Photo: Instagram / David Beckham
In today’s poshest feud to rise up from the poshest part of the English countryside, the Beckhams and their posh neighbors are fighting over the former’s plans to build a lake with an island on their property.
The feud actually started earlier this year, when the Beckhams filed papers with the West Oxfordshire District Council, asking for approval to build a lake outside their Cotswolds mansion. David and Victoria Beckham have spent most of 2020 here, at the £6 million ($8 million) estate, so it was only natural for them to want to improve on existing conditions.
This included building a wine cellar, expanding their auto gallery and an underground tunnel to connect them all. Oh, and a lake, which has just received a planned upgrade in the form of a larger surface for the pond and a man-made island.
Initial documents included plans for a kidney-shaped body of water of 2,976 square meters (32,033 square feet), and they struck horror in the hearts of neighbors, who complained to the council that the Beckhams were trying to bring suburbia into the countryside. The amended plans now reference a 4,170-square-meter (44,885-square-foot) and a 122-square-meter (1,313-square-foot) island in the middle of it.
With construction having already started on the lake (under special conditions from the council, including making sure it did not disrupt wildlife in the area), the neighbors now fear David and Victoria might want to use the lake for… speedboat racing.
“The lake looks just too large for the area it sits in,” one of them writes in a letter to the council. “It is out of keeping with the area and what is planned next? Motor boats zooming up and down and shattering the peace? It is just not on and should not be allowed.”
The council tells The Sun they have received three such letters until now, but wouldn’t say whether they plan to heed the complaints. That said, if David wanted to race speedboats on his new lake, he probably could. The council previously noted that the family mansion is isolated from other properties, so whatever he does on his property can hardly “shatter the peace.”
This included building a wine cellar, expanding their auto gallery and an underground tunnel to connect them all. Oh, and a lake, which has just received a planned upgrade in the form of a larger surface for the pond and a man-made island.
Initial documents included plans for a kidney-shaped body of water of 2,976 square meters (32,033 square feet), and they struck horror in the hearts of neighbors, who complained to the council that the Beckhams were trying to bring suburbia into the countryside. The amended plans now reference a 4,170-square-meter (44,885-square-foot) and a 122-square-meter (1,313-square-foot) island in the middle of it.
With construction having already started on the lake (under special conditions from the council, including making sure it did not disrupt wildlife in the area), the neighbors now fear David and Victoria might want to use the lake for… speedboat racing.
“The lake looks just too large for the area it sits in,” one of them writes in a letter to the council. “It is out of keeping with the area and what is planned next? Motor boats zooming up and down and shattering the peace? It is just not on and should not be allowed.”
The council tells The Sun they have received three such letters until now, but wouldn’t say whether they plan to heed the complaints. That said, if David wanted to race speedboats on his new lake, he probably could. The council previously noted that the family mansion is isolated from other properties, so whatever he does on his property can hardly “shatter the peace.”
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