David and Victoria Beckham's wealthy neighbours are locked in a High Court dispute over the right to excavate a basement cinema and gym beneath a shared garden in Holland Park, west London.
Photographer Piers Calvert, 48, and former banker-turned-choral singer Lisa Erickson, 69, are challenging the ground-floor flat owner, an offshore entity, after it unveiled plans to dig "to the centre of the earth".
The contested space is a garden attached to a five-storey Grade II listed Victorian house where flats have recently sold for over £3million.
Just down the road lies the Beckhams' main London home, purchased for £31.5m in 2013, and other high-profile residents such as Simon Cowell, Elton John and Robbie Williams.
Through a freehold and residents' company they direct, Calvert and Erickson have asked the judge to decide whether the leaseholder owns only the cultivable surface or the entire subsoil beneath the garden.
Residents' company barrister David Nicholls argued that "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" and added that soil at any depth cannot be deemed a garden.
The lease covering the ground, lower ground floors and garden is held by Jersey-listed Montana International Properties Ltd, whose owners remain undisclosed.
Planning permission for a single-storey, 2.5m deep basement - intended to house a gym, family cinema, shower and storage - was granted to Montana in 2018.
Mr Nicholls told Judge Master Francesca Kaye that the lease uses the word "garden" rather than "land", implying it should not automatically include deep subsoil.
Montana's counsel, Daniel Dovar, countered that the issue hinges on whether the garden extends below the sub-soil and, if so, how far, asserting that a plain reading of the lease demises the whole garden "without limitation".
He further noted the legal presumption that a property conveyance includes both airspace above and subsoil below, citing authority that surface owners also own underlying strata unless expressly alienated.
Lawyers for both parties declined to reveal the offshore entity's ownership or the identities of current lower-apartment tenants.
After three days of hearings, Master Kaye has reserved judgment, with a decision to be delivered later.
