Kitchen renovation in Shepherd’s Bush

Plan the kitchen around movement, storage and services.

Start with the kitchen renovation brief

Map preparation, cooking, washing and storage before choosing cabinet fronts. Measure clearances with doors and drawers open, and decide which existing walls, floors and details belong in the finished room.

Coordinate the cabinetry with water, drainage, extraction, electrics and lighting. Confirm appliance dimensions and access for installation before the layout is signed off; structural alterations need their own design and approval checks.

The local building context

The Ravenscourt and Starch Green profile, approved on 2 July 1997, describes three sub-areas. Sub-area B, Victorian housing north of Goldhawk Road, holds the conservation area’s earliest development there: terraces each with a uniform appearance and its own detailing. The profile finds the sub-area’s most impressive houses in Ashchurch Park Villas, mostly of 1870: Nos. 1–15 and 17–24 form a two-storey stock-brick terrace in pairs with stucco surrounds and parapet, and Nos. 25–32 are detached double-fronted houses with two-storey bays. Nos. 8–27 Ashchurch Grove are stock-brick pairs of 1870, some lacking their pierced stucco parapet.

The profile describes Rylett Road and Nos. 1–23 (odd) and 2–28 (even) Binden Road as two-storey brick houses with bay windows, designed as semi-detached pairs with red-brick string courses, most of their bays carrying pointed slate roofs known as Napoleon Hats. Bassein Park Road, which runs into Askew Road, has two- and three-storey mid-Victorian terraces. Rylett Crescent, once called Fortesque Road, has two-storey brick pairs at Nos. 1–17 and three-storey houses at Nos. 17–23, and the profile’s sub-area C text sets bungalows on its western side against three-storey houses opposite.

The Coningham and Lime Grove profile places that conservation area between Uxbridge Road to the north and Goldhawk Road to the south, taking in every building in Coningham Road, and describes a grid of mid to late 19th-century streets, denser and terraced in the west and more open around Godolphin Road, whose southern part has paired stock-brick villas of about 1865, generally three storeys over semi-basements under pitched slate roofs. In the residential terraces of Lime Grove, Coningham Road and Thornfield Road, the profile treats unpainted brickwork and timber sashes as important unifying features.

Local design and consent context

Conservation area 8 in the Local Plan’s table, first designated in February 1974 and extended three times up to March 1991, has a profile that describes it taking in varied Victorian and Edwardian housing in the Starch Green area north of Goldhawk Road. Starch Green itself, between Askew Road and Ashchurch Road, is named, the profile says, after a laundry or laundry ground once there; the profile describes it and its mature tree, King’s Parade near the Goldhawk Road junction and No. 215 Askew Road, a villa of about 1830 converted into The Eagle public house, in its sub-area A text. Sub-area B holds the Victorian pairs and terraces, and sub-area C the later Edwardian housing, laid out on a more open plan, and Wendell Park.

The profile’s design guidelines run across all three sub-areas: rooflines should stay undisturbed, and Napoleon Hats, decorative ridge tiles, finials, cast-iron gutters and downpipes and original roof materials should be kept. In sub-area C it singles out roofs punched through by badly designed dormers and altered glazing patterns as the greatest risks, and notes that inappropriate alterations are particularly evident at the rear of properties in Wendell Road, a street whose Nos. 65–103 are in garden-suburb style. For directions and Buildings of Merit, do not stop at the lists printed in the profile, which the council’s page for the area says are not complete; check the direction summaries and the 2015 register too.

The council’s non-technical summary notes, which it says are not part of the legal documentation, describe the controls. Under No. 1, planning permission is needed at the listed numbers in Ashchurch Grove, Ashchurch Park Villas, Ashchurch Terrace, Binden Road and Rylett Road to paint unpainted brickwork, to change roof coverings at the rear, or to alter a roof, gable or dormer at the front, coverings included. No. 4 does the same for enlarging, improving or otherwise altering the front elevation at its listed numbers in Ashchurch Park Villas, Ashchurch Grove, Rylett Road, Rylett Crescent and Binden Road, and adds gates, fences and walls on the front boundary at Ashchurch Park Villas 1–32 and 15, 16 and 25–27 Ashchurch Grove.

Access and site planning

Residents cannot apply for skip, scaffold or hoarding licences in Hammersmith and Fulham: skip licences go to skip companies, for 14 days or more, while scaffold licences go to scaffolding companies and hoarding licences to building contractors, each for one month or more. Footpaths and pedestrianised areas are closed to skips altogether, while a skip in a parking bay must wait until a suspension is in force. Parking bay suspensions need notice that grows with their size and length: at least eight days for up to six bays (30 metres) over three days or fewer, two weeks for up to six bays for longer or for six to 12 bays for up to a week, and four weeks for more than 12.

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The Shepherd’s Bush area guide · Kitchen renovation across London · Hampstead Architecture & Planning · Hampstead Chartered Surveyors

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