Next door’s nice new front drive.
Why might this be of interest? Because I have been panicking that we might be moving onto his drive.
A few weeks ago, neighbour Kevin pointed out that our blue retaining wall against his drive was bulging slightly. I decided that it probably hadn’t moved for years, but would keep an eye on it. While travelling to Norfolk a couple of weeks ago, Richard commented that Bill, our mutual friend who built our patio and was now laying next doors drive, had discovered that the wall had no foundations. It is built on soil. I went very quiet. It dawned on me that the same wall ran the length of our house. On top of this wall was the garage wall. The garage is now our living room.
I had some sleepless nights wondering if, one day, our nice living room might collapse onto the neighbours drive. This would spoil his newly laid block work, and on the whole could be very embarrassing.
A few days later I left work early to catch Bill, still working next door. He confirmed that the whole length of the wall, and therefore the garage wall, is just sitting on soil, suspended about two feet above Kevin’s drive. The garage wall was built on top of the older wall that was already (and still is) leaning precariously towards the adjacent drive.
However he reassured me that, from what we know of the house history, the blue brick wall was probably built in the late 50’s and is still standing. The garage wall was built in 1965, and is still vertical. And our extension has a new inner wall, supporting the roof, hopefully with proper foundations (although this was the builder that put the wrong kind of tiles in the roof). Nevertheless I have asked our neighbours that, should one evening they discover us watching our TV on their drive, maybe they could bring us a cup of tea.
Technically we live in Oaktree House, but sadly the tree had to go.
We now have a thriving Oakstump at the front of the house.
