## Facts

- A confectioner occupied premises where, for over 20 years, he used two large mortars in a rear kitchen to pound confectionery ingredients.
- A physician occupied the adjoining property, which initially had a rear garden separated from the confectioner’s kitchen by a party wall.
- The physician later built a consulting room on the former garden site, using the party wall as one wall of the room.
- After the consulting room was built, the mortar-pounding noise became clearly audible and materially interfered with the physician’s use of the consulting room and his medical practice.
- The physician sued in private nuisance and sought an injunction to restrain the noisy activity.

## Issues

1. Whether the confectioner’s mortar-pounding amounted to an unreasonable interference with the physician’s use and enjoyment of land, considering the character of the locality.
2. Whether the physician was barred from relief because he effectively “came to the nuisance” by building a consulting room after the confectioner’s long-standing operations began.
3. Whether the confectioner acquired a prescriptive easement (at common law or under the Prescription Act 1832) to continue generating the noise based on more than 20 years of use.

## Decision

- The Court of Appeal upheld injunctive relief for the physician.
- The noise, in the circumstances and locality, constituted an actionable private nuisance.
- The fact that the physician built the consulting room after the confectioner’s operations began did not defeat the claim.
- No prescriptive right to make the noise was established because the prior activity had not been actionable before the consulting room was built.

## Legal Principles

- Whether an interference is an actionable nuisance depends on the character of the locality and the reasonableness of the defendant’s use in that context.
- “Coming to the nuisance” is not, by itself, a defense to a private nuisance claim.
- A prescriptive easement requires long, continuous use that is capable of being actionable; a use that was not a legal wrong during the prescriptive period cannot mature into a right to continue conduct that later becomes a nuisance.

## Conclusion

The court treated the confectioner’s noise as a private nuisance in a residential/professional setting, rejected “coming to the nuisance” as a defense, and held that long-standing but previously nonactionable noise could not create a prescriptive entitlement to continue once it became an actionable interference.


Sturges v. Bridgman, (1879) 11 Ch. D. 852 (C.A.)