Bathroom renovation in Twickenham

Design the room around water, waste and ventilation.

Start with the bathroom renovation brief

Record the room dimensions, existing fittings, drainage route and floor construction before choosing a layout. Include the shower or bath, storage, lighting, ventilation and the details that affect everyday use in the same brief.

Agree the waterproofing details, access to valves, finishes and testing before installation. If it is the only bathroom, discuss how the household will manage while the work is carried out.

The local building context

Twickenham Riverside Conservation Area, designated on 14 January 1969, follows the Middlesex bank from Marble Hill Park to Radnor Gardens. Its appraisal, adopted on 20 November 2023, finds short groups of Victorian workers’ cottages, earlier mews-style housing on Orleans Road, semi-detached homes in Lebanon Park, taller Georgian townhouses on Montpelier Row and detached villas on Cross Deep, mostly in stock or gault brick. Lebanon Park’s Edwardian houses stand on the site of Mount Lebanon, a villa that burnt down in 1909.

The Strawberry Hill guidance describes a leafy residential area of large older homes and 20th-century infill houses and flats, with shops near the station. Strawberry Hill Road and Waldegrave Gardens form two treed avenues of substantial late Victorian houses in generous plots, some now flats; Waldegrave Park was developed after an 1883 auction; the Strawberry Vale conservation area is a tightly packed group of Victorian riverside houses whose long gardens slope down to the river, with boathouses; and Mallard Place, built from 1977 to 1984, has fifty-seven flats and forty-five terraced houses by the Eric Lyons Cunningham Partnership.

Twickenham and St Margarets appear in ward names, and all three places appear in the name of a Local Plan area and of several conservation areas. Even so, neither a name nor a TW1 or TW2 postcode shows which conservation area, list entry or Article 4 schedule applies. Hounslow once designated most of the St Margaret’s Estate as its Old Isleworth Conservation Area; boundary changes in 1994 brought the whole estate into Richmond upon Thames. There is no conservation area called East St Margarets, and East Twickenham’s Sandycoombe Road is not Kew’s Sandycombe Road. For the exact house number, look at the council’s conservation map, the list entry and the Article 4 schedules, then at the title or lease and the planning history.

Local design and consent context

Four town areas have appraisals from 2023. Twickenham Riverside’s, adopted on 20 November 2023, gives extensions in 1982 and 1991, and it proposed boundary changes, including adding 3–33 King Street, whose outcome it does not record. Twickenham Green and Queen’s Road appraisals were adopted the same day; the Green itself is Other Open Land of Townscape Importance, and most of Queen’s Road’s housing was built between 1880 and 1895. Trafalgar Road’s appraisal dates from 30 March 2023 and describes 12 pairs of two-storey semi-detached houses of about 1845.

Dates for the other conservation areas come from the council’s statements and its list of studies. In St Margarets, the St Margaret’s Estate (No. 19) was extended in 1988, 2005 and on 24 January 2011, Crown Road (No. 49) covers the area around St Margarets station, and Twickenham Park (No. 24) adjoins it; in East Twickenham, Cambridge Park (No. 21) dates from 1974 and Richmond Road, East Twickenham (No. 66) from 23 September 2003. Strawberry Hill has Strawberry Hill Road (No. 43), Strawberry Vale (No. 45) and Mallard Place (No. 44), all from 14 June 1988, and Waldegrave Park (No. 54), which adjoins Fieldend (No. 71) to the south; Pope’s Avenue (No. 40) lies south of Twickenham Green. Cole Park Road (No. 78) followed on 20 February 2019.

Village planning guidance covers each part: St Margarets and East Twickenham, both adopted on 7 June 2016, and Twickenham and Strawberry Hill, both adopted on 5 February 2018. They predate the 2025 Local Plan, and the Strawberry Hill document says it expands on policies in the 2017 Local Plan. The borough’s House Extensions and External Alterations SPD, adopted on 1 June 2015, discourages turning a hipped roof into a gable and notes that a flat-roofed dormer may be out of character, while a hipped or gabled one is often better, with rooflights as another option.

Access and site planning

Richmond’s permitted hours for noisy building work run from 8am to 6pm, Monday to Friday, and 8am to 1pm on Saturday; Sundays and bank holidays are quiet days. Erecting scaffolding is noisy work under the council’s Construction Code of Practice, so plan it for the same hours. Write to the neighbours, and to the managing agent of a mansion block or converted house, before the loud stages, check the lease for its own rules, and settle whether the household will move out for the worst of it.

Continue planning

The Twickenham area guide · Bathroom renovation across London · Hampstead Architecture & Planning · Hampstead Chartered Surveyors

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