House extension in De Beauvoir Town

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

Most of the houses are Italianate. Many are villas, some semi-detached, with entrances set back to the side and designed to look like separate blocks, as on De Beauvoir Road, Buckingham Road and Northchurch Terrace. Northchurch Road is almost entirely detached villas or semi-detached houses. The other recurring design is the short ‘bookend’ terrace of four or six houses with projecting end bays, seen on Southgate Grove, Lawford Road, Culford Road and Ufton Road. In Hertford Road, the semi-detached Benyon Cottages of 1839 apply the Italianate style to modest houses.

De Beauvoir Square is the exception. Its Tudor-Jacobean pairs, from 1838, are two storeys over basements with attics under sharp gables, and the council notes their shaped gables, sculptured chimneys and lozenge-pattern leaded lights; the central garden is a protected London Square, ringed by Grade II listed railings. On Southgate Road, the listed terraces at Nos. 110 to 116 and 126 to 130 are three storeys of stock brick with stuccoed ground floors and Ionic porches, and houses on Downham Road have front steps and porches with free-standing columns.

Neither the N1 postcode nor the name De Beauvoir Town settles the council, the conservation area or the controls. Southgate Road is the borough boundary: its east side is in Hackney and the De Beauvoir Conservation Area, its west side in Islington, where Islington’s East Canonbury Conservation Area begins. Balls Pond Road is split too: the appraisal puts its south side between Southgate Road and Dalston Junction in the conservation area, and its north side in Islington. Englefield Road, Northchurch Road, Downham Road and Southgate Road also appear in Islington’s East Canonbury guidelines of January 2002, so a street name alone does not settle the council. Check the exact address: use GOV.UK’s council finder with the property’s own postcode, then the conservation area map, the Article 4 database, the list entry, the lease and the planning history.

Local design and consent context

The council’s De Beauvoir page links the May 2008 appraisal in two parts; it replaced all earlier documents. Other Hackney conservation areas neighbour it: Kingsland, designated in 1998 and centred on Kingsland Road, lies immediately to the east; Regent’s Canal, designated on 26 November 2007 and extended in 2011, to the south; and Dalston Lane (West) to the north-east. South of Downham Road, outside the conservation area, stands the high-rise 1960s De Beauvoir New Town Estate.

Among its threats the appraisal lists inappropriate alterations such as large side extensions and painted brickwork, and among its weaknesses side extensions that are out of keeping, too high or poorly detailed. On Northchurch Road it records villas whose two-storey flank extensions have cost them some of their original symmetry, and at Nos. 31 and 33 a flank extension turned a semi-detached pair into a terrace; it calls single-storey flank extensions more sympathetic. It also notes front gardens lost to parking on Englefield Road and Southgate Road.

An Article 4 direction does not forbid development, Hackney explains; it means planning permission must be obtained first. The council placed one in the De Beauvoir conservation area to protect features such as front garden walls, railings, door cases, original windows and decorative ridge tiles. Made on 7 July 2008 and approved by the Secretary of State on 27 November 2008, it requires permission, for a house it covers, to alter windows, front doors, railings and other metalwork, plasterwork or doorcases; to add to or alter the roof, including chimneys and pots; to paint the exterior; to build, maintain or alter a gate, fence or wall; and to add a porch or a hard surface.

Access and site planning

Settle the street side before the scaffold goes up. Hackney issues skip licences for no more than four weeks, and only approved skip companies may apply. Within a controlled parking zone, council approval for the skip must come at least 7 working days ahead of the licence start date. Where the skip must sit in a parking bay, the bay suspension comes first, applied for online no less than 7 working days ahead, and the skip licence second. A highways licence covers scaffolding, hoarding, building materials or containers on the highway; apply no later than 10 working days before it is needed and include your public liability insurance details. On red routes, TfL deals with both.

Continue planning

The De Beauvoir Town area guide · House extension across London · Hampstead Architecture & Planning · Hampstead Chartered Surveyors

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