A property dispute between Paget neighbours continued in the Supreme Court yesterday with experts offering evidence about a portion of woodland reserve between their houses.

Samuel Andrew Banks, who owns 17 Inglewood Lane, has argued that Simon and Deirdre Storey, the owners of 13 Inglewood Lane, cleared trees from a woodland reserve on his property to build a road.

Jeffery Elkinson, representing Mr Banks, said the Storeys claimed that trees in the area had been lost by the back-to-back impacts of hurricanes Fay and Gonzalo but that Mr Banks was never notified about the damage and replanted the area to suit his own tastes.

The Storeys have, however, alleged that Mr Banks, the husband of former premier Dame Pamela Gordon, built a gate partially on their property — and accused him of trespassing and causing a nuisance on his side of the border.

Dame Pamela was accused of making “various insulting remarks” to Mr Storey during a June 2023 confrontation between the two, in which the defendant was said to have blocked her car with his scooter on the road outside their properties.

She denied the claims.

As the hearing continued yesterday, Dave Ramrattan, a structural engineer, said he visited the site of the alleged clearing on December 7, 2024 to determine the depth of the soil in the area.

He told the court he chose to do so because he wanted to address “contradictions” between the evidence offered by experts from the two sides.

Mr Ramrattan said that the location of the “access road” allegedly created in 2015 had shallow bedrock with only about a foot of soil.

However, on either side there was a berm of soil as much as 3ft deep.

Mr Ramrattan said he had not been at the site in 2015 or earlier, but looking at satellite photographs of the area he said it was “clear in his mind” that it had been an active roadway.

“It suggests to me that rock was exposed and the only way rock could be exposed in that location is the soil was excavated,” he said.

“Something happened between March of 2015 and April of 2015, within four weeks. If you look at these images you can see that difference in colour. It’s green, and four weeks later it’s whitish.”

David Cox, a landscape architect, said he had been hired by Mr Banks to create a conservation management plan for portions of the woodland reserve, including the area alleged to have been cleared by Mr Storey.

He said he had met with Mr Banks about the project in 2023 and was told that the intention was to bring the area back into a more natural state.

Mr Cox accepted that there were different approaches to landscape architecture, and that the approach taken on the replanted site adopted a “resort” flavour.

“I think what has been done there is high-maintenance,” he said. “What has been done would need to be maintained for 30 to 40 years.

“There is expense in that and I think that one of the problems with keeping what’s there is it require quite a lot of cost.”

Mr Cox accepted that his proposal would involve the removal of endemic species that have been planted in the area by Mr Storey, while planting the same species in the same reserve.

He said: “The plants that are on the property don’t belong to Mr Banks, so they should be returned to their rightful owner.

“There are palmetto planted on solid ground, but quite a lot of the Bermuda cedar are planted with mulch which leads to problems with the stability of the trees. We would like to plant trees that grow in stable ground.”

Mr Cox also accepted that the proposal would involve the installation of fencing and a wall, and moving forward with the project as planned would involve accessing the area through Mr Storey’s property.

A former tenant of 13 Inglewood Lane meanwhile recalled that the property to the west of the home was overgrown with dense vegetation while she lived there.

She added that there was also thick overgrowth to the south of the home, which often blocked the view of the South Shore.

The trial continues.

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