House extension in Bush Hill Park

Connect the added space to the existing home.

Start with the house extension brief

Begin with how the new space will meet the old rooms, garden and circulation. A measured brief should record boundaries, levels, existing drains, neighbouring windows and the parts of the building you intend to keep.

Develop daylight, structure and services alongside the floor plan. Agree which openings and finishes are included, how the existing home will be protected during construction and which decisions need surveys or approval before a quotation.

The local building context

Enfield’s character appraisal places Bush Hill Park about 0.75km south-east of Enfield town centre, immediately west of the branch line from Edmonton Green to Enfield Town. In 1875 the North London Estates Company bought the 373 acres now known as Bush Hill Park; the building of the station in 1880 gave an impetus to development, and most of the earliest houses were designed for the company by R. Tayler Smith. As originally conceived, the estate straddled the railway, with artisan housing to the east, and the conservation area covers only part of the surviving core of its prestige development.

Between 1914 and 1960 the remaining plots were filled with modest semi-detached houses and bungalows. After 1960 most of the larger houses in Village Road, at the south end of Wellington Road and on the north side of Private Road were replaced by blocks of flats, until designation in 1987 halted such redevelopment. The appraisal counts about 273 houses, most still in single occupancy, and 22 blocks of modern flats. Around the station, buildings stand at the back of the pavement without front gardens, with three-storey terraces with attics along Queen Anne’s Place.

Neither the name Bush Hill Park nor an EN1 postcode tells you which council decides an application, whether a home is inside the conservation area, whether it is listed or locally listed, whether the Article 4 direction covers it or which consent route the work takes. EN1 also covers Enfield’s Civic Centre in Silver Street, the Bush Hill Park ward also takes in N21 and N9 addresses, and Planning Data shows the conservation area overlapping three wards: Bush Hill Park, Grange Park and Southbury. Confirm the council with the official lookup, then read the appraisal’s maps, the Article 4 schedule and map, any list entry, the title or lease and the planning history of the property itself.

Local design and consent context

The Development Management Document also reaches everyday house projects. For a single-storey rear extension, one of the tests in DMD 11 is a depth of no more than 3 metres beyond the original rear wall of a terraced or semi-detached house, or 4 metres for a detached one; read the policy in full for the others. DMD 13 generally permits front roof dormers only where they do not materially affect the character of the area and are not dominant or intrusive, DMD 14 asks that side extensions keep at least 1 metre from the neighbouring boundary, and DMD 5’s supporting text sets a general presumption against converting single dwellings into flats in conservation areas.

The appraisal regards the street greenery as the area’s key characteristic and finds the large plots in relation to house size a particularly strong feature. It records new development as mainly side, rear and garage extensions, generally of a reasonably high standard, says the Article 4 Direction appears to have been effective, and makes reinstating lost features, as the opportunity arises over the medium term, the principal conservation objective.

Continue planning

The Bush Hill Park area guide · House extension across London · Hampstead Architecture & Planning · Hampstead Chartered Surveyors

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Design support: Hampstead Architecture & Planning.
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