House extension in West Kensington and Barons Court

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

West of the cemetery the scale drops. Nos. 38 to 90 (even) and 51 to 71 (odd) Margravine Gardens, most of St Dunstan’s Road and the north side of Claxton Grove are two-storey terraces with suburban front gardens, mostly red stock brick under slate roofs with protruding party walls. The island site formed by Barons Court Road, Barton Road and Palliser Road holds 34 linked 1920s semi-detached houses in the style of Voysey, roughcast under steep clay-tiled mansards, and the present Comeragh Mews houses were made by converting the original two-storey mews buildings into three-storey units.

Queen’s Club Gardens was begun in 1892 by W. H. Gibb, formerly of the Gibbs and Flew partnership, as mansion flats around a communal garden and tennis courts; most blocks are four storeys with a basement, late Victorian red brick with white-painted timber sashes. Gibbs and Flew had begun Auriol Road, the Gunter Estate’s first phase, in 1882. The Fitzgeorge and Fitzjames Conservation Area, designated in September 1982 and described in March 2000 as the two avenues, was extended on 2 July 2002 to three eight-storey North End House blocks built from 1930 and the North End Parade shops.

W14 is not exclusive to Hammersmith and Fulham: Kensington and Chelsea’s Holland Park appraisal, adopted on 19 June 2017, gives W11, W14 and W8 as that conservation area’s postcodes, and Hammersmith and Fulham’s 2018 Local Plan has the Earl’s Court and West Kensington Opportunity Area spanning both boroughs. Of the 21 wards that a 2020 order set for Hammersmith and Fulham’s elections from 2022, one is West Kensington and none is Barons Court, and each ward is defined on a map, not street by street. The council, a conservation boundary, a listing, an Article 4 direction and the consent route all have to be established for the address itself, not inferred from either name or from the postcode. Begin with GOV.UK’s council finder; then check that council’s current conservation maps, Historic England’s list and the council’s list of properties under Article 4 directions, and finish with the title or lease and any earlier planning decisions on the site.

Local design and consent context

The profile was approved by the council’s Planning Applications and Transport Sub-Committee on 14 December 1998 as supplementary planning guidance to the since-replaced Unitary Development Plan, and updated after the boundary changes of 14 July 2004, when properties in St Andrews Road and Greyhound Road moved to Queen’s Club Gardens, and 23 February 2005. It calls itself an appraisal with some broad design guidelines. Read it with the 2018 Local Plan and the council’s current boundary map; controls on estate agents’ boards were added in part of the area in November 2006.

Its guidance for the outside of houses is specific. Front roof extensions will only be considered where a terrace is already significantly impaired by them, and raising a ridge for more internal ceiling height is considered unacceptable. Excavating a front garden for basement windows or light will not normally be permitted where its planting is integral to the street or terrace, though carefully designed lightwells may be acceptable. It notes open views to the rear of terraces in many places, with the rears of Barons Court Road highly visible from the railway, and says the uniformity of rear elevations should be preserved.

An Article 4 direction of 3 July 1981 removes the permitted development rights to alter the roofs, build rear extensions or paint previously unpainted brickwork at Nos. 1 to 6 (consec.) Queen’s Club Terrace. The profile adds that a new or enlarged front lightwell needs planning permission and will not normally be permitted where it would take more than half the front garden, that removing original chimney stacks seen from the street needs permission and should be resisted, and it encourages owners of PVCu windows to change them for designs and materials matching the originals.

Access and site planning

Settle the delivery and waste arrangements with the street in mind before anything is booked. Hammersmith and Fulham grants skip licences to skip companies alone, for no less than 14 days; no skip may stand on the footpath, and one in a parking bay needs a suspension as well. Scaffold licences go only to scaffolding companies, for a minimum of one month. Bay suspensions need notice: 8 days for up to six bays for up to three days, and two weeks or more for bigger or longer ones. The council lists Talgarth Road and West Cromwell Road among roads where Transport for London is responsible for the pavements; on TfL red routes, TfL issues the licences and would rather materials were loaded straight into a vehicle than into a skip.

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The West Kensington and Barons Court area guide · House extension across London · Hampstead Architecture & Planning · Hampstead Chartered Surveyors

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