Bespoke joinery in Putney

Fitted storage, cabinetry and the room around it.

Start with the bespoke joinery brief

Start with what the furniture needs to hold and how you use the room. Record alcoves, ceiling heights, skirtings, sockets and radiator positions before setting cabinet depths or door swings. Keep the details worth retaining in the measured brief.

Agree internal layouts, lighting, ventilation, hardware and finish samples before manufacture. Drawings should show how new joinery meets uneven walls and existing cornices, and how access for installation will work.

The local building context

Wandsworth’s Putney Embankment appraisal calls it the first part of Putney to be developed and finds it predominantly late Victorian and Edwardian: shop terraces, the well-detailed houses of Ruvigny Gardens, slightly later mansion blocks and boathouses that give the riverside a character of its own. The Deodar Road appraisal records houses built in the years just after 1896 whose long back gardens run down to the river, an arrangement it calls unique in Wandsworth.

The West Putney conservation area, between Putney Hill and the Dover House Estate and between Upper Richmond Road and Chartfield Avenue, is described as predominantly suburban and residential, largely Victorian in the north and east and overwhelmingly Edwardian in the centre, south and west. It wraps around the separate Coalecroft Road and Parkfields conservation areas. The East Putney appraisal describes an area centred on Upper Richmond Road and West Hill that mixes quiet residential streets with busy main roads.

The Oxford Road appraisal records high-quality detached, semi-detached and terraced Victorian houses, and the Charlwood Road and Lifford Street appraisal finds a distinctly rural feel on Charlwood Road and narrow streets tightly packed with small terraced houses around Lifford Street. Historic England lists 37, 39 and 41 Lower Richmond Road, an early 19th-century two-storey terrace of yellow stock brick with a pantile roof, and 25 Oakhill Road, a house dated 1880, both at Grade II.

Local design and consent context

Among Putney’s conservation areas, Wandsworth lists Article 4 directions only for Putney Lower Common and the Dover House Estate, whose appraisal places its northern part in Putney. At 15–36 Commondale, permission is needed for visible external alterations, replacement windows and doors included, re-roofing in a different material, front porches, hard surfaces and boundaries, demolition and painting the outside walls of houses and flats. The council’s Dover House Estate page lists similar controls, except that rough-cast or render may be painted light beige, cream or off-white.

The East Putney appraisal states that no Article 4 direction has been proposed there, and the council lists none for West Putney, Putney Embankment, Oxford Road, Deodar Road or the other Putney areas. Wandsworth has no basement direction either, and its change-of-use directions do not concern refitting a home. A flat still has no Part 1 householder rights, and a house in a conservation area has reduced ones.

Policy PM5, the Area Strategy for Putney, concerns mostly the town centre and its site allocations; it supports upward extensions on Putney High Street where they are subordinate to the host building and seeks to avoid a canyon-like effect. LP3 welcomes removing pebbledash, paint from brickwork and non-original style windows. The Housing and Historic Environment SPDs, both adopted in November 2016, cite policies since replaced, so rely on the current policy numbers.

Access and site planning

Work out how materials will travel from the street to the room, through any shared entrance hall or stair. At the points checked, TfL’s data placed West Hill (A3) and most points on Upper Richmond Road (A205) under TfL, while Putney High Street, Putney Hill and Lower Richmond Road were not TfL roads; check TfL’s map and Wandsworth’s red-route list for the frontage, because the council does not license skips, scaffolds or hoardings on red routes. On council roads, a skip licence lasts at least five days, is sought five working days ahead, covers up to 12 cubic yards, rules out grab lorries for emptying and needs no separate bay-suspension application; scaffold and hoarding licences last at least 28 days. Book a domestic bay suspension at least seven clear working days ahead.

Continue planning

The Putney area guide · Bespoke joinery across London · Hampstead Architecture & Planning · Hampstead Chartered Surveyors

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