs Rotherham, a 60-year-old semi-retired auditor, and her husband, 61, who works as a tree surgeon after leaving IT, had been searching for a peaceful existence, with properties in the village fetching more than £1.7 million. Initially, their neighbour appeared perfectly agreeable, but it quickly became what Mrs Rotherham described as "a living nightmare." The couple spent thousands on new fence panels to maintain their privacy over the period of Hayes' episodes and found themselves avoiding spending time in their garden in nice weather. LATEST DEVELOPMENTS Nightmare neighbour jailed for campaign of terror which forced families away from sleepy street Aldi leaves woman in tears as she breaks down over large noise of store's refrigeration units Teen boys spared jail for rape have sentences appealed amid national fury Mrs Rotherham said: "We had to move to the bedroom just to avoid her. It was just one thing after another." The dinner party in July last year was the first gathering the couple had hosted in years, having been intimidated by their neighbour's behaviour. Eight friends joined them for wine and tapas in the garden, when Hayes started her lawnmower to compromise the couple's gathering. "I said it was a breach of the restraining order and I was going to call the police because I was so angry," Mrs Rotherham recalled. Eventually, friends of the couple went next door with a concealed camera to confront Hayes, where they captured her admitting she knew Mrs Rotherham was outside and "wanted to wind her up." The hidden camera footage handed over to police and formed part of the prosecution case. Prosecutor Cristiane Finlay told the court Hayes had received a restraining order following a property damage conviction in February 2021. Conditions prohibited her from contacting, pestering or annoying either of the Rotherhams. "This is a matter which is at best a deliberate breach," Ms Finlay stated, describing how Hayes left her mower running "to frustrate and annoy" her neighbour. Hayes had previously breached the same order in 2023, receiving a six-week sentence suspended for 12 months. Defence solicitor Raymond Tan noted his client had relocated to Dorset in January and was no longer living beside the Rotherhams. She now faces the prospect of imprisonment when she returns to court for sentencing next month. Our Standards: The GB News Editorial Charter
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