House
refurbishment
in Camden Town, NW1

Camden says the residential parts of the Camden Town Conservation Area were laid out within three decades, from 1820 to 1850, and are largely uniform in scale and character.

Our survey compares the house with its neighbours in the row, so original fabric is repaired and later losses are put back to the pattern the street already shows.

Source: Camden: Camden Town Conservation Area Appraisal and Management Strategy (adopted 4 October 2007)

Windows in Camden Square's period houses are generally timber sashes: wide centre panes with narrow side panes in the 1840s and 1850s, three-part glazing with undivided central sashes from the 1860s.

Its appraisal warns against replacements that over-historicise with six-over-six glazing, by then used only at the back.

Kept up by the owner, with a joiner's help from time to time, historic windows and doors can go on indefinitely, the strategy says.

We record each sash, its glazing bars and its weights before work, and repair before we consider replacement.

Source: Camden: Camden Square Conservation Area Appraisal and Management Strategy (adopted 11 March 2011)

Front and back gardens shape the residential streets, and the 2007 strategy says Camden will resist the loss of planting and of original boundary walls and railings.

Camden Road is singled out in the Camden Square strategy, where parking in front gardens will be resisted for its harm to the conservation area.

On Gloucester Crescent, a number of front walls and gardens have been altered or lost to forecourt parking.

Sources: Camden: Camden Town Conservation Area Appraisal and Management Strategy (adopted 4 October 2007), Camden: Camden Square Conservation Area Appraisal and Management Strategy (adopted 11 March 2011), Camden: Primrose Hill Conservation Area Statement, Gloucester Crescent sub-area

Each listed house on Jeffrey's Street, built between the late 1790s and the early 1800s, has its own fanlight and first-floor balcony, behind a narrow railed basement area and under a strong parapet.

Their statement requires natural materials as close to the original as possible, and rules out concrete tiles, artificial slate and PVCu windows.

We match brick, mortar and joinery to the house in front of us rather than to newer houses in the streets around it.

Source: Camden: Jeffrey's Street Conservation Area Statement (agreed 19 November 2002)

The appraisal's appendix of listed buildings gives several long runs of Albert Street, and the main text records Crowndale Road's Nos 31 to 53 as a grade II terrace of the 1840s.

A listed building is protected throughout, inside as well as out, later alterations too, and works to it need listed building consent, a separate permission from planning.

Carrying out work without consent is a criminal offence, even if the owner did not know the house was listed.

Sources: Camden: Camden Town Conservation Area Appraisal and Management Strategy (adopted 4 October 2007), Camden Council: Listed buildings

GOV.UK stresses that building regulations approval and planning permission are different things, and a refurbishment may need both.

Plenty of refurbishment work is exempt, most repairs, replacements and maintenance among it, though not new heating systems, oil tanks, fuse boxes or glazing units.

Chimney breast removal is different: being structural it always comes under the building regulations, backed by an engineer's drawings and calculations.

Sources: GOV.UK: Building regulations approval, GOV.UK: when you don't need building regulations approval, Planning Portal Interactive House: Do I need permission to remove chimney breasts?

Historic street furniture, York stone, bollards and coal-hole covers, still adds to the Camden Town area, and Camden Square's east side has its own long stretch of old York paving.

Many trees in the conservation area are legally protected, and Camden's tree officers advise on those in private gardens.

Under Camden's rules the loud stages of a refurbishment, strip-out, cutting and breaking, are kept to weekday working between eight in the morning and six at night, with Saturday's allowance ending at one.

Scaffold feet sit on boards, never on the old stone, and we photograph the pavement before the first delivery.

Sources: Camden: Camden Town Conservation Area Appraisal and Management Strategy (adopted 4 October 2007), Camden: Camden Square Conservation Area Appraisal and Management Strategy (adopted 11 March 2011), Camden Council: noisy building works