Neighbours on a 'millionaire's row' where David and Victoria Beckham have a home are embroiled in a court battle over plans for a huge cinema beneath a garden.
Photographer Piers Calvert is fighting alongside downstairs neighbour, a former banker turned choral singer Lisa Erickson, in the west London planning row.
The mystery owner of a neighbouring flat unveiled plans for a basement – with gym and cinema room – under the garden of the house where they all own apartments in Holland Park.
David and Victoria Beckham's main London residence – for which they paid £31.5million in 2013 – is on the same street as the battling neighbours.
The surrounding streets are home to the mansions of other celebrities 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 dispute with the ground floor owner – an offshore entity with few details made public.
A judge has been 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 firm says that, despite having planning permission for the basement, the organisation that owns the ground floor and garden has no right to dig deep into the earth to construct the room.
Photographer Piers Calvert is fighting alongside downstairs neighbour, ex-banker turned choral singer Lisa Erickson, in a planning row - she is seen outside London's High Court
This is the property in Holland Park, west London, at the centre of basement row involving Montana International Properties Ltd
David Nicholls, for the residents' company, told London's High Court: '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.
'The subsoil at 20ft or 100ft or 1,000ft below the surface cannot properly be said to be "garden".'
Sitting at the High Court, judge Master Francesca Kaye heard the dispute revolves around a five-storey Grade II listed Victorian house in Holland Park, where flats have recently sold for more than £3million.
Mr Calvert, 48, an award-winning documentary photographer who spends much of his working life in Colombia, owns the lease on the attic flat.
Mrs Erickson, 69, a former banker turned osteopath and now choral singer, owns the lease 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.
Planning permission was granted to the firm in 2018 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.
But there remain wranglings with the building's freeholder, 51 Holland Park Residents Ltd, a company made up and owned by the owners of the flats including Mr Calvert and Mrs Erickson.
Photographer Piers Calvert is pictured outside the High Court for a basement dispute hearing
Montana International Properties Ltd's plans for the basement were shared in documents
In court, the freehold company's barrister told the judge the dispute boils down to whether the basement work planned by Montana goes beyond the limits of its demise, the land it owns.
Mr Nicholls said: '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.
'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.'
He told how Montana's position was that 'all the subsoil beneath the garden is included in the demise' but added his clients felt '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'.
Barrister Daniel Dovar, representing Montana which has owned the lease on the lower floors and garden since 2014, said the issue was about 'whether the garden extends below the sub-soil and if so how far'.
He told the judge: 'Montana contends it is sufficient to develop an underground basement area, Holland Park contends that it is not.
'The demise is of the whole garden, which naturally includes all the sub-soil. There is nothing in the lease which provides any alternative construction.
'If that were not sufficient, then there is the legal presumption that a conveyance of property includes the airspace above and the subsoil below.'
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 occupying the lower apartment.
After three days in court, Master Kaye reserved her decision on the dispute until a later date.