You can see exactly what’s happening in a recent video of Ed Sheeran that has rekindled a planning dispute with his neighbors in Suffolk and caused local council officials to panic. On his £3.7 million estate, he plunges into a kidney-shaped body of water with such ease that it appears he does this on a regular basis.The only issue is that in 2016, he informed the local council that this was a wildlife pond. A dragonfly habitat. An act of conservation. Not a swimming pool.
The discrepancy between what these things are and what they are called is difficult to ignore. Draped in reed beds and good intentions, natural pools and swim ponds have subtly emerged as the prestige purchase of choice for Britain’s affluent countryside, offering a way to have both your luxury amenity and your eco credentials at the same time.
On his property in the Cotswolds, David Beckham constructed one. With its elaborate bridge and pagoda in Oxfordshire, Prue Leith taught her grandchildren how to swim in it. Dominic West, who portrayed Prince Charles in “The Crown”, excavated a “bulletproof” thirty-meter lake next to his house. It seems like this is now standard practice for anyone with a sizable rural estate.
Even tho status is obviously a factor, it’s interesting to note that the appeal isn’t solely status-driven. These ponds actually don’t need chlorine, are far less expensive to maintain than heated pools don’t require the kind of energy consumption that is embarrassing during a crisis in the cost of living.
The steam-rising-from-a-heated-pool esthetic is just a bad look these days, according to PR consultant Mark Borkowski. Having your own personal version of a Sussex weir seems like a logical continuation of the wild swimming, Wim Hof, cold water therapy mental health thru discomfort movement that had already gained popularity.
less expensive to operate, more esthetically pleasing simpler to defend at dinner parties. Some of the owners might be sincere supporters of conservation. They might have simply desired a pool.
It becomes truly unclear when it comes to the planning aspect. The majority of homeowners do not require permission for natural swimming ponds unless their property is listed or is situated in a protected landscape, as they fall under the same planning category as conventional pools. A pond presented as a wildlife habitat may receive a different kind of approval one that is subject to certain restrictions.
Nature conservation language served as the foundation for Sheeran’s application. The jetty, the steps the everyday swimming followed. His neighbors were unimpressed as they observed everything from the other side of the fence.One of them referred to it as “taking the mick”.
Similar issues were encountered by Sam Taylor-Johnson and her husband Aaron Johnson in Somerset. They started excavation without permission and then filed a retrospective claim, with their consultants claiming the hole was primarily meant to control surface water flooding. It’s a handy framing whether or not that is the case.
It would be unjust to completely ignore these ponds. Between 1900 and 2019, Britain lost about 60% of its ponds, according to Dr. Hannah Robson of the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust. This habitat collapse had serious ecological repercussions. Even if a privately funded pond is not perfect, it still accomplishes something.
How much is the question. Owners are effectively freezing the pond at one successional stage, which benefits a small subset of species, if they keep the water artificially clear and open for swimming. You can’t swim in a shallow, muddy, vegetation-choked pool, but if you let it mature naturally, it will benefit far more wildlife. When there is conflict between the two objectives, the celebrity version usually resolves it in a predictable way.
Real businesses have been built around this, such as Gartenart and The Swimming Pond Company. There are currently about 2,000 natural swimming ponds in the UK, with installations costing between £140,000 and £400,000 for larger ones. It usually takes seven to twelve weeks to complete a build.
It is evident that the company is expanding, with one company receiving three hundred inquiries annually. These commissions are no longer eccentric. They are a well-known product category that includes custom filtration systems, aquatic planting plans site assessments. The pitch, which is as much astute marketing as anything else, incorporates the environmental framing.
It is now practically irrelevant whether Sheeran’s pond ever actually supported breeding dragonflies. A somewhat unsettling aspect of how environmental virtue functions at the upper end of the real estate market has been exposed by the swimming pond trend.
It is typically embraced when it is convenient and discreetly ignored when it isn’t. Of course, celebrities are not the only ones who do that. It becomes more difficult to ignore the discrepancy between the stated and actual motivations when your pool is the size of a small lake and costs more than most people’s homes.
i) https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/08/22/status-lake-ed-sheeran-david-beckham-prue-leith/
ii) https://www.luxurylifestylemag.co.uk/homes-and-gardens/clear-water-revival-is-this-the-future-of-luxury-swimming-pools/