Renovations

Ed Sheeran Tried to Put a Sauna by His Newt Pond and His Neighbors Said Absolutely Not

Other concerns of the East Suffolk neighborhood association: a tacky sign on his “drinking den,” a pier, and a chapel.
Image may contain Human Person Crowd Audience Head Finger Glasses Accessories Accessory Face and Ed Sheeran
By Markus Schreiber/AP/REX/Shutterstock.

Want to go for a swim at the local watering hole? It’s nearly summer and there’s this great swimming pool just over yonder in East Suffolk, England. It’s about a third the size of an Olympic swimming pool and kidney bean–shaped, like all the best backyard pools, and it’s far away from everything, out in a field. Lounging there on the little pier and sunning ourselves would be a great treat and well-deserved for getting through another winter without putting a panicked down payment on a house in Fort Lauderdale, no? The problem, of course, is that we can’t go to this great pool because it’s on the property of Ed Sheeran, a Cadbury egg with the voice of an angel, so if we tried, we’d likely be stopped, and also probably jailed. But we’d wouldn’t just be violating trespassing codes. Ed Sheeran is not even allowed to swim in his pool.

How did this happen? How did Sheeran, who could use a little sun honestly, get barred from swimming in his own backyard pool? It’s a long tale of bureaucracy and landscaping that the Daily Mail has detailed since early March. Basically, Sheeran wrote to his town council saying he wanted to build an outdoor water feature to serve as a respite for the newts and the water beetles, which cohabit his land in a tony East Suffolk neighborhood. They could breed there, and also some birds and some mammals could drop by for a tall drink of water.

The council said, “Go ahead and build this pond for the invertebrates, as long as you, Ed Sheeran, and any other human people don’t swim in it. It’s not your respite in the middle of a field; it’s the water beetles’,” and Sheeran said, “You bet,” and he built it, and it looked like a . . . pool. It’s shaped like a big bean and is the color of any old YMCA swimming pool, though apparently it contains no chlorine. And, to top it all off, the East Suffolk council later gave approval for Sheeran to add some steps and a small pier after he claimed they’d be used for “maintenance.”

So it’s an outdoor pool, and all his neighbors noticed thanks to a bunch of aerial shots of the place, and said, “Oy, mate, that’s just an outdoor pool.” One such neighbor, Tony Robinson, wrote in a petition to the council: “I believe that the development of the site is more about creating an environment for a ‘wild lifestyle’ rather than the actual ‘wild life.’” Tony! Tony gets it.

O.K., but if you thought that was the end of the matter, hold onto your butts because that was just the start of it. The council recently did a walk-through of Sheeran’s property, and it became apparent that he got a little cocky after getting this habitat for newts with its steps and its pier approved. Our guy constructed a sauna next to his pool. No, not just any sauna. What the Mail called a “Romany gypsy caravan” had been converted into a sauna. Ask for forgiveness and all that, you know. But neither the council nor the neighbors have any interest in forgiving our multi-millionaire singer-songwriter, who’s performed with Beyoncé. They asked him to remove the sauna, which he did.

Now, how do we know that mammals small and large wouldn’t enjoy a good steam? How do we know that the newts wouldn’t enjoy lounging on top of a hot house, soaking up that thermal energy? These are just a couple good questions Sheeran is free to borrow when he’s making his case for putting the nature sauna back next to the wildlife water feature. The big sign on the other hand? I have no help for him there. What’s the big sign? Well, in addition to adding a sauna he didn’t get permission to add, Sheeran also put up a giant piece of signage, on his property’s pub.

Much like the water feature, he got permission to build his “drinking den,” in Daily Mail parlance, from the council sometime in 2017. The building would have underground passageways that lead to the big house, and the council said, “Yeah, go for it, but just use similar bricks and tiles to the original barn so it doesn’t look insane.” Why the council didn’t just trust Sheeran to have good taste, I have no idea. But then he added a big—and unauthorized, mind you—sign on his pub that reads “The Lancaster Lock,” apparently a tribute to his new wife, Cherry Lancaster Seaborn. This guy knows and understands romance, but the council was not hearing it. They asked him to take the eyesore down.

So what we have here is a cut and dry give a mouse a cookie situation. Another resident, who I hope is Tony, though I don’t know if it is, told The Mail on Sunday last month, “It seems Ed is now doing what he wants. He seems to be getting permission for some things but thinking he can get away with other aspects of his renovations.” At last count Sheeran already has an indoor swimming pool, a four-room treehouse, something called a “pod,” and this pub. Soon he will have a soccer field. But because the great pendulum of justice swings to and fro, the list of what he doesn’t have is just as long: that tacky sign, a caravan sauna, and, per more official documents, a 24-seat chapel—the council worried it could endanger a colony of great crested newts. You can’t always get what you want; not even if you’re Ed Sheeran.

Vanity Fair has reached out to Sheeran’s reps for comment.

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