St Albans Renovations & Design-Build — AL1

Conservation area and Article 4

The city has its own large conservation area, and Sopwell and Cunningham Avenue are designated separately. The council's District Mapping Service, or a My St Albans account, shows whether an address sits inside one and whether an Article 4 direction applies, and we check both for every property before design starts.

Heritage statement

Where work affects a listed building, a conservation area or their setting, Policy HE1 asks for a heritage statement proportionate to the scale of the proposal, referring to the conservation area character statement. We write it from our survey of the building.

Green Belt at the edges

For a house in the Green Belt, Policy LG9 compares an extension with the original building, defined as the house at 1 July 1948 or, for a later house, as originally built, and Table 3.3 gives a size guide. The whole of the Sopwell Conservation Area lies in the Green Belt. Our district page quotes the table row by row.

Building regulations

The St Albans and Watford shared building control service, which St Albans and Watford run together, handles sign-off, or a private registered approver can do so instead. Planning and building regulations are separate questions, and a project may need both.

Neighbours and trees

Anyone working on a party wall, or near the line between two plots, has to give the neighbour notice under the party wall rules, a process that stands apart from planning and building regulations. Trees in a conservation area that have no Tree Preservation Order are still protected by section 211 of the 1990 Act.

Archaeology

St Albans is rich in archaeological heritage, and Verulamium was the third largest town in Roman Britain. On or beside a site of known archaeological interest, Policy HE3 can require a desk-based assessment or a field evaluation before an application is decided.

Protected woodland

The Chilterns Beechwoods mitigation strategy screens out householder applications and replacement dwellings. An extension or a granny annexe is taken case by case, depending on whether it functions as a separate unit from the main dwelling.

Timber frames behind render

What lies behind an old Fishpool Street front?

Many Fishpool Street buildings date from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and were re-faced in the eighteenth, and at the upper end jettied, timber-framed fronts are still on show. Sopwell Lane keeps medieval timber frames too, mostly plastered or rendered under steep tiled roofs.

Opening up is done a little at a time and photographed, and repairs are designed to work with the frame, in lime where the existing finishes are lime.

Regency and early Victorian terraces

Why are Verulam Road's details worth keeping?

Its tall terraces of yellow stock brick and stucco went up when Verulam Road was the city's best residential address, and the area still has mainly slate roofs and timber sliding sashes.

We survey sashes, shutters and door cases before specifying anything, and repair them in timber.

Mid-Victorian terraces

What has changed on the terraced streets?

Albert Street is still largely two-storey mid-Victorian terraces with timber sashes. On Liverpool Road, lined with terraces of about 1885, about half of the original slate roofs have been replaced with concrete tiles.

Where a roof is being renewed, we price natural slate and check the weight it brings back onto the rafters.

Late Victorian villas

Where is the third bedroom in a Granville Road villa?

Granville Road and Stanhope Road were built piecemeal, mostly two storeys with a few small dormers, as middle-sized houses with rearward projections to give a third bedroom; most were probably taken from builders' pattern books.

That rear projection is usually where a kitchen or bathroom goes, so we survey its walls and foundations closely.

Edwardian houses by Clarence Park

How should a Clarence Park house be extended?

The statement calls the area one of the best preserved late Victorian and Edwardian areas in St Albans, with Queen Anne and Domestic Revival houses carrying white painted timber balconies, sashes and tile hanging, and it asks that new extensions repeat that detailing.

Our drawings record the balconies, tile hanging and bays so the new work can be detailed from them.

Inter-war Arts and Crafts

What makes Cunningham Avenue consistent?

Gabled roofs, timber-framed porches with fretwork, decorative timber windows, mock timber framing, tile hanging or pebbledash against red brick and clay tiled roofs. Later change has been mostly side extensions and alterations to finishes.

Under the Article 4 direction most of those alterations now need permission, so we design them from the start as a planning application.

Larger Victorian houses

What is under a Prospect Road house?

Many of the larger houses there have cellars, some with small areas to the front, and some have been converted to flats. Red brick predominates, alongside London stock bricks, pebbledash and render.

A cellar tells us a good deal about the ground and the walls above it, so we inspect it at the first visit.