Loft Conversions in Holland Park

The Holland Park houses share one roof design: a long slope over the rear addition and a shorter slope to the front, hidden behind a balustrade, with stuccoed dormers rising from the facade. Where dormers are original they are single windows in a surround.

James Hall's stuccoed villas on Addison Road probably had a similar roof, but all have since gained dormers, mostly hidden behind the stucco balustrade; elsewhere on that road roofs once concealed by parapets have often been altered for extra rooms.

The appraisal accepts that most of those additions are low key, just visible without being obtrusive, but it names poorly designed roof extensions in Addison Crescent, Holland Road and Holland Villas Road, and parapet detailing on Holland Park spoiled by others.

Small changes are weighed too. Building between chimney stacks, infilling between slopes and adding rooflights to a plain roof are named as being as harmful as a poor extension.

To the south, Neo-Georgian houses have taller hipped roofs with dormers designed from the outset, and Melbury Road and Holland Park Road hold one of the borough's important concentrations of artists' studio-houses, whose alteration Policy CD1 controls closely.

After the Second World War many houses were divided into flats and gained roof extensions, and Policy CD12 resists a further storey on any building that already has one.

Some groups were built with two storeys over half basements and later gained dormers in their slate roofs; others, like the listed Vassall Cottages, two linked villa pairs of 1845 in stock brick, show how much a single change matters, since one has a side roof extension that spoils the group's uniform look.

For one former service building, the appraisal counts it a great benefit that the roofline has stayed unextended, keeping its small size and character.

Holland Park Mews are listed grade II for their relationship to the Holland Park houses, and larger changes to a listed building, such as extensions, need listed building consent; inside, new openings in walls and suspended ceilings are on the council's list of smaller works that need it too.

Roof work usually touches the party walls on either side; the Party Wall Act requires notice to adjoining owners in the way it sets out and provides a route to settle disagreements.

Kensington and Chelsea has made a Local Listed Building Consent Order that grants blanket consent for solar panels on listed buildings, subject to conditions, which can make a roof project on a listed house simpler where panels are part of it.

Concrete deliveries and waste collection count as noisy activities, allowed only within the permitted hours, and on a route past a school deliveries keep to 9.30am to 3pm on weekdays.

Before the scaffold goes up, neighbours should have at least a fortnight's notice, and nothing may be left on the highway without a licence.

Every proposal has to preserve or enhance the character, appearance and significance of the conservation area under Policy CD4, and that test is applied to the roof as seen from the street and from the gardens behind.

On the Radford villas the roofline is, in the appraisal's words, one of the houses' most characteristic features, and it names the linking of dormers by a solid structure to gain rooms as one of the two most devastating alterations made there.

Holland Villas Road's hipped slate roofs with deep eaves have gained many added dormers, while at numbers 97 to 100 Addison Road, houses of a higher level of design, the mansards are original, with pedimented stone dormers, diamond-pattern slate and tall chimney stacks.

Not in Holland Park: Belsize Park Gardens, NW3, a full-house refurbishment in Belsize Park whose works included the loft.

We photograph each roof from the street and the garden before proposing anything, because the balustrade, the parapet and the dormers are what the appraisal describes for each street.

Sources: Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea: Holland Park Conservation Area Appraisal (June 2017); Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea: Holland Park Conservation Area Appraisal (adopted June 2017); Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea: Local Plan (adopted July 2024); Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea: listed buildings explained; GOV.UK: Party Wall etc. Act 1996 guidance; Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea: Code of Construction Practice (April 2019).