Neighbour-from-hell Zipporah Lisle-Mainwaring steps up her campaign to annoy her neighbours in Kensington
Zipporah Lisle-Mainwaring is the ultimate neighbour from hell: If she ran a hotel, she’d be Basil Fawlty; if she were in business she’d be Donald Trump.
Lisle-Mainwaring became infamous in 2013 after she sought planning permission to construct a “mega-basement” underneath a house she’d purchased at 19 South End, a cul-de-sac in Kensington, W8 in 2012. A series of applications, approvals and appeals followed and after the case reached the High Court of Justice in February 2015, Mrs Lisle Mainwaring – who currently lives in what the Evening Standard describes as “a grand apartment in Switzerland” – decided to festoon her property with red and white stripes “to get her own back on neighbours who objected to her plans”.
Adjoining a house offered for £12.75 million in 2010, Lisle-Mainwaring’s three storey, terraced property – which is allegedly worth £15 million but is recorded as having been sold for just £1.3 million in 2010 and £575,000 in 1997 – was formerly a 4,154 square foot office building and on Tuesday, the Evening Standard reported that she now has secured permission to demolish it. According to the report, the Geneva based woman – whose own stepson, Robert Lisle, told the Daily Express that she is “so rude, in fact the rudest person I’ve ever met” in April 2015 – has spent over £1 million in legal fees to date but has only managed to remove asbestos and strip out the interior of 19 South End thus far.
Mrs Lisle-Mainwaring now faces yet more battles ahead: She cannot actually level the building until she gets a party wall agreement from the owners of two adjoining buildings and an attempt to accuse the Daily Mail of harassing her when they photographed her with a coat over her face failed this month also. For these reasons, we make this ridiculously bad neighbour our Wally of the Week. It is time to take pity on anybody who finds Zipporah Lisle-Mainwaring next door.
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