House extension in Tufnell Park

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

Islington’s Tufnell Park Conservation Area was designated on 23 June 1970 and last amended or extended on 20 May 1993. Its January 2002 design guidelines describe it as largely the residential estate Lord Tufnell laid out in the 1860s and 1870s, mainly spacious detached and semi-detached villas and terraces of three and four storeys, many designed by the estate’s surveyor, Truefitt, with a variety of styles and a flamboyant use of materials and decoration. They record the area as predominantly residential, with a few houses then providing hotel or bed and breakfast accommodation.

The conservation area’s character, the guidelines explain, rests on surviving 19th century buildings in brick, stone and render, with timber windows and natural slate and tile roofs; only a few 20th century buildings exist. Roofs take the form of gables, mansards, exposed pitches and parapets, and sloping chimney stacks mark the rear of many terraces. Original porticos, porches and canopies are to be kept, as are ornate tiled dadoes in entrance porches, and front boundaries vary from railings on brick walls to engineering-brick finishes, several still carrying original house names. Gaps between houses give views of trees and rear gardens.

In Islington, Tufnell Park is the name of a ward, a conservation area and a designated public open space, while Dartmouth Park Hill marks where Camden begins. Neither the name nor an N19 or N7 postcode settles the council, a conservation boundary, a listing, an Article 4 direction or the consent route. Use the official lookup to confirm the council, then check its conservation-area map, the list entry, its Article 4 schedule, the title or lease and the planning history for the address.

Islington’s Hillmarton guidelines describe an area mostly first built in the 1850s and 1860s as pairs of three- and four-storey semi-detached villas or as terraces, and those for Mercers Road/Tavistock Terrace name 6 and 9–21 Tufnell Park Road among the 19th century buildings to retain. In Camden, the Dartmouth Park appraisal describes late Victorian villas and houses on Dartmouth Park Hill either side of a 1950 group of houses and maisonettes, and finds most of that conservation area built between 1840 and 1890, with late 18th century terraces, cottages, mansion blocks and Victorian villas side by side.

Local design and consent context

Islington’s list gives the Tufnell Park Conservation Area (CA11) a designation date of 23 June 1970, a last amendment or extension on 20 May 1993 and current design guidelines adopted in January 2002. The guidelines say the council will operate special policies there to preserve and enhance the area’s character, and that it wishes to retain all statutory and locally listed buildings and all other 18th and 19th century buildings and structures. Read them with the Local Plan Islington adopted on 28 September 2023.

Continue planning

The Tufnell Park area guide · House extension across London · Hampstead Architecture & Planning · Hampstead Chartered Surveyors

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Tell us what you are planning in Tufnell Park

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Design support: Hampstead Architecture & Planning.
Surveying support: Hampstead Chartered Surveyors.