House extension in Winchmore Hill

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

Enfield’s conservation area appraisal records that the village centre took its present form between 1867 and 1896, when the terraces of shops and houses around The Green were built, and that the station opened in 1871. After the Taylor family sold land to developers in 1902, the change from village to suburb was largely complete by 1935. The earliest surviving buildings, the Old Bakery and the Rowan Tree and Woodside houses, date from the early 18th century, and many others from the 18th and early 19th centuries, mainly in the classical style.

Most buildings around The Green are flat-fronted Victorian terraces in red and yellow brick with tall sash windows. Down Wades Hill, shops give way to two-storey terraced houses from late-Georgian to Edwardian, given some unity by yellow stock brick, with early 19th-century cottages of stock brick and weatherboarding at 15–21 and 23–29. Wilson Street has two rows of late Victorian terraces and Harwoods Yard bay-fronted stock brick cottages, while the wider Church Hill has mostly large detached houses or blocks of flats in well-planted gardens and a group of 1930s semi-detached houses.

Neither the name Winchmore Hill nor an N21 postcode tells you which council decides, whether a home is inside a conservation area, whether the 2006 Article 4 direction covers it, whether a building is listed or locally listed, or which consent route the work takes. Enfield’s Winchmore Hill ward is served by N13 and N21, its local list gives N21 postcodes to entries in Grange Park, Bush Hill Park, Southgate and Highfield wards, and the appraisal treats Broad Walk as outside the conservation area while the Article 4 schedule names 86 and 88 Broad Walk. Confirm the council with the official lookup, then read the appraisal, the Article 4 schedule, any list entry, the title or lease and the planning history.

Local design and consent context

Enfield has 22 conservation areas, and its list includes Winchmore Hill and Vicars Moor Lane. Winchmore Hill Green (CA09), designated in 1968 and extended in 1974 and again in 2009 to take in part of Station Road, covers the historic village centre: it borders Grovelands Park to the west and includes the railway bridge, the station and the shopping parades on the south side of Station Road. Vicars Moor Lane (CA10), designated in 1970, is a group of 19th-century properties on the north side of the lane.

Enfield’s Article 4 page says Article 4(2) directions were made on 26 January 2006 covering parts of the Winchmore Hill and Vicars Moor Lane conservation areas, and the direction, confirmed as permanent, was sealed by the council on 27 June 2006. The properties affected are those in its schedules; the plans, dated December 2005, are for guidance only. The Winchmore Hill Green schedule names, among others, 86 and 88 Broad Walk, 212 Hoppers Road, 35 The Green and specified numbers in Harwoods Yard, Compton Terrace, Wades Grove, Wades Hill, Wilson Street and Church Hill; the Vicars Moor Lane schedule covers 70 to 112 (even) Vicars Moor Lane.

The management proposals put the effect plainly: for the properties the direction covers, planning permission must be sought to change windows, doors or roof coverings, to paint or render brick facades, or to put up, alter or demolish a boundary fence or wall on house frontages facing a highway, footpath or public open space. Separately, an Article 4 direction covering the whole borough, confirmed in October 2013, means that changing a dwelling (use class C3) into a house in multiple occupation (use class C4) needs planning permission anywhere in Enfield.

Access and site planning

Plan skips, scaffolding and deliveries around the street outside. A skip on an Enfield road needs a licence for that site, which the hire company applies for and which lasts 14 days unless extended; a skip on a drive or in a front garden needs permission, and a skip on the road or pavement must be lit at night. Scaffolding or hoarding on or over a road or pavement needs a licence, valid for 30 days and extendable, and if Enfield decides a road should be closed, a temporary traffic order needs at least six weeks’ notice. The appraisal notes controlled parking signs and ticket machines around The Green; for building works, ask Enfield about a temporary parking dispensation, which does not promise a space.

Continue planning

The Winchmore Hill area guide · House extension across London · Hampstead Architecture & Planning · Hampstead Chartered Surveyors

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