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Read Next:. Follow Us Twitter Facebook. Corrections Report Content. Please log in to comment. Report an error, omission or problem:. Hoarder: Richard Wallace has stashed away so many possessions that it has made his house unliveable. Crannies: The rubbish started to increase after the death of Mr Wallace's mother, who had controlled his habit. Space junk: The rubbish in Richard Wallace's yard in the village of Westcott in Surrey was visible from satellites.
Documentary: Mr Wallace's story will be told in a film on Channel 4 to be broadcast this evening. But it was the six rusting cars — three Jaguars, an Audi and Two Wolseleys — which jostled for space in the garden with piles of wooden pallets, bags of empty cans and bottles, an office chair covered with moss, pushchair, tarpaulins, old front doors and kitchen sinks that fuelled their rage.
Journalism: Mr Wallace's collection includes thousands of newspapers dating back decades. Diving in: Mr Wallace has a psychological problem which prevents him throwing things away.
Junk: The house was so cluttered it took 45 minutes - and a huge fire risk - just to fry an egg. Finally, in May , Robert Primrose, a senior planning enforcement officer with Mole Valley council, served an order on Mr Wallace under the Town and Country Planning Act ordering him to clear up his garden.
But he had underestimated Mr Wallace, who had maintained a sense of community spirit despite having become ostracized from some of his neighbours. Recorder Christopher Purchas QC agreed. But now, 22 months after Mr Wallace's victory at Guildford Crown Court, comes the extraordinary conclusion to the story. He is now working on the house, fuelled by home-cooked meals from locals, is waiting for an appointment to see a psychologist, and has had his first haircut in years.
And in it lies a lesson for us all. It shows that a bitter dispute can be resolved with a little care and understanding on both sides — and a community working together is more effective than the law. It just goes to show that, if the bureaucrats had taken more trouble to find out that Mr Wallace had an obsessive illness, the case would never have escalated so far. Rusting heaps: There were six old cars - three Jaguars, an Audi and Two Wolseleys - jostling for space in the garden along with piles of wooden pallets, old front doors and kitchen sinks.
Outside: The rehabilitation between when a landscape gardener offered to screen off Mr Wallace's property from the rest of his picturesque village. Crowded: Mr Wallace sleeps and eats in his chair, as there is no space to do them anywhere else. Heaps: His garden was at one point so full of rubbish that the debris could be seen from satellites.
It is an extraordinary turnaround, which has been filmed by the Channel 4 filmmaker Christian Trumble for his documentary Obsessive Compulsive Hoarder, and shows that the hand of friendship often achieves more than the rule of law. I really am worried about it. My mother would be absolutely horrified. I am going to go to one session to start with and then proceed from there. Hoard: Despite owning two houses, there is almost no living space left in the properties. Regrets: Mr Wallace warns that obsessive collecting is not a good idea as it takes over people's lives.
Landscape gardener Andy Honey approached Mr Wallace with the offer and he accepted. Afterwards Mr Honey offered to help him cut back his undergrowth and remove the foliage. He then appealed for neighbours to help clear the rubbish — in just one afternoon they removed 30 tons of junk — enabling Mr Wallace to walk to his front door.
Over the next eight weeks, they cleared the remainder of the garden. Born on June 9, , the only child of former bus driver Maurice Wallace and his wife Freda, whose family had lived in the village since the 19th century, Richard Wallace was destined for a bright future. Firefighters took seven hours last week to rescue a vulnerable mother from a tiny flat in Romford, Essex, which was stuffed with hoarded items.
The bedsit above a takeaway was piled with rubbish accumulated by the woman and her son. In January emergency services in Vancouver, Canada, had to cut their way into an elderly man's home after he became trapped for three days behind a vast hoard of rubbish. He had no heating or electricity and was suffering from severe dehydration.
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