Couple refuse to sell - as bulldozers clear the rest of the street

Alexander Cooper and Nicola Callendar live in the middle of a terrace on Woodside Avenue in Newcastle. They have been under pressure to sell their home to the council, but while all 39 of their neighbours have agreed and moved out, this couple isn't going anywhere. Now the council is demolishing the terrace around them.

The council decided to demolish the houses in March 2014, after it emerged that the terrace - and another row of houses - were suffering from structural problems. Council residents were offered a rehoming deal, and those who had bought the properties privately were offered the full market value - plus 10%.

The council told the Evening Chronicle that it could not confirm whether Mr Cooper's home was affected, but that a retention wall at the end of the street had started to crack, and some residents had reported cracks in back yards. The council investigated and discovered layer of weak material below the retaining wall. It decided to knock the terrace down as a preventative measure, and because it could not prove imminent danger, it couldn't compulsorily purchase any of the houses.

Cooper (62), a retired shipyard worker, told the Daily Mail that he had lived in the property since he was four years old, that he bought it in 1989, and that he wouldn't sell, because the cash on offer wouldn't buy anything as nice as his current home.

Instead he has forced the council to tear down the terrace around him and grass over it, giving him a newly detached property. He told the paper he'd be glad when the work was done as neighbouring houses have fallen into disrepair - and without them around him he would have a great view of the Tyne.

Still standing

Mr Cooper is not the first person to take a stand like this, houses like his are commonly known as 'nail' houses - as they are like a nail that refuses to be hammered down.

Perhaps the most famous example was in Seattle, where developers decided to put up a shopping mall in 2004. They bought up properties, started demolishing them, and were busy building the mall when they ran into an old woman called Miss Macefield. She refused to sell - even for $1 million - so the entire mall was built around her home. As an odd twist in the story, the building project supervisor made friends with her, and ended up caring for her as she got older. Finally she passed away and left the house to him.

Nail houses are currently fairly common in China, largely due to the pace of infrastructure building in a number of cities. There are plenty of stories of developers taking extreme measures to persuade people to move on - including building an enormous trench around one home, cutting off the water and electricity, and knocking down every staircase in a seven story building to get rid of tenants on the eighth floor.

One of the most iconic of these nail houses was demolished in 2012 in Wenling in China. The owner had refused to sell to make way for a motorway, so the authorities bulldozed all the surrounding houses, and built the motorway up to the front door, around the sides, and then continued onwards. The owners still refused to sell until they were offered a bigger compensation package.

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