‘Iceberg homes’ point to underground land-grab

London: If popping down to the shops in Kingswood, Surrey, one should probably remember to bring a credit card. The village parade includes little aside from eyebrow-shaping treatments, a wine bar, luxury travel agents and a vintage motorbike seller.

This exclusive enclave populated by footballers and Chinese and Russian millionaires is far from your average village. Huge neo-Georgian homes propped up by stucco pillars lurk behind electric gates — in some cases adorned with the monogrammed initials of the name of the house.

The cars sit sleek on gravel drives, glinting in the sun. Their personalised number plates appear almost quaint. These days, in places such as Kingswood, there is a new must-have accessory that puts all others to shame; one that lies deep underground.

For the ‘iceberg homes’ of the capital are spreading into the countryside. Whereas previously it was largely the residents of Hampstead, Kensington and Chelsea who had to put up with their neighbours creating huge subterranean bunkers containing ballrooms, swimming pools, spas and cinemas, now homeowners across the country are opting to dig deep.

Digging deep

From Dorset to Cheshire, we are excavating on a scale not seen since Victorian times. But these are not sewers or train tunnels being created for the public good. People are instead burrowing deep into the earth in a subterranean land-grab.

In some instances, the spaces are so vast you could fit 26 double-decker buses inside. Above ground, new research shows that the average size of a British home has shrunk to 818 square feet - with new one-bed flats typically no bigger than a Tube carriage. Living space is 10 per cent smaller than 30 years ago, making properties more confined than anywhere else in western Europe. The Royal Institute of Architects says living in such cramped conditions can put health and wellbeing at risk — let alone the threat of fuelling animosity between neighbours.

It is the preserve of the wealthy to expand their empires underground. The spreading ‘iceberg’ homes have become socking great symbols of increasingly fragmented neighbourhoods and desire to insulate ourselves from one another at all costs.

As Sarah Beeny, the Property Ladder presenter who is about to embark on a basement conversion of her own underneath her Victorian cottage in Streatham, south London, admitted: “Everyone has gone basement mad.”

Even the rich themselves are unable to stop the diggers rolling in. Last week, the High Court rejected an attempt by residents of Hampstead Garden Suburb, led by former Lloyds chairman Sir Victor Blank and including television presenter Richard Madeley, to prevent their city trader neighbour Scott Franklin from building an underground swimming pool, games room and wine cellar.

In fashionable Notting Hill, a campaign fronted by Ruby Wax and Rachel Johnson, sister of the Mayor of London, has just secured a rare victory by blocking financier Mark Hawtin’s plans to create a vast underground extension by digging under a public road. But Johnson has warned she fears the application will “rise quickly from the dead”.

Exclusivity

Nigella Lawson and Charles Saatchi are veterans of London’s basement wars. In 2010, they were reportedly so incensed by a planned garden conversion next door to their £30 million flat in Belgravia that they decided to sell up. However, they too have extended their current £12 million home in Chelsea underground. It now boasts a wine cellar, gym, and an underground swimming pool. Last month, they reportedly objected to another basement conversion for potentially eroding the character of their exclusive street. Goldman Sachs banker Christoph Stanger caused so much subsidence while excavating the basement of his £7 million Kensington townhouse last year that neighbours were left unable to open their doors.

Stanger, who offered compensation to victims, was granted permission for the underground extension despite objections from nine of the 11 locals consulted by the council. Rural residents feel similarly powerless. Many complain of trucks shipping mud and rubble away for months on end.

“It’s like that famous Woody Allen quote,” says Simon Parnall, former chairman of Kingswood Residents Association and now a councillor for the area. “I’m not afraid of death, I just don’t want to be there when it happens.”

— The Telegraph Group Ltd, London 2013