GB - Thurloe Lodge Ltd v Amberwood Drive Ltd & Anor

This is my judgment on the Defendants’ applications dated 4 December 2020 and 4 March 2021 for summary judgment on key aspects of the Claimant’s claim.

The Claimant, Thurloe Lodge Limited, is represented by Mr Warwick QC. The

Defendants, Amberwood Drive Limited and Prime London Holdings 11 Limited, are represented by Mr de Waal QC with Mr Watkin. I have been greatly assisted by their skeleton arguments and compact submissions, which have enabled the hearing which was listed for two days to be completed in just over a day.

At an earlier stage the Claimant applied for and was granted interim injunctive relief by Mr David Holland QC sitting as a Deputy High Court Judge. Mr

Holland’s judgment dated 17 October 2019 sets out the background to the claim at paragraphs 1-21 which I gratefully adopt:

“1. This is an application for an interim injunction made by the Claimant, Thurloe Lodge Limited, against the Defendants, Amberwood Drive Limited and Prime London Holdings 11 Limited. The Claimant has been represented by Mr Warwick QC with Mr Kynoch and the Defendants have been represented by Ms Holland QC with Mr Wills.

The application relates to a right of way which the Claimant admittedly has over a private roadway situated opposite the Victoria and Albert Museum in central London. The roadway runs in a roughly southerly direction off the public highway at Thurloe Place. It is some six metres wide and approximately 36 metres in length. It has a footway down its eastern side which extends most of the way down that side.

The Claimant is the freehold owner of a property known as Thurloe Lodge which is situated at roughly the south-eastern corner of the private road (which I shall hereafter call “the Road”). The Second Defendant is the owner of another substantial and adjacent residential property known as Amberwood House, the entrance to which forms the southern end of the Road. The Road is a dead end and it is, so far as I can see, the only means of access, certainly vehicular access, to both Thurloe Lodge and Amberwood House.

The history of the matter is briefly as follows.

Thurloe Lodge was a Victorian construction built in or about 1840. It was, so I am told, originally built as two dwellings, but subsequently knocked into one.

Amberwood House itself was built in about 1928. In or around 1972, Thurloe

Lodge became occupied by a tenant. All the properties, that is Amberwood House, Thurloe Lodge and the roadway, were at the relevant time owned by a trust. I