Neighbours from hell who face being banned from their OWN street

For prospective buyers, it looked like a golden opportunity to settle in one of Scotland's most desirable spots where all but those with the deepest pockets are usually priced out of the market.

Not for nothing does North ­Berwick regularly emerge as the seaside town with the steepest property prices in the land.

The retirement haven has two spectacular golf courses and gorgeous beaches. Its state school is the envy of all others in East Lothian. Even choice apartments here sell for well over half a million.

So when Miller Homes finally won a long battle to build dozens of homes on the edge of town – which now sell for around £500,000 – business was brisk.

For Robert and Marie Bain, the detached home they snapped up on the newly created Blackadder Crescent was their retirement 'dream'.

Two doors down, online designer Stuart McMorris and schoolteacher Catriona Henderson were no less delighted when they and their two children moved into their split-new four-bedroom abode in 2018.

What neither couple reckoned on was their neighbours – the middle-aged husband and wife who had bought the house which sits between their ones.

Certainly David and Jacqueline Aston, who had moved from ­Peebles, seemed amicable enough at first. Yet within weeks there was ­tension – and, soon after, ­outright hostility.

Owning a house next door to the Astons became, in the words of Marie Bain, 67, a 'living hell'.

This month, following a lengthy court trial, a sheriff signalled that he was considering a drastic denouement to the three years of suffering the Astons put their neighbours through.

Sheriff John Cook said he may be persuaded to impose a non-harassment order banning the couple even from entering the street where they live.

In that scenario they would be forced to sell, leave the Ferrygate estate in disgrace and see if they were any more capable of getting along with neighbours elsewhere.

For their part, it seems the Astons are determined to stay put for as long as the law allows – even if their outrageous antics have made them the talk of the town.

How, then, did an unprepossessing street of comfortable new homes become the scene of one of the most extreme neighbourhood feuds to be heard in a Scottish court?

An early trigger, it seems, was Jacqueline Aston's 'strange obsession' with the positioning of bins at the front of her house.

The Astons also took exception to barking from the Bains' dogs, Hamish and Brodie – and swiftly decided their other neighbours should be reported to the authorities for abusing their children.

Mrs Aston, 58, a nurse, made a series of false claims to that effect. She reported Ms Henderson, 45, to the General Teaching Council for Scotland, alleging she was a drug-taker and 'unfit' to be a teacher.

She also contacted children's charity the NSPCC and East Lothian Council saying the couple were guilty of abuse and neglect.

The malicious complaints were all dismissed.

Mr McMorris, meanwhile, told Edinburgh Sheriff Court that Crimestoppers came to the family home after an anonymous report that he and his partner were drug dealers. The 46-year-old was in no doubt about the identity of the complainer.

'We were already stressed out but this was utterly appalling,' he said. 'I couldn't believe someone would stoop to this kind of behaviour towards us. She [Mrs Aston] was trying to get the children taken away from us.'

Two doors away, the Bains' retirement dream was swiftly becoming a horror story. The Astons were relentlessly filming and photographing them when they were in the garden.

In a ­single day, Mrs Bain discovered, they had made 67 recordings of them and family members.

Her husband Robert said it reached the stage where the 'stalking' forced them to cancel family gatherings in their garden.

Matters took an even darker turn in 2020 when neighbours ­discovered how Mr Aston had been spending his time indoors over the foregoing months.

The former accountant, who was left disabled after a car crash in 2013, had been writing a novel.

Now the self-published work was on sale online – and the tale it told bore an uncanny similarity to events in Blackadder Crescent, as seen from the Astons' skewed point of view.

Its central character was Dave, a stroke victim who is unpopular in his neighbourhood because he is English.

He takes revenge on those he sees as 'behaving badly' after he discovers his stroke has given him magical powers to make 'bad things' happen to them.

Englishman Mr Aston suffered a stroke shortly after a motorway crash which forced him to quit his job as a chartered accountant. He and his wife were waging war on their neighbours on both sides.

What could possibly have inspired him to write such a story?

'I'm shaking at the moment just thinking about this,' Mr McMorris told the court. 'We were almost living what we were reading here.'

His partner claimed the discovery of Mr Aston's novel left her 'scared and worried' and she believed her family may have been used as a 'project' for it.

While that remains wholly plausible, the Mail has discovered the Astons' neighbours in North Berwick were far from the first with whom they had crossed swords.

Some 45 miles away in Peebles there had been rows with fellow residents of their cul-de-sac over a disabled parking bay which the local council had designated for Mr Aston, who can walk but often uses a wheelchair.

The Astons believed neighbours' indignation over the bay – previously used as a turning spot – prompted a vandal attack on his Nissan Qashqai which was badly keyed in October 2016.

When Scottish Borders Council's Tweeddale Area Forum later decided to remove the parking bay the couple told the local press they were being driven out of ­Peebles.

'We can't see how we can continue to live here under the circumstances,' said Mrs Aston. 'It's a disgusting state of affairs when we are given a parking bay to make life easier for my husband and then it is taken away.'

Counter arguments included the fact bin lorries could not get turned when Mr Aston's car was in the bay – and that they had a driveway of their own.

When they arrived in North ­Berwick two years later, then, the Astons were already bruised from neighbourhood disputes. Was the wrath they unleashed on ­neighbours there a hangover from Peebles?

And to what extent did Mr Aston's loss of livelihood after his accident impact on events that followed?

He fell asleep at the wheel of his sports car, hit a crash barrier and suffered a fractured jaw and brain injury. The jaw break later caused a carotid artery dissection which resulted in an ischaemic stroke.

Mr Aston has claimed the brain injury brought on personality changes and left him 'alert' for only around three hours a day.

'I don't see myself as a brain injury survivor, I see myself as a victim,' he said once. 'Brain injury ruined my life. I know that's a sad thought, but everyone's entitled to their own interpretation and that's definitely mine.'

Whatever their motivation, it seems that, from an early stage, both husband and wife began a campaign of intimidation against both next-door neighbours.

In respect of Mr McMorris and Ms Henderson, Sheriff Cook found the Astons guilty of causing them fear and alarm over three years.

The single charge outlined a litany of behaviour the sheriff said was 'utterly appalling'.

The Astons installed three CCTV cameras to point at the couple's property. They ­confronted them about delivery drivers bringing goods to their house, shouted at the ­drivers and took photographs of the vans.

They made false reports about them to a mortgage company, to East Lothian Council and to Lothian Valuation Joint Board, ­repeatedly claiming the pair were ­running a business from home and engaged in fraud.

They made numerous 'malicious, vexatious and false' reports to the police about them and arranged for solicitors to contact them in relation to purported breaches of their property's title deeds.

The pair would also stare at their neighbours' house and repeatedly walk past the edge of their garden.

On top of this, the sheriff found that Mrs Aston spread rumours the couple were drug dealers and threw glass shards, stones, ­compost and litter onto their property.

Another intimidation tactic was to place a water sprinkler in her garden in such a way that it would soak her neighbours in theirs – and, yet another, to repeatedly move their bins for vexatious reasons.

The objective, claimed Mr McMorris, was 'to damage our lives and our reputations'.

He said he had suffered 'huge amounts of stress' due to the 'frivolous' complaints made against them.

The Astons' behaviour towards the neighbours on their other side was no less toxic. The sheriff found they 'constantly maintained observations' on them and their visitors, repeatedly staring at them and photographing and filming them.

The Bains, too, were the subject of malicious and false reports to the police and council.

Further intimidation methods included deliberately placing

bird feeders near the Bains' ­property – resulting in birds ­soiling it. The Astons would also beat their side of the fence when their neighbours were in the ­garden to disturb them.

Separately, Mrs Aston was found guilty of yet more misdeeds. The sheriff found she gave the Bains the same water sprinkler treatment as she gave her neighbours on the other side.

She also threw glass onto their property and, on one ­occasion, hurled a shovel full of snow at one of their dogs.

Giving evidence, Mrs Bain said the Astons took her and her husband to court about their dogs' supposed excessive noise and, as part of that process, she learned her neighbours had recorded her and her family 248 times – including 67 occasions on one day.

One time, she said, Mrs Aston filmed her when she was wearing a bathing suit after using her ­garden hot tub.

After winning the civil case concerning the dogs, the Bains were advised by police to keep a diary of all the harassment incidents involving the Astons.

Police also told Ms Henderson and Mr McMorris to start logging their neighbours' unacceptable behaviour.

It resulted in a bizarre stand-off where, it seemed, the only way to defend themselves against their neighbours' ­constant monitoring of them was to monitor them back.

Civil engineer Mr Bain reflected in court: 'It's been horrendous. We moved to North Berwick to our dream home to retire to, but the dream has turned into a nightmare.'

The 64-year-old added: 'There is constant harassment, we can't sit in our garden, we can't invite friends to our garden, we are always wary and we are walking on eggshells all the time.

It has had a huge detrimental effect on my health, such as sleeping ­patterns and work.'

As for the Astons, they were indignant at suggestions they had any unhealthy interest in their neighbours' affairs.

If they were often seen using cameras and binoculars inside their home, that was because they were keen birdwatchers, said Mrs Aston.

She told the court she and her husband were the ones who had suffered abusive behaviour. Mrs Bain, she said, had told her she should 'sell up because no one wants you here' which, she said, was among 'the most ­shocking abuse I've ever seen'.

Summing up, Sheriff Cook was in no doubt about the real ­victims. He said that, while Mrs Aston's offences were the more grave, both she and her husband could face jail.

On the issue of a non-harassment order banning the Astons from their home street, he told their solicitor Mark Harrower: 'It is an extensive course of conduct and it may well be entirely proportionate, so maybe your clients should ­consider their future there.'

The sheriff also found the Astons guilty of causing fear and alarm to a third set of neighbours, Marcus and Marianne Weurman. Again, Mrs Aston's actions were the more egregious.

She shouted at them in the presence of their children – and would often walk past their house, stare in their windows and laugh.

According to her testimony, she and her husband are settled in the community, have friends there and attend a local church. They have no plans to move.

When they return to court for sentencing next month, they could find the matter is out of their hands.

Until then, an uneasy wait lies ahead for at least three households in Blackadder Crescent. In one of Scotland's most desirable towns their addresses are, for now, surely the least enviable.