Dartmouth Park Renovations & Design-Build — NW5

Camden designated the Dartmouth Park Conservation Area on 4 February 1992. A stretch of Highgate Road that had sat in Highgate Village since 1985 moved into it that year, together with St Anne's Close and St Anne's Church.

Holly Village and the parade at the foot of Highgate West Hill followed in March 2006, transferred out of the Highgate Village Conservation Area.

Camden's 2009 appraisal describes ten parts: Highgate Road, Dartmouth West, Dartmouth East, the York Rise Estate, Highgate New Town, the Brookfield Estate, Holly Village, St Albans Road, Lissenden Gardens and the schools.

The council adopted that appraisal on 22 January 2009, added energy efficiency guidance for the area on 23 August 2012, and weighs both when it decides applications here.

Since every part has its own write-up, our first visit notes which part a house falls in and reads the paragraphs on its street before any design talk.

Sources: Camden: Dartmouth Park Conservation Area Appraisal and Management Statement (adopted 22 January 2009), Camden Council: Dartmouth Park Conservation Area appraisal and management strategy

Grove Terrace stands back from Highgate Road on raised ground: 27 houses, of which Nos 1 to 5 are listed Grade II and Nos 6 to 27, railings and lampholders included, Grade II*.

Most have three storeys over area basements, attics in slate mansards with dormers, and wooden doorcases with fanlights and panelled doors.

Their front gardens, railings, low walls and flagstones are part of the listed houses' setting, and the pavement in front is York stone with granite sett gutters.

Camden's appraisal calls Highgate Road one of the oldest streets in the area, its Georgian terraced houses built up plot by plot.

Work on a Grove Terrace house starts from its list entry and a room-by-room record, so the application describes what is truly there.

Source: Camden: Dartmouth Park Conservation Area Appraisal and Management Statement (adopted 22 January 2009)

Churchill, Spencer and Chetwynd Roads were laid out for the Conservative Land Society. Its land ended at the north side of Chetwynd Road, meant for middle-class buyers, and the roads to the south were built for artisans.

Camden finds this side less formal: small groups within one street differ a little in style or height, yet the same materials and detailing hold them together.

Spencer Rise, mostly of the 1870s and by several builders, has plainer houses on narrow plots set back from the road, many with a butterfly roof behind a parapet.

Here the next house along may be by another builder, so measured drawings of the neighbours count as much as those of the house being altered.

Source: Camden: Dartmouth Park Conservation Area Appraisal and Management Statement (adopted 22 January 2009)

The Brookfield Estate was designed for St Pancras Borough Council between 1922 and 1930 by A J Thomas: flats and maisonettes arranged to look like a garden suburb.

The neighbourhood plan protects the view up Croftdown Road, with its curve, red tiled roofs, trees and hedges, and will resist work that detracts from it.

The York Rise Estate of 1937 to 1938, five neo-Georgian blocks by Ian Hamilton, reads as one group, which is why the artificial slate on one block stands out.

Holly Village, listed Grade II, was founded in 1865 by Angela Burdett-Coutts and designed by W A Darbishire in a fantasy Gothic style.

Sources: Camden: Dartmouth Park Conservation Area Appraisal and Management Statement (adopted 22 January 2009), Dartmouth Park Neighbourhood Plan (made by Camden, 2 March 2020)

The Holly Lodge Estate has been a conservation area in its own right since 1 June 1992, with an appraisal adopted in December 2012.

Camden describes it as a planned 1920s estate in the garden suburb tradition on the slopes below Highgate Village, with Holly Village just outside its boundary.

That appraisal places it between the Highgate Village Conservation Area on three sides and Dartmouth Park to the south, which also takes in St Anne's Church on Highgate West Hill.

Addresses on the estate are judged against the Holly Lodge appraisal, not Dartmouth Park's, so that is the document we open first there.

Source: Camden: Holly Lodge Estate Conservation Area Appraisal and Management Strategy (adopted 6 December 2012)

Camden adopted the Dartmouth Park Neighbourhood Plan on 2 March 2020, after a referendum that February, and corrected a Local Green Space boundary at the Mansfield Bowling Club in August 2022.

The plan says Camden must refer to it whenever development is proposed in the area; its policies run to 2034.

It counts some 90 listed buildings and structures, 35 of them at Grade II*, and 7 entries on Camden's local list.

The plan and the 2009 appraisal cover some of the same ground, and the plan suggests reading them together for any particular scheme.

Sources: Camden Council: Dartmouth Park Neighbourhood Forum, Dartmouth Park Neighbourhood Plan (made by Camden, 2 March 2020)

Front boundaries vary and many are original: railings in wrought and cast iron, brick walls and piers with stone caps, and hedges, each chosen to suit its house.

Camden's 2012 guidance notes that most houses were built with timber sliding sashes, one pane over one or two over two, which can last indefinitely if kept painted.

Fitting a window of a different material or appearance needs planning permission, and uPVC will be resisted.

In front and back gardens alike, Camden will resist losing soft landscaping and original boundary walls and railings.

Sources: Camden: Dartmouth Park Conservation Area Appraisal and Management Statement (adopted 22 January 2009), Camden: Energy efficiency planning guidance for Dartmouth Park Conservation Area (adopted 23 August 2012)

The first visit records the house, the group it belongs to, its part of the appraisal and the neighbourhood plan policies that touch it. The written scope then separates repair, alteration and new building, with the consent each one needs.

Our architects and engineers draw the scheme and the same team builds it, so the drawings Camden approves are the ones used on site.

Close by, see renovating in Kentish Town, our Highgate area guide and work in Tufnell Park.

How these streets came to be built is told on our Dartmouth Park history and architecture page.