"Most British people in our area put up chain-link fences with barbed wire all around their land as if to say 'this is mine'," says John Nelson. "We just didn't want to do it that way."

THE RISE and rise in development of golf-side property has been one of the truly remarkable phenomena of the property market in recent years. The concept of arranging homes around the greens and fairways of a golf course originated in the US before becoming big in Europe, and has now been adopted throughout the world.