So it seems I'm about to have a row with my neighbours as to who owns the fence between us!
As far as I'm aware there's a convention that when you stand in the road facing your house, the fence to the right is your responsibility, which is the case with the fence in question. This is what the neighbour is relying on, but I don't think it has any standing in law.
The reason I'm disputing this is that my house was built 20 - 30 years before theirs and the land on which their house now stands was part of the garden of a big old manor house behind. At that time there would have been a hedge between my house and the garden of the manor house which would have been on the right of the manor house behind. A small part of this hedge still survives where the bottom of my garden overlaps with the garden of the manor house behind and they once told me quite clearly that it's their hedge when I cut it back a bit too enthusiastically!
When the developers subdivided the garden for the 2 new houses and leveled the plot, they would have ripped out the hedge and built a retaining wall with the said fence on top as the boundary between my house and the new house. I think that the ownership of the boundary would have passed from the manor house behind to the new house in the sub division, rather than to the existing house next door (ie mine).
The fence is pretty knackered now and they're saying it's my fence, but they have form for this sort of thing as a couple of years ago they told their neighbour on the other side that the fence between them was his and he had to replace it, which he did.
There is nothing in my deeds or Land Registry Certificate that indicates who owns the fence.
Sorry for the long winded post but I often finds it helps to get my thoughts in order when I write things out and who knows I might even get some intelligent suggestions!
Thanks!