Now you too can live like a hobbit. Planning officials have granted approval for Britain’s first fully subterranean home — a £2m des res with water slide and indoor pool.

The property will be built in the grounds of a 19th century mansion in Bowdon, Cheshire, an area favoured by multimillionaire footballers.

Only the entrance to the two-storey underground house will be above the surface, although it will be disguised to look like a garden folly surrounded by hedges.

Boasting 3,800 sq ft of floor space, more than twice the size of a conventional Victorian terrace, it will have a central lightwell to illuminate its warren of rooms, and strategically placed vents to draw in fresh air.

The lounge will be on the top floor, with a master bedroom with en suite facilities and a chute linking it to a pool directly below. The lower floor will have two double bedrooms, a gym and a Jacuzzi.

The vogue for subterranean living, popularised in fiction by JRR Tolkien’s The Hobbit and the Wombles of Wimbledon Common, has largely been prompted by a shortage of land, and strict conservation rules.

In one London borough alone applications for basement extensions, which can go down five storeys, have almost quadrupled in five years.

The Bowdon house will be created by driving a series of 33ft interlocking steel piles into the ground to create a drum, which will then be lined with concrete. Building work will start in the next 18 months, regardless of whether a buyer has been found.

The property is the brainchild of Chris Oakes, a developer who has worked on homes for Patrice Evra, the Manchester United defender, and Carlos Tevez, the Manchester City forward. Unconfirmed reports suggest that Emmanuel Adebayor, Tevez’s team mate, may be interested in the new underground property.

Oakes has decided to build downwards because the Victorian mansion, which was converted into flats in 2003, is in a conservation area.

“We felt we could create a dwelling that had all the attributes of a luxury home but met the conservation requirement,” he said.

The house will have strong eco-credentials. A ground source heat pump will provide underfloor heating, hot water will come from solar tubes set into the lawn above the property and a rainwater harvesting system will reduce water consumption. According to Oakes, the total energy bill should be no more than £200 a month.

Other homeowners have already partially burrowed into the earth. Bob Marshall-Andrews, a Labour MP, spends some of his time in what he describes as a “Teletubby house” — a grass-roofed property built into a hillside in Druidston, Pembrokeshire.

It is not claustrophobic because one side of the building is lined with glass, but the MP for Medway in Kent admitted: “There is a slight sense of living like a hobbit.”

In Helsby Hill, near Frodsham, Cheshire, Steve O’Connor, a director of the Eddie Stobart haulage group and owner of the Widnes Vikings rugby league club, is carving a 17,000 sq ft energy efficient home out of sandstone.

O’Connor hopes to move his family into the £3.5m semi-submerged property, which boasts a subterranean pool, at the start of next year. “We’re looking for this house to be significantly less expensive to run than our current home,” he said.

Residents are also going underground in the heart of London. Kensington and Chelsea council received 212 applications for basement extensions last year, compared with 64 requests in 2003.

Jon Hunt, the founder of Foxtons estate agency, is building a five-storey extension below the back garden of his eight-bedroom home in Kensington Palace Gardens.

The 80ft deep structure will have enough space for an indoor tennis court, a swimming pool and a garage for his vintage Ferraris. However, his application to excavate a further three floors directly below his house was turned down by officials in April.

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