Kitchen renovation in High Barnet and Monken Hadley

Plan the kitchen around movement, storage and services.

Start with the kitchen renovation brief

Map preparation, cooking, washing and storage before choosing cabinet fronts. Measure clearances with doors and drawers open, and decide which existing walls, floors and details belong in the finished room.

Coordinate the cabinetry with water, drainage, extraction, electrics and lighting. Confirm appliance dimensions and access for installation before the layout is signed off; structural alterations need their own design and approval checks.

The local building context

Barnet’s Monken Hadley Conservation Area Character Appraisal Statement, adopted in January 2007, describes an area that is still green, leafy and of low built density, with large Georgian houses and gardens around Hadley Green and the edges of the Common. Small Victorian cottages of stock brick or stucco line the road at Hadley Highstone, Hadley Green Road has a string of mainly Georgian listed buildings and Dury Road a range of listed buildings, several timber-framed. Hadley Grove has a group of Edwardian houses, and the High Street end is tighter, commercial and mostly Victorian.

Homes change street by street. Ravenscroft Park has large late Victorian villas in small terraces of three or semi-detached pairs, mostly single-family homes in 2007; Union Street has modest buildings close to the road; and further west, Wood Street’s north side has substantial detached houses of about 1900 behind deep frontages. In 2007 the appraisals recorded flats over High Street shops, town-centre homes in Tapster Street, Moxon Street and Victors Way, mostly in modern purpose-built flats, conversions to flats such as the former Old Rectory on Wood Street, and Hadley Heights, a modern block of flats on the Common.

Neither the names High Barnet and Monken Hadley nor an EN5 postcode tells you which council decides, whether a home is in the Monken Hadley or Wood Street Conservation Area or the Green Belt, whether it is listed, which Article 4 direction applies or which consent route the work takes. The Monken Hadley Conservation Area has Hertfordshire and Enfield on its northern boundary, and a 2019 Barnet tree preservation order still gives an EN5 address on Wood Street as Barnet, Hertfordshire, so confirm the council with the official lookup, then read the conservation area map, the list entry, the mapped Article 4 areas, the title or lease and the planning history of the property itself.

Local design and consent context

Planning Data gives Wood Street (CA03) a designation date of 25 April 1969; the appraisal says it was extended in 1979, and Barnet’s Article 4 note records that after a council sub-committee on 7 June 2007 it took in 87 to 97 (odd) High Street, although Barnet’s November 2023 map still gives a last amendment of 1 October 1969. Its appraisal, adopted in July 2007, sets out five character areas, gives unlisted ‘positive’ buildings a general presumption in favour of retention and was to be reviewed every five years. Barnet’s open data lists no later appraisal for either area.

An Article 4(2) direction, A4D9, approved by Barnet’s Cabinet on 15 January 2007, is mapped as 15 areas. Where the work fronts a highway, waterway or open space, planning permission is needed for alterations including windows, doors and facing materials, roof-slope changes, porches, outbuildings and pools, hard surfaces, satellite antennas, gates, fences and walls and their demolition, and exterior painting; erecting, altering or removing a chimney is listed without that frontage condition.

Planning Data finds 52 list entries intersecting the Monken Hadley Conservation Area, five of them Grade II*, and 31 intersecting Wood Street, one Grade II*, with none at Grade I. The Monken Hadley appraisal also names locally listed buildings such as Ludgrove Hall and Monkenhurst, and in 2007 Barnet added five Wood Street area buildings, including the Old Library and 85 High Street, to its local list. Ask Barnet whether a building is on its current local list.

Access and site planning

Barnet’s 2007 Wood Street appraisal describes traffic dominating the High Street end, busy and noisy particularly at the junction of Wood Street with High Street; it also records busy traffic in the morning and afternoon rush hours on Wood Street between Tudor Hall and the Black Horse, and limited parking schemes in the area. The Monken Hadley appraisal records restricted road widths around Taylors Lane and Old Fold Lane, describes Camlet Way as a narrow lane and notes that Games Road has no pavement or kerb. A skip on a public road needs a council licence, usually obtained by the skip company, while one wholly on private land needs none; scaffolding or hoarding on the highway needs a licence too. TfL licenses such items only on its red routes, so check whether the road outside is one.

Continue planning

The High Barnet and Monken Hadley area guide · Kitchen renovation across London · Hampstead Architecture & Planning · Hampstead Chartered Surveyors

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