Sturges v Bridgman (1879) 11 Ch D 852

Bridgman was a confectioner who had used large mortars and pestles at his premises for many years. A neighbouring physician, Sturges, later built a consulting room at the end of his garden close to the confectioner's kitchen. The noise and vibration from the machinery seriously disrupted medical consultations in the new room. Bridgman argued that his activity had continued for more than twenty years and that he had therefore acquired a prescriptive right to make the noise. He also relied in substance on the fact that the physician had brought sensitive use closer to an established business. Sturges sought an injunction restraining the interference. The courts had to decide when prescription began and how the locality affected nuisance.

Was the confectioner's noise an actionable nuisance despite its long duration and the physician's later construction of a consulting room near the source?

The Court of Appeal granted an injunction. Whether noise amounts to nuisance depends on the character of the locality and the ordinary use and enjoyment reasonably expected there. The confectioner's long use did not establish a prescriptive easement because the twenty-year period could begin only when the noise became an actionable interference with Sturges's land. Before the consulting room was built, the activity had caused no actionable nuisance to that property, so time had not run. Nor was it a defence that the claimant had developed or changed the use of his land near the existing activity. A landowner does not lose the ordinary right to use property merely by coming to the nuisance.

Private nuisance is assessed in context, including the character of the locality and the ordinary use of the claimant's land. Prescription runs from the point at which the interference becomes actionable, and the claimant's arrival or development after the defendant's activity began is not by itself a defence.

The case supplies three enduring rules. Locality helps determine what level of noise or disturbance is unreasonable; an activity harmless in one setting may be intolerable in another. A defendant cannot establish prescription through years when no neighbour had an actionable claim. Finally, prior occupation does not create a general coming-to-the-nuisance defence. Modern authority such as Coventry v Lawrence preserves these propositions while allowing planning context and changes in neighbourhood character to inform the assessment and remedy. Courts may award damages instead of an injunction, but liability and remedy remain distinct questions.