Kitchen renovation in West Kensington and Barons Court

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

Designated on 10 April 1989, the Barons Court Conservation Area was extended on 2 July 2002 to include Gledstanes Road, Beaumont Crescent and parts of Greyhound Road and North End Road; in the April 2005 profile its northern edge follows Talgarth Road to include West Kensington and Barons Court stations. East of Hammersmith Cemetery, and particularly east of Vereker Road, the profile finds terraces noticeably grander than much of the locality, at four storeys or three over semi-basements; west of Vereker Road they become plainer red brick, generally three storeys, some with basement flats or roof dormers.

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.

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.

Conservation Area No. 11 was designated on 8 August 1975 to control demolition and works to trees, extended on 18 November 1991 to Nos. 2 to 106 (even) Musard Road, Normand Mews and Normand Mansions, and extended again on 14 July 2004. Its profile, approved by committee that day and updated in October 2005, says significant changes to the massing or appearance of the core mansion blocks should not be permitted, and records Nos. 2 to 112 (even) Musard Road, of 1885, as locally listed Buildings of Merit. St Andrew’s Church has since been listed at Grade II.

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 · Kitchen renovation across London · Hampstead Architecture & Planning · Hampstead Chartered Surveyors

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