A 79-year-old Carnock woman, who is now housebound, has been convicted of causing a disturbance at a neighbour’s door.

Janet Heeps, of Hawthorn Bank, was unable to attend Dunfermline Sheriff Court for health reasons and a trial was heard in her absence.

She was found guilty of a charge that on February 17 last year at Hawthorn Bank she acted in an aggressive manner and shouted.

It had been alleged that she “repeatedly stabbed a door with a knife” but sheriff decided this was not proven by the Crown and removed it from the charge.

There appears to have been ill-feeling brewing for a long-time in the quiet village street with “frosty relations” going back 25 years and a recent dispute about a fence going to civil court.

Neighbour Mary Archibald, 79, said she saw Heeps leaving her home and going to the door of Ian Reid.

The witness said Heeps looked angry and was “hammering and banging at the door”. Heeps was shouting and the incident went on for about 25 minutes.

She said she saw Mr Reid, 78, opening the door then quickly closing it.

He told the court he did not get on well with Heeps and there had been a recent civil action about a fence.

The witness, who has lived in his property for 46 years, said his relations with the Heeps family “had been frosty since 1999”.

Mr Reid said he had been going on holiday that night planning to leave his home at 11pm and Heeps had turned up at his door at around 7pm.

Earlier that day he had put a letter through the door to Mr Heeps asking him to remove debris from his property, following on from the civil case.

He said Heeps turned up at his door shouting: “I thought this was all over," and that she “started a tirade” then produced a kitchen knife with a seven-inch blade.

“Before you could blink, there was a kitchen knife pointing at me,” he told the court.

When defence solicitor Shona Westwood put it to the witness that it was a torch not a knife, Mr Reid replied: “Utter balderdash. I know what a kitchen knife looks like."

Sheriff Krista Johnston found Heeps guilty but deleted the reference to the knife. She noted that Mrs Archibald had watched Heeps for around 25 minutes and did not see a knife.

The sheriff said that Heeps is now “severely unwell” and has no previous convictions. In those circumstances, she admonished Heeps.