‘Man cave’ owner receives injunction to stop harassing neighbours | UK News

A millionaire who went to jail after refusing to tear down ‘Britain’s biggest man cave’ has been served an injunction to stop harassing his neighbours.

Graham Wildin, a 70-year-old accountant, illegally built a 10,000sq ft leisure complex behind his home in Cirencester, Gloucestershire, which boasts a bowling alley, casino and cinema in 2014.

He has repeatedly defied court orders to take it down and even spent time in prison as a result.

Now his neighbours claim Wildin is taking out his frustrations on them by clogging up the street’s parking spaces with his fleet of classic cars.

He also has his own CCTV cameras which he angles at the road, they claim.

A judge has now served an interim injunction on Wildin stopping him from causing nuisance and annoyance to his neighbours.

Wildin appeared at Cheltenham Magistrates’ Court as part of Gloucestershire Police’s application for an injunction order.

Deputy Judge Coughlin handed out the interim injunction ahead of a full two-day hearing, expected to take place later in the year.

It states Wildin must not engage in conduct which causes nuisance and annoyance to neighbours, must have no more than two of his cars parked on the street and must have no CCTV vans.

The judge said: ‘There’s clear evidence of a pattern of behaviour, and I’ll grant that interim judgment today.’

Among the cars Wildin parks on the street are: a Bentley Turbo R, a yellow convertible Jenson-Healey sports car and a burgundy Austin 1100.

Speaking previously, one elderly resident who lives on the same street said she couldn’t use her drive anymore because two of Wildin’s cars were parked either side of the entrance, preventing her from getting out.

‘I can get in but I can’t get out,’ she explained. ‘If he moved them it would be okay.

‘I tried to speak to his son and asked him to ask if the cars could be moved. He said he would but from that day on he hasn’t even looked at me.

‘Why should I have to move my car? It’s very upsetting because he’s taking it out on us.’

Another neighbour added: ‘Cars appear in our spaces when we’re out at work. Wildin has cameras looking out onto the street to spot when we move our cars out of our spaces.

‘It’s very intimidating. No one likes living here when you come back after work and feel deflated pulling into the street.

‘I don’t understand why he feels he needs to make his neighbours suffer.’

Another said: ‘He sits there watching the cameras and plays cat and mouse with his collection of classic cars.

‘He is a bloody nightmare and he is making people’s lives hell.

‘The illegal sports centre doesn’t worry me but he’s blaming us neighbours for the council’s actions so he’s decided to cause parking mayhem.’

A fourth resident added: ‘The parking here is terrible and he is causing a lot of aggro. He’s doing it on purpose too.

‘The complex shouldn’t have been built. The law is law. Why should he get away with it?’

Wildin has lost his fight to keep the leisure complex five times in court, with the first defeat happening September 2018.

He was handed a High Court injunction ordering him to remove the building before April 2020, which he failed to do.

As a result he received a suspended sentence in June 2021.

He then lost an appeal against the sentence at the Court of Appeal that November and was ordered to knock down the complex by March 10 2022.

When this was not done, a six-week suspended sentence for contempt of court was activated on August 13 2022.

After being released from HMP Cardiff, he was given 18 weeks to ‘soft strip’ the interior of the building to make it unusable.

That deadline expired in early January and his sentence was later upheld and he was ordered to pay £9,962 in costs to the district council.

During the latest hearing for allegedly harassing his neighbours, Wildin told the court: ‘I don’t swear, I never shout. It’s all wrong. Apart from one occasion I’ve never blocked drives parking cars.’

He showed the judge an aerial photo, adding ‘more than half the cars on the street aren’t mine’.

He added: ‘The reason I had to have CCTV in the road was to check on my cars. The neighbours covered it, so I put taller units in.

‘I get on with the neighbours, it’s only a band of six of them who’ve come together against me,’ he added.

The application for an injunction over alleged anti-social behaviour has been made by police and the district council.

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