Ex-lovers warring over a Twickenham property valued at over £650,000 moved a top High Court judge to near-poetry in his judgment on Wednesday.

As he ruled on the legal wrangle between carpenter Barry Young, 49, and his ex-partner Rebecca Lauretani, Mr Justice Lindsay said: "This action is concerned with the always-vexed questions which arise when the relationship between parties who have lived together as if man and wife has broken down; where sadly, only bitterness has proved to have flourished in the soil in which once hope and love had briefly seemed viable."

He added: "Mr Young is not, I would think, a man either of much education or of even temper; the papers before me include inarticulate, angry and often coarse notes that he has written.

"Miss Lauretani, some eight or nine years younger than Mr Young, would, I would expect, be fairly seen by Mr Young - an older and far less educated or polished figure - to be a very attractive catch' for him."

However, over the course of a 21-page ruling, the judge's eloquence gave way to more prosaic guidance on the splitting of the ex-couple's assets, with a ruling that the former "quasi-matrimonial home" in South Road, Twickenham, should be auctioned off if the feuding ex-lovers cannot agree a sale by July.

Mr Young who met Miss Laurentani in 2001 while carrying out work on the house where she was living now wants to buy out Miss Lauretani's interest in the property, which was bought by the couple for £655,000 in June 2003.

However, as a preliminary measure the High Court's guidance had been sought on a number of issues relating to the complex calculations involved when unmarried couples split up.

Having settled which contributions by each party should be taken into account in the calculation, the judge said that the parties could now be free to negotiate a sale of the South Road home.

However, he ruled that if no terms can be agreed, and if no other buyer can be found that is acceptable to both parties, the house should be sold at auction with the ex-couple sharing the cost.

He said that if agreement could not be reached between Mr Young and Miss Laurentani instructions for a sale by public auction should be given to the chosen estate agents or auctioneers by July 9, 2007, with the auction to be conducted within six months of that date.