House extension in Temple Fortune

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

Finchley Road became the main shopping centre for Hampstead Garden Suburb, and the London Plan 2021 lists Temple Fortune as a District centre in Barnet. Only the road’s eastern side lies in the Suburb conservation area, though most shops are on the western side. On the east, Arcade House and Temple Fortune House, which the Finchley Road appraisal says were completed in 1912, are listed at Grade II and have shops below and flats above. The 1930s blocks that followed include Belmont Court and The Pantiles, a listed block of 40 flats.

The Temple Fortune Lane and Willifield Way area has larger houses than the Artisans’ Quarter, built for middle-class families with large gardens and unified by white roughcast or render, tiles and brick decorative features; Temple Fortune Lane, built in 1907, was the Suburb’s first road. House types run from small three-bedroom properties to four- and five-bedroom houses, in formal squares, semi-detached and detached forms. On Temple Fortune Lane, Historic England lists the Palser Square houses of 1908–10, Arnold Mitchell’s pair at 34 and 36 and the flats of Temple Fortune Court at Grade II.

Temple Fortune’s shops stand on both sides of Finchley Road, the Suburb’s western boundary, but only the eastern side lies in the conservation area, and Barnet notes that the conservation area and the Trust’s Scheme of Management area are not entirely the same. The place name and the NW11 postcode do not decide the council, a boundary, a listing, Trust consent or the consent route. Confirm the council, then check Barnet’s conservation map, the list entry, the Article 4 schedule and map, whether the Trust’s Scheme or a Trust lease applies, the title or lease, and past planning decisions.

Local design and consent context

The Hampstead Garden Suburb Conservation Area was designated in 1968 and later extended to take in Golders Green Crematorium; to the west it reaches the east side of Finchley Road. The Trust says the character appraisal was formally adopted in October 2010 and divides the conservation area into 22 character areas. For Temple Fortune, read the chapters for the Artisans’ Quarter (Area 2), Temple Fortune Lane and Willifield Way (Area 3) and Finchley Road (Area 16).

Barnet’s Hampstead Garden Suburb Article 4 page lists the rights withdrawn in Area 1, including enlarging, improving or otherwise altering a house, other roof alterations, porches, hard surfaces, gates, fences and walls, means of access to a highway, exterior painting and microgeneration equipment such as solar panels and ground or water source heat pumps; for that equipment the withdrawal covers blocks of flats as well as houses. Barnet notes that its scanned direction file may hold historical classes and maps, and that it has translated the old classes into modern ones.

The Hampstead Garden Suburb Design Guidance was produced jointly by the Trust and Barnet, and planning applications are determined in the light of it. It was formally approved after public consultation and is given due weight as a material consideration; the Trust dates the current guidance to 2010. Read it before settling windows, external pipework, boundaries or finishes on a Suburb home.

Access and site planning

Scaffold on the footpath, like any building work that uses or infringes on the public highway or footway, needs a Barnet highways licence, and the landowner is ultimately responsible for having one in place. Residents hire a skip through a skip company, which arranges the licence; if a bay suspension is needed, it must be approved before the skip licence is applied for, with at least 7 working days’ notice on Barnet’s highways page and 7 calendar days on its parking page. Barnet cannot suspend bays turned into parklets at 24, 25, 26 and 30 Temple Fortune Parade and 1255 Finchley Road, and asks you to contact customer services first for a suspension nearby; vehicles for the works must park inside any suspended area.

Continue planning

The Temple Fortune area guide · House extension across London · Hampstead Architecture & Planning · Hampstead Chartered Surveyors

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