Kitchen renovation in Temple Fortune

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

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.

Behind the parade, the Artisans’ Quarter takes its main influence from the Arts and Crafts movement, with cottages grouped in terraces and linked pairs and most homes built between 1909 and 1912. Lower Temple Fortune Hill has white roughcast cottages in symmetrical groups, and brick half quadrangles face each other midway up. The appraisal names roughcast rendered walls, red brick plinths, London stock and red brick, shingle tiles and decorative tiled elements as traditional materials, and says most houses are nationally or locally listed; 5–11 Temple Fortune Hill are Grade II.

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.

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 file’s earliest listed direction is dated 5 March 1971, and its 1991 schedule of affected properties, which predates the 2010 direction, names addresses on Temple Fortune Hill and Temple Fortune Lane. Barnet sealed a further direction, HGS 10, on 15 October 2010 for specific residential properties shown on its map. A separate borough-wide direction has required planning permission since 29 May 2016 for converting a dwelling house into a small house in multiple occupation, a change of use rather than refurbishment.

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 · Kitchen renovation across London · Hampstead Architecture & Planning · Hampstead Chartered Surveyors

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