Loft conversion in Totteridge

Test the roof space before settling on a layout.

Start with the loft conversion brief

A measured roof survey should establish headroom, structural spans and where a staircase could meet the floor below. Plan the stair, escape route, insulation and building services together before treating the loft as another room.

Compare the proposed roof shape with the address-specific design guidance below. Record chimneys, shared walls and neighbouring rooflines, then ask the appointed designers to identify the structural work and consents the proposal needs.

The local building context

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.

Neither the name Totteridge nor an N20 postcode tells you which council decides, whether a home is inside the conservation area or the Green Belt, whether it is listed, which Article 4 direction applies or which consent route the work takes. Barnet’s conservation map marks the borough boundary as well as the conservation boundary, so confirm the council with the official lookup, then read that map, the list entry, the Article 4 orders and their mapped areas, the title or lease and the planning history of the property itself.

Local design and consent context

The appraisal’s management proposals say a direction made shortly after designation, in 1970, covers parts of the conservation area: Totteridge Green, and Totteridge Village around its junction with Grange Avenue and around St Andrew’s Church. They list the works it brings under control, including replacement windows and doors, roof extensions and roof lights, new wall materials and painting, porches and outbuildings, replacing boundaries other than hedges, front-garden hard standings and vehicle crossovers, and most new gates, fences and walls.

Barnet’s order, A4D11, was made on 7 September 1970 and approved on 5 July 1972; later schedules approved in 1974 and 1979 cover porches, vehicle hard standings, oil tanks for domestic heating and gates, fences and walls, and the 1979 schedule also covers painting external walls. Planning data maps the direction as three areas and lists the rights it withdraws: enlargement and alteration, roof alterations, porches, outbuildings, hard surfaces, chimneys and flues, antennas, boundaries, access to a highway and exterior painting.

A second direction under Article 4(2), approved on 6 May 2008, covers 17 to 27 (odd) Totteridge Village, and on its approval Red Lodge and Lyndeth in The Close were taken out of the 1970 direction’s area. Planning data maps it as two areas and lists the rights it withdraws: enlargement and alteration, roof alterations, porches, outbuildings, hard surfaces, chimneys and flues, antennas, boundaries, exterior painting and demolition of gates, fences and walls. Barnet says it has translated the old classes into modern ones, so read each order against today’s rules.

Access and site planning

Barnet’s 2008 appraisal describes Totteridge Lane, Totteridge Village and Totteridge Common as busy with fast traffic, particularly at rush hours; private shared roads such as Links Drive and Hadar Close, and lanes such as Lime Grove and Horseshoe Lane, without pedestrian paths; and Barnet Lane as narrow, winding and steep. Plan where deliveries stop and waste waits, and keep vehicles off Totteridge Green, which the appraisal found rutted in places. 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 Totteridge area guide · Loft conversion across London · Hampstead Architecture & Planning · Hampstead Chartered Surveyors

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