Busker Frank loses his court bid to stay in tent

Winchester City Council won its fight to evict Mr Williams, 54, from St Catherine's Hill on Garnier Road, where he has lived for more than ten years.

Mr Williams, whose dome even has its own postcode, had argued that the council had failed to conclusively show that they owned the land.

He had also maintained that he had a right to the land under the adverse possession law, commonly known as squatters' rights, where a person who has lived on a site for 12 years gains possession of the land.

But Judge Nicholas Murphy told Winchester County Court that Mr Williams' case had failed on both fronts.

The judge said that in his view the council had provided sufficient evidence to prove that the land was theirs, and he further rejected Mr Williams' suggestion that the piecemeal way the evidence was submitted suggested there was something suspicious about the documents.

Furthermore, he said the adverse possession claim had also failed because Frank had written a letter to the Winchester mayor in 2002 when the council's first eviction attempt was conducted, in which he only claimed to have been at the site since 1994.

The judge granted Winchester City Council a re-possession order to take effect in 28 days, and ordered Mr Williams to pay costs of £1,750.

After the hearing Mr Williams said: "I'm very disappointed and I'm still not convinced I've got to the bottom of this.

"It looks as though I'm going to have to move, though there might be the possibility of an appeal and there's still further action I'm thinking of taking, so maybe this isn't the last of it yet.

"As for the costs, well it's a bit ridiculous. I have no money and no savings, and the only reason their costs got so high is that they failed to get the right evidence before the court time and time again.

"As yet I really don't know what I'm going to do about that, or my home if I eventually have to leave it, but something will come up."