Beckham's millionaire row neighbours in court battle over giant basement plan

David and Victoria Beckham's "millionaire's row" neighbours are locked in a bitter court fight over plans to build a giant basement cinema under a garden and the right to dig to "the centre of the earth."

Globe-trotting photographer Piers Calvert is fighting alongside downstairs neighbour, former banker turned choral singer Lisa Erickson, after the owner of a neighbouring flat unveiled plans for a basement - with gym and cinema room - beneath the garden of the house where they all own apartments in star-studded Holland Park, west London.

David and Victoria Beckham's main London residence - for which they paid £31.5m in 2013 - is on the same street as the battling neighbours, and the surrounding streets are home to the mansions of other stars including Simon Cowell, Elton John and Robbie Williams.

Through a freehold and residents' company of which they are directors, Mr Calvert and Mrs Erickson are now embroiled in a High Court fight with the ground floor owner - a mysterious offshore entity of which little has been made public - with a judge being asked to rule whether the company owns only the cultivatable surface of the garden, or all of the soil beneath it "to the centre of the earth".

The singer and the photographer's freehold company says that, despite having planning permission for the basement, the entity which owns the ground floor and garden has no right to dig deep into the earth to construct the room.

"The demise of the garden does not carry with it the subsoil to the centre of the earth or to any level beyond that reasonably required for use as a garden," said the residents' company's barrister David Nicholls.

"The subsoil at 20 feet or 100 feet or 1,000 feet below the surface cannot properly be said to be ‘garden’."

Sitting at London's High Court, judge Master Francesca Kaye heard that the dispute revolves around a five-storey Grade-II listed Victorian house in Holland Park, where flats have recently sold for more than £3m.

Mr Calvert, 48, an award-winning documentary photographer who spends much of his working life in Colombia, owns the lease on the attic flat, while Mrs Erickson, 69, a former banker turned osteopath and now choral singer, owns that on the maisonette below.

The lease on the final flat, which spreads across the ground and lower ground floors as well as the garden, is owned by Jersey-listed company, Montana International Properties Ltd, the mystery owners of which lawyers have refused to reveal.

Planning permission for the single-storey 2.5m deep basement beneath the garden - to include a gym and family/cinema room, as well as shower room and storage space - was granted to the company in 2018.

But despite the permission, a long-running dispute has arisen with the freeholder of the building, 51 Holland Park Residents Ltd, a company made up and owned by the owners of the flats, including Mr Calvert and Mrs Erickson.

In court, the freehold company's barrister told the judge that the dispute boils down to whether the basement work planned by Montana goes beyond the limits of the land which it owns.

"In short, 51 Holland Park contends that the demise includes the subsoil beneath the garden to no greater depth than is reasonably required for the use of the garden as a garden," he told the judge.

"There is a presumption that applies particularly to freehold conveyances, namely that the owner of land is presumed to own everything up to the sky and down to the centre of the earth.

"But that presumption does not automatically apply in the leasehold context. The correct starting-point is the lease, the actual words used, and the overall context.

"If the true construction of the lease shows that the demise is limited in some way, then the application of the presumption will be excluded.

"Montana’s position is that all the subsoil beneath the garden is included in the demise; or in the alternative, that the subsoil to a level co-extensive with the lower level of the basement is included.

"51 Holland Park’s position is that the demise does not include the subsoil beneath the garden to any greater depth than was reasonably required for the use of the garden as a garden."

He said the word "garden" featured in Montana's lease for the property, rather than something which might more readily be thought to include what is under the surface, like "land," he said.

"That word does not naturally lend itself to the concept of subsoil extending to the centre of the earth or indeed to any depth beyond that required for cultivation.

"The subsoil at 20 feet or 100 feet or 1,000 feet below the surface cannot properly be said to be ‘garden’."

But for Montana, which has owned the lease on the lower floors and garden since 2014, barrister Daniel Dovar said the issue was about "whether the garden extends below the sub-soil and if so how far."

"Montana contends it is sufficient to develop an underground basement area, Holland Park contends that it is not," he told the judge.

He said on a "plain and natural" reading of the company's lease, the garden is demised to it "without limitation."

"The demise is of the whole garden, which naturally includes all the sub-soil," he told the judge.

"There is nothing in the lease which provides any alternative construction."

But he continued: "If that were not sufficient, then there is the legal presumption that a conveyance of property includes the airspace above and the subsoil below."

He cited previous legal authority to the effect that "the owner of the surface is the owner of the strata beneath it, including the minerals that are to be found there, unless there has been an alienation of them by a conveyance, at common law or by statute to someone else."

Speaking outside court, lawyers for both sides declined to confirm who owns the offshore entity which wants to build the basement, nor the identities of the tenants who are currently in occupation of the lower apartment.

After three days in court, Master Kaye reserved her decision on the dispute until a later date.