Chalet owners at Allhallows Leisure Park have lost an emotional court battle to keep their homes.

Hundreds of chalets at the 1,000-home resort were given 42-year leases in the 1970s, which are now running out. The long-stay homes could be replaced by holiday lets.

It is a huge blow to those who live at Allhallows 10 months a year. Some have been there for decades.

More than 80 of them clubbed together and raised an incredible £24,000 in six weeks for a last-ditch legal fight against park owner Palmhall Ltd.

Medway County Court was packed as chalet owners Diane Pond and George Norris and his wife Ashleigh fought for their homes in a tense hearing.

Mr Norris bought a chalet in 1988. Yet he has been a trespasser on the ground where it stands since the lease expired last year, when Palmhall applied to evict him.

He and his wife used an obscure law, the 1954 Landlord and Tenant Act, to claim they could stay because they used the chalet for business.

“Seventy years I’ve been visiting that site”, Mr Norris, 76, told the court. “It’s my property. Not [theirs], mine.

“We were told to remove the chalet by July 29. But I can’t take it away because it’s fixed to the ground.”

The owners had “harassed” him to leave, he claimed.

District judge Simon Gill said Mr Norris was “truly straightforward, truthful and convincing”, but the law was simply against him. Mr Norris had claimed business use on two grounds: that he did paperwork in the chalet and that he sub-let it to friends.

But Judge Gill said neither counted as business use. He ordered the trio to leave their chalets within 28 days and pay Palmhall’s £9,400 legal fees.

Dozens of residents hugged a tearful Mrs Norris, 55, after the verdict.

“We’re so disappointed,” she said. “It’s a lovely community. Everyone knows everyone and they’ve totally ruined it. People can’t afford to take them to court because they’re a big company.

“It’s so amazing that our neighbours funded this. We feel so humbled that they’ve all come together to do this for us and we can’t thank them enough.”

Other chalet owners are hoping to launch a second, far bigger legal fight.

They could challenge Palmhall Ltd in court under the Leasehold Reform Act 1967, which allows people who have lived on a long lease for several years to buy their land permanently.

Ben Tisdall, of Fursdon Knapper Solicitors, said: “We’re going to see if we can get them together and fight it as a group.”