Dave Gilmour, Pink Floyd guitarist, angers locals with property plans

Dave Gilmour is planning to turn a 122-year-old Victorian bathhouse on the Esplanade in Hove into a modern mansion. The locals are apparently outraged.

According to the Sun, the 70-year old rock guitarist and his author wife, Polly Samson, bought historic Medina House last year for £1 million. They plan to transform the building into a mansion for them and their eight children.

Protestors are concerned that changes will go too far, and the couple will be allowed to tear down a large proportion of the building. They have expressed themselves through the medium of one of Pink Floyd's most famous songs, posting a note on a nearby wall that reads:

We don't need no demolition
We don't need no thoughtless plans
No tall dark shadows across out windows
Leave Medina House alone
Hey Gilmour! Leave our 'hood alone!
All in all it's just another betrayal of us all
To you it's just another brick in the wall

The Daily Telegraph says the transformation may not be as drastic as locals fear, as they want to keep the form and facade of the original building, and a number of features from inside.

The building had been occupied by squatters between 1999 and 2006. It was then left empty, and damaged by two separate fires in 2013 and 2014. The owner at the time had submitted a series of planning applications - all of which were rejected.

When the couple first bought the property, they originally intended to restore the building entirely, and they were only forced to change their plans because it had got into such a poor a state that it wasn't possible. They are therefore at least preserving some of it for future generations.

Neighbours

It seems something of a common path that as music stars get older (and wealthier), they move from upsetting the neighbours with parties, to upsetting them with their property plans.

In 2004 Coldplay's Chris Martin and his then-wife Gwyneth Paltrow bought two houses next to each other in order to knock them through into one super home. They also bought a flat next door, and planned to erect a huge security fence. The neighbours complained to the press about the disruption, and said they would issue a formal objection to the imposing fence.

Sir Bob Geldof has also been embroiled in a debate over planning with a neighbour. She apparently wanted to re-open an old opening in a wall which runs around Geldof's estate and finishes up against the wall of her house. She wanted to install a gate to give her better access to her garden, but he argued it was a security risk.

Ozzy Osbourne had objections from neighbours of a different kind. In 2014 he was told he would have to halt plans to convert a barn on his Buckinghamshire estate, because there was evidence that bats and owls were living there.

Robbie Williams also managed a twist on the pattern, by moving into Holland Park, and submitting plans for renovations that elicited objections from a fellow rocker - his neighbour Jimmy Paige. He has since submitted an enormous number of planning applications, and renovations are ongoing.