Basement conversion in Totteridge

Start with the basement conversion brief

Distinguish an existing cellar conversion from excavation for a new basement. Record levels, drainage, access and the adjoining structures, and obtain project-specific ground and structural investigations before relying on a design or budget.

Plan temporary works, waterproofing, ventilation, escape and spoil removal as part of the same brief. Ask Hampstead Chartered Surveyors to assess party-wall matters and Hampstead Architecture & Planning to coordinate the design requirements. An area name alone does not establish ground conditions.

The local building context

Barnet’s Totteridge Conservation Area Character Appraisal Statement, adopted in May 2008, places the area in the north of the borough on a west–east gravel ridge, whose road links Mill Hill with Whetstone and Barnet. It describes a ribbon of development along the highway, with green fields on three sides falling to Dollis Brook and Folly Brook, and five character areas: Totteridge Lane, Totteridge Green, Totteridge Village, the later suburban roads of Pine Grove, Northcliffe Drive, Grange Avenue and Priory Close, and Totteridge Common. It counts about 450 properties.

The appraisal attributes several houses to named architects: Norman Shaw for Trevanion and Ellern Mede, Charles Nicholson for The Grange and The Vicarage, and T.E. Collcutt for The Croft, Fairspeir and The Lynch House. Totteridge Lane was built up between 1884 and 1914 with neoclassical houses set back in large secluded gardens, and Totteridge Green keeps two listed 17th-century timber-framed farmhouses, Laurel Farm and Home Farm. The warm red of clay brick and tile is the most prevalent colour, some older buildings carry soft lime render, and most buildings after the mid-19th century are roofed in Welsh slate.

Around St Andrew’s Church, built about 1790 and of yellow brick with a slate roof, Totteridge Village has larger listed houses, including Totteridge House, a late 18th-century red brick villa, Southernhay, an early 19th-century stucco villa, and The Priory, a 17th-century Jacobean mansion, with a close-set group of modest, mainly 19th-century buildings to the west. Weatherboarded cottages such as No. 51 Totteridge Village have clay-tiled roofs, small timber porches and picket fences. Pine Grove and Northcliffe Drive hold large detached interwar and post-war houses in deep, narrow plots, and Lime Grove mainly chalet-type bungalows.

• Barnet: Totteridge Conservation Area Character Appraisal Statement, adopted May 2008 (PDF)
• Planning Data: Trevanion, listed Grade II (list entry 1359110)
• Planning Data: Ellern Mede, listed Grade II (list entry 1359108)
• Planning Data: The Croft, listed Grade II (list entry 1359109)
• Planning Data: Fairspeir, listed Grade II (list entry 1064830)
• Planning Data: Laurel Farm House, listed Grade II (list entry 1064831)
• Historic England: Church of St Andrew, Totteridge Village, Grade II, list entry 1064837
• Planning Data: Totteridge House, Garth Cottage and Falmer, listed Grade II (list entry 1192409)
• Planning Data: Southernhay, listed Grade II (list entry 1064836)
• Planning Data: The Priory, Priory Cottage and Beam Ends, listed Grade II (list entry 1359111)

Local design and consent context

Planning data records the Totteridge Conservation Area, reference CA12, as a London Borough of Barnet designation of December 1968. Barnet’s boundary map, dated November 2023, gives its last amendment as 6 May 2008 and marks the borough boundary alongside the conservation boundary, so read it for the exact property.

• Planning Data: Totteridge conservation area (CA12), London Borough of Barnet
• Barnet: Totteridge conservation area (CA12) boundary map, November 2023 (PDF)

Continue planning

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