Report - Colin’s Barn (The Hobbit House), Chedglow, Wiltshire - May 2015

[glub]

They seemed to know exactly what qe were looking for must get it allot.
Not sure why they don't just let people come and look. Does there farm or land any damage.
Do they have motion detectors in the field?

 

[silentwalker]

What an incredible little place! Great report and pictures

 

[Maniac]

We got caught by the land owner here, although to be honest we were very obvious about our visit and parked in the entrance to the field it's in and just strolled in, not the wisest of ideas. He was quite an angry person, but in talking to him on the way out I understood his frustrations as dealing with trespassers interrupts his working day and is quite annoying. It is however an amazing building and great to see it's still there.

.

 

[Bertie Bollockbrains]

I too have encountered the farmer here whose vocabulary seems to be limited to just two words.. one beginning with F and the other word beginning with O. Whilst he never caught us in the literal sense, he did follow us all the way to the car (about a km away and well off his land) with a constant barrage of those two words that he knows. As stated earlier, timing is key to this site, think when a farmer is least likely to be out and about.

One last thing, there a big shiny new palisade fence across the most obvious way in.

 

[Carmofy]

I think the property should be snapped up and maintained by English Heritage or the National Trust. The farmer is letting it go to rot and soon time and the elements will either collapse it or make it very dangerous to enter. Even worse, he may decide the land would be better used for extending the nearby quarry or for growing corn. If he had any aesthetic sense, the farmer could get some cheap labour in to maintain the place and the lane and get some income from visitors.

 

[Palisade]

I think the property should be snapped up and maintained by English Heritage or the National Trust. The farmer is letting it go to rot and soon time and the elements will either collapse it or make it very dangerous to enter. Even worse, he may decide the land would be better used for extending the nearby quarry or for growing corn. If he had any aesthetic sense, the farmer could get some cheap labour in to maintain the place and the lane and get some income from visitors.

The landowner clearly doesn't care about it. It would certainly be nice if the building gained some sort of protection but I suspect someone or some organisation would have to offer a lot of money.

 

[Thumper]

Do excuse the thread bump but thought I would pop in and say I went here in May 2016, solid electric gates have been installed at the track with CCTV. I went on the byway which surrounds the field although a fair way out, I couldn't see anything due to solar panels littering the fields. I finally managed to find a break in the barbed wire fencing and was about to start my long walk to the barn when a lady out walking her dog called me over. She told me under no circumstances should I enter any of the fields because CCTV is installed all over the place and the 'angry farmer' basically sits there all day watching it and will rush out on his quad bike armed with a shotgun and a foul mouth. The entire village hate him. She said there were rumours that he had demolished it but as you cannot get anywhere near it no-one knows. A real shame, it's stunning and I made an 80 mile trip here to see it so was bitterly disappointed, sometimes you just have to throw your hands up in defeat especially when you hear you'll be chased by someone with a shotgun, not high on my list of things to do!

 

[Carmofy]

<cough> Drone <cough> Just an idea <cough> Cheap one, in case Farmer Palmer has his shot gun <cough>

 

[Bertie Bollockbrains]

I think you need some strepsils? That's quite a nasty cough you have there

otherwise an excellent idea

 

[Thumper]

I like your style Carmofy, I shall have to invest in one and a gopro and take a trip back up at some point Let's hope the shotgun doesn't take it out!

 

[Maniac]

As you'd travelled so far I'd have gone for it and just see what happens. We've run into him before, and although he wasn't p[particularly pleasant, he just asked us to "go away" in slightly less polite terms.

 

[AltCoyne]

I have a quadcopter based on a DJI F450 frame that I run with a GoPro Hero3+ but I'm not really willing to have it blown out of the sky...

 

[Thumper]

Nice setup AltCoyne! I live on a farm and despite the farmer being a very pleasant chap I am sure he'd take out a drone with his gun if someone was snooping around his land. The local Royal Naval airfield use birds of prey to take out drones, that may cause less damage. Maplins do a reasonably priced drone with an inbuilt camera, maybe I'll invest in that for fear of it getting blown to bits or taken out by a Hawk!

 

[Carmofy]

Question for the legally savvy: Does a landowner own the airspace above his land? Is it trespassing to fly a drone 100ft above non-residential property?

Question for the rest of us: Wouldn't it be a cool YouTube video if we were to fly a drone over nondescript fields and lanes and then suddenly there is the grand reveal of the amazing Hobbit House? The drone could do a reccy to establish the state of the work of art and then shoot up in the air in surprise as it spies the red-faced, fist-waving, furious farmer on his quad bike, open shirt flapping in the breeze, hairy belly overhanging his wide belt with its large golden "UKIP till Death" buckle. We recover and fly our drone teasingly lower. Low enough now for us to read the farmers lips, through foaming, spraying spittle, as he describes the intimate, yet indelicate, treatments he plans to enact on our skulls. He halts and jumps off the bike and turns to retrieve something from the rear. We recall his reputation, his previous posturings and threats. We have strayed too close. We rapidly back our agent away and up but we are too late: the farmer's leering face and gun track up. A short distance away, the display of our live feed goes blank a moment before we hear the blunt report of Farmer Palmer's anger.

100,000 hits in four days and worldwide publicity and sympathy for the fate of Hobbit House.

Alternatively, the drone, mis-managed, could hit an electricity pylon and end tits up and damaged in a pile of cow shit long before it reaches Hobbit House. However, we may still get a modicum of publicity as "click 31" of "Fifty Hilarious Drone Fails".

 

[Bertie Bollockbrains]

Does a landowner own the airspace above his land?

Yes, and historically it was covered in law under the principle of "Cuius est solem, eius est usque ad coelum et ad inferos" which translates as "Whoever owns the soil, holds title all the way up to the heavens and down to the depths of hell."

With the advent of aviation, the above principle no longer exactly applies and ownership of the airspace above your land restricted to just a short distance. NASA does not need the homeowners consent to pass a satellite over your house. Likewise I can not divert the London to Sydney flight away from my house just because I want to. The Civil Aviation Act of 1982 gives a generally accepted amount of air above one's roof that a person is entitled to as 500-1000ft but this is not a hard definition. In the US, the threshold is 500ft. So flying a drone in the way you described is most definitely trespassing. In the opposite direction you do own the land below your house but not the mineral rights and anyways the Crown has first rights to gas, oil, gold, coal on both public and private land.

All this means that it's perfectly legal for you to cut branches off a neighbour's tree if you are only cutting branches overhanging into your airspace. You mustn't kill the tree. Strangely though, the cuttings legally belong not to you but to your neighbour and your neighbour can demand that you hand over all the cuttings. Refuse to hand over the cuttings and it's technically a theft.

In recent years, the original "ad coelom" principle has been further modified to clarify matters beyond the Earth's atmosphere. The Outer Space Treaty of 2012 has now been signed by most UN nations - in a nutshell it says that space belongs to all of mankind and that no one person or nation can claim a part of space as their own.

I think I need to get out a bit more.