House extension in Stamford Brook

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

Street by street, the appraisal is specific. On Pleydell Avenue the houses on the western side are larger, with prominent decorative gables, decorative roof tiles and original windows. Vaughan Avenue’s houses vary considerably in design and rise to three storeys at the eastern end. Prebend Gardens has two-storey terraces of four houses on its western side and mostly two-storey semis on the eastern. West of the Pleydell Avenue junction, the houses of Stamford Brook Common South Side have prominent half-timbered gables and decorated timber porches, each built of brick with a rendered first floor.

The appraisal credits the area’s elegant Edwardian character to the relationship between the common, the listed buildings, the mansion blocks and the family housing, and says scale and character have survived because the buildings have not had obtrusive extensions, alterations have been kept to a minimum and most front gardens remain. Among the further protections it lists are registration as Common Land and Local Open Space status, and it names Stamford Brook Common as a designated Local Open Space.

The name Stamford Brook belongs to a common, a road, an avenue and a District line station. None of these, and no W6 postcode, decides the council that handles an application, the line of a conservation boundary, a building’s listing or the consents a job requires. Hounslow says Stamford Brook Road and the houses on its north side are outside its borough, yet its own schedule includes The Brook at 27 Stamford Brook Road, and only 42–74 (even) and 47–99 (odd) Prebend Gardens are in its conservation area. The house or flat number is what counts. Check that number on the right council’s conservation area map, in the statutory list and against any Article 4 schedule; the title or lease and past planning decisions on the building complete the picture.

Local design and consent context

Hounslow designated the Stamford Brook Conservation Area on 13 January 1998, and its appraisal, consulted on in autumn 2019 and adopted by the council in January 2021, says the area had not been altered or extended since. The appraisal places it in the north-east part of Chiswick and explains that its eastern boundary is irregular because it partly follows an old ditch along the former parish boundary between Chiswick and Hammersmith. To the east lies Hammersmith and Fulham’s Ravenscourt and Starch Green Conservation Area.

Its guidance is brief and direct: dormers are very visible and should be carefully considered, uPVC is not recommended for windows and doors, strong front boundaries should be kept and new crossovers for vehicle access and parking resisted. It sees no obvious potential in this very tightly knit area beyond repair and small rear extensions. It also notes that the council could control the replacement of doors and windows, new window openings and changes to boundaries through an Article 4 direction, presenting that as a power the council could use.

Hammersmith and Fulham adopted its current Local Plan on 28 February 2018, and that plan is the basis for planning decisions at its Stamford Brook Road addresses. Its Policy DC4 expects an extension to be subservient and never to dominate the parent building, and Policy DC11 stops a basement reaching under more than half the depth of the garden. A Regulation 18 draft of a replacement plan has been out to consultation, but it remains an emerging document, not adopted policy.

Access and site planning

Check which council manages the street before booking a skip or scaffold. In Hounslow, licences from Hounslow Highways are needed for scaffolding, hoarding, building materials, crane operations and skips, and a parking suspension must be applied for at least ten working days before the space is needed. On the Hammersmith and Fulham side, the skip firm, not the householder, applies for the skip licence, with 14 days as the shortest period; the scaffolding firm applies for the scaffold licence, which lasts at least a month; and parking bays can be suspended, up to six of them for up to three days, on eight days’ notice, counting Saturdays and Sundays.

Continue planning

The Stamford Brook area guide · House extension across London · Hampstead Architecture & Planning · Hampstead Chartered Surveyors

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