The 80-year-old wife of a former Tottenham Hotspur manager has been told by a court to accept a caution for spraying a hose into her neighbours’ kitchen during a long-running dispute.
Carole Shreeves, wife of former football manager Peter Shreeves, faced trial for causing £4,829 of damage to the £1.3m property of her long-suffering neighbours Trevor Dempsey and Sandra Durdin.
A bitter ‘war of the hoses’ dispute has raged for years, apparently starting in 2019 with a dispute over work on the brick pillar between their driveways in a smart area of east London.
The latest in a long series of court hearings took place yesterday at Thames Magistrates court – and concluded with Mrs Shreeves, who did not attend, being urged to attend a police station to formally accept a caution for the offence.
Carole Shreeves (right) wife of former football manager Peter Shreeves (left) faced trial for causing £4,829 of damage to the £1.3m property of her long-suffering neighbours Trevor Dempsey and Sandra Durdin
The warring neighbours lived at these two properties in prosperous Chingford, east London
A magistrate said that if she failed to do so she would face conviction in court.
The neighbours had lived in peace for almost a quarter of a century before relations degenerated when a brick structure was knocked down wilthout Mrs Shreeves’ permission.
A nearby resident said: ‘The dispute all started in November 2019, when Trevor suddenly told Mrs Shreeves he wanted to knock down the brick pier between their two driveways. She told them to wait until the Monday, so she could take legal advice.
‘But she said he went ahead and knocked it down with a sledgehammer on the Sunday. She thought that was bad behaviour – and it went downhill from there.’
A friend of Mr Dempsey and Ms Durdin, however, said: ‘They’d been friends with Peter and Carole Shreeves for years before all this started after their daughter moved in.
‘In the end they said they had to move away to escape the harassment.
‘The hose was squirted through the door when they had to leave it open so their new-born puppy could go out into the garden.
‘The floor was ruined. The hose pipe was set up so it kept squirting in without being held.’
Mrs Shreeves’ daughter by her famous husband, Joanne, 52, was in March convicted of common assault, causing criminal damage and one count of threatening behaviour, in the same dispute.
Pictured: Neighbours Sandra Durdin and Trevor Dempsey
She had been caught on CCTV camera installed by Mr Dempsey, 62, and Ms Durdin, 58, throwing bricks, boulders, part of a kitchen cabinet and a shovel-full of cement over the fence dividing the smart mock-Tudor semi-detached homes in Chingford, east London, causing £5,000 worth of damage.
And it was a mobile phone camera operated by Ms Durdin’s son Mitchell which the prosecution say caught her mother Mrs Shreeves directing a hose over the fence, and through the open kitchen door of her neighbours two years ago.
One of Miss Shreeves’ hearings about the dispute had heard there was ‘clearly an undisguised animosity between all the parties in this case’.
CCTV audio had captured the sound of Miss Shreeves spitting at Ms Durdin’s son Mitchell.
Mrs Shreeves and her daughter have both claimed they too had suffered abuse and damage from Mr Dempsey and Ms Durdin, but their attempts to insist CCTV footage had been tampered with have been dismissed.
Mr Dempsey and Ms Durdin eventually moved away from their six bed, three bathroom house, complete with ‘detached gym or summerhouse’, all the way to the Kent coast at Ramsgate in a bid to put the dispute behind them, but court cases are still dragging on.