Bespoke joinery in Golders Green

Start with the bespoke joinery brief

Start with what the furniture needs to hold and how you use the room. Record alcoves, ceiling heights, skirtings, sockets and radiator positions before setting cabinet depths or door swings. Keep the details worth retaining in the measured brief.

Agree internal layouts, lighting, ventilation, hardware and finish samples before manufacture. Drawings should show how new joinery meets uneven walls and existing cornices, and how access for installation will work.

The local building context

Barnet’s August 2011 appraisal of the Golders Green Town Centre Conservation Area records that development began about two years before the station opened in 1907. Between 1907 and 1911 roads were laid out and some 744 homes built, and the appraisal describes two building phases, 1907–1918 and 1924–30. Record the age, construction and later alterations of your own building rather than assuming one local type.

Barnet describes the conservation area as the town centre together with the railway and bus/coach station. The appraisal identifies parades of shops with apartments and flats above as the main building type and counts seven listed buildings; the Cheapside and The Promenade parades, 78 retail units in all, are listed Grade II. For a flat above a shop, the survey brief should also cover any listing, the lease terms and the shared services.

Other buildings raise their own questions: West Heath Court, built in 1936, is a five-storey block of mansion flats in brick and stone, and The Parade on North End Road is two storeys in red brick with slate and lead roofs. Much of Golders Green is residential streets, so check whether your address is inside a conservation area on Barnet’s maps.

• Golders Green Town Centre Conservation Area appraisal, August 2011
• Barnet: Golders Green conservation area
• Historic England: listed-building consent
• LEASE: alterations and home improvements
• Barnet conservation areas, appraisals and maps
• Golders Green conservation area boundary map

Local design and consent context

Barnet designated the Golders Green Town Centre Conservation Area in March 1998 and publishes a character appraisal and management proposals dated August 2011, with a boundary map. Barnet notes that, of over 16,000 people living in the Golders Green area, approximately 400 live within this conservation area; that figure does not show whether another designation covers your home.

The Hampstead Garden Suburb conservation area adjoins it. Designated in 1968 and later extended to include Golders Green Crematorium, it extends on its western side to the east side of Finchley Road. Barnet also lists Hampstead Village (Heath Passage), another adjoining conservation area. Use the published maps for the address rather than a street name or postcode.

The 2011 appraisal says an Article 4 direction is not applied in the Golders Green Town Centre Conservation Area. Barnet’s Hampstead Garden Suburb directions are different: they withdraw permitted development rights for the enlargement, improvement or other alteration of a house, other roof alterations, porches, hard surfaces, boundary walls and gates, exterior painting and more, for addresses inside the Suburb.

• Barnet: Golders Green conservation area
• Golders Green Town Centre Conservation Area appraisal, August 2011
• Golders Green conservation area boundary map
• Barnet: Hampstead Garden Suburb conservation area
• Barnet conservation areas, appraisals and maps
• Hampstead Garden Suburb Article 4 directions

Access and site planning

Plan how materials and waste will move between the street and the room, and how shared entrances will be protected. Barnet requires a highways licence wherever works use or infringe upon the public highway or footway, such as scaffold or hoarding. Only registered skip companies are licensed to place skips on the highway, and a skip licence needs an approved bay suspension first, so apply well in advance and check the current notice period.

• Barnet highways licences and skip licences
• Barnet parking suspensions and dispensations
• LEASE: alterations and home improvements

Continue planning

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