House refurbishment in Twickenham

Bring the whole-house scope together.

Start with the house refurbishment brief

Survey the rooms, structure and building services before separating repairs from alterations. Identify the features to keep and the rooms that must remain usable, then coordinate heating, electrics, bathrooms, kitchens and finishes in one written scope.

Record allowances and exclusions against the drawings. Plan inspections before work is covered, agree how changes will be priced and keep a clear handover list for certificates, commissioning and snagging.

The local building context

The St Margaret’s Estate was bought by the Conservative Land Society in 1854 and laid out around three private pleasure gardens; its conservation area was first designated on 2 November 1971 and later extended. Detached villas in a mix of Gothic and Italianate styles dominate its southern end, Netherton Road is a cul-de-sac of two-storey yellow-brick houses under shallow slate roofs, and Kilmorey Gardens is mainly terraced. In the Twickenham Park area beside St Margarets station, Riverdale Road has large four-storey Victorian houses, while East Twickenham’s Cambridge Park was built in the late 19th century.

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

The Twickenham Riverside direction, confirmed on 21 August 1997, covers numbered houses in Lebanon Park and 137–149 and 155–165 (odd) Richmond Road for six types of work: enlargements and other alterations, hard standings, satellite antennae, gates, fences and walls, exterior painting other than repainting what is already painted, and demolishing boundary enclosures. The Cole Park Road direction, made on 17 November 2020 and confirmed on 16 March 2021 without 2A, 2B, 2C, 20 and 29A, removes several householder classes where the work fronts a highway. The register also lists directions on Queen’s Road, Holly Road, Grosvenor Road and Trafalgar Road; read each before relying on it.

The direction dated 12 July 2000 covers work that would front a highway or open space, and chimney alterations in every case. It applies all eight of its categories to 1–29 Netherton Road and 1–18 and 20 St Margaret’s Drive, but only hard surfaces and satellite antennae to 270–284 (even) St Margaret’s Road; it also covers 1–39 St Stephen’s Gardens, specified numbers on Sandycoombe Road and 307 and 309 Richmond Road in Cambridge Park, and 1–13 Victoria Road in Amyand Park Road. The Mallard Place direction of 2009 covers 71–97 (odd) and 66–80 (even) Mallard Place and 69–77 (odd) Strawberry Vale where work fronts a highway or waterway, and chimney alterations there in any case. A separate 2022 direction concerns turning commercial premises in the town centre and the St Margarets and Strawberry Hill parades into homes.

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 · House refurbishment across London · Hampstead Architecture & Planning · Hampstead Chartered Surveyors

Discuss your project

Tell us what you are planning in Twickenham

Share the property location, the work you have in mind and any drawings or permissions you already have.

£5M public liability, £10M employers’ liability and contractors’ all risks cover.

Design support: Hampstead Architecture & Planning.
Surveying support: Hampstead Chartered Surveyors.