Track Record/Planning Consent

Hampstead has many beautiful tall redbrick houses, and this one, not far from the Freud Museum, has a sensitively planted roof terrace with views across London. As part of our comprehensive refurbishment, with contractors Boldfort, HEAT obtained planning permission for a new helical staircase and sliding mechanical rooflight to take you up to this paradise in NW3.

Project 206

Everything looked ok on the surface when our client bought this detached family house in Kew. The garden is huge and the sunny front windows have views over the Pagoda in Kew Gardens. But the previous owners had done a patchwork of repairs over a number of years and none of it was up to standards.

HEAT obtained planning consent from Richmond Council to open up the ground floor to the garden with huge sliding doors. We took the house apart and rebuilt it with our contractor who was meticulous. The house interior is light and relaxed to an interior design by Samantha Knight and the house is fully air conditioned. The garden was designed by Matthew Wilson and has become the heart of the house.

Project 204

“Don’t laugh – we are planning to move – again!” This is how we learned we would be renovating a third house in a row for our clients. This time they were downsizing and had selected a charming mews house in Belgravia on the Grosvenor Estate.

Westminster Council had helpfully indicated in the conservation area appraisal that we would be able to obtain consent for an extra mansard storey as all the adjacent houses had one and the effect was of a “missing tooth” in the mews. As is often the case these days we also asked for planning consent for air conditioning.

It is a great pleasure to work with clients again on repeat projects. We had already surveyed all of their furniture for example and were able to bring all the reference images out of our archive, and it was great knowing their taste and style so well.

The image shows a detail of a staircase newel post.

Project 210

In the mid C19th, Thomas Cubitt, the most eminent builder London has ever produced, acquired the right to build on an unpromising patch of land near the river. On this marshy ground Cubitt built the small grid of streets that are the heart of Pimlico. The houses were not as grand as his developments in Belgravia, but are tall solid practical houses, that are still popular and adaptable nearly 200 years later.

In Pimlico he built wharves and workshops, barges to transport
materials, invented machinery for forming bricks, and had sections within his workshops for carpentry, joinery, iron casting and brick manufacture. Most of the components of his houses were fabricated off site in these workshops, which allowed for greater quality control and greater safety on site, particularly from fire.

HEAT was delighted to have the chance to refurbish another of these first-class houses. We gained planning consent to infil on the ground floor and open up the interior to bring in more light, and to add a floor onto the rear extension to provide an additional family bathroom. The interiors were taken back to the plaster and re-constructed with traditional finishes, panelling and modern services. It is wonderful to follow in the footsteps of London’s Master Builder.

Project 203

HEAT has refurbished a gorgeous sun-filled duplex apartment in a stucco-fronted house in Notting Hill. High ceilings and large south-facing windows also meant a lot of heat in the peak of summer, so as part of a comprehensive refurbishment we applied an invisible ceramic film to the windows to cut down solar gain and obtained planning consent for air conditioning.

The interior air conditioning units were concealed in ceiling spaces with subtle plastered-in air grilles so as not to spoil the classic interior design by Sibyl Colefax and John Fowler. The external air conditioning unit was concealed in a custom-made acoustic housing that allows air flow, but prevents break out of noise that could annoy neighbours. The final installation is silent and almost invisible, but keeps the flat beautifully cool in the occasionally warm summer months in London.

Project: 207

HEAT have won planning permission for a spacious kitchen/dining extension to a country house from Wokingham Borough Council. The substantial C19th house, nestled in a bend of the river Thames was surrounded on three sides by rolling grounds, but nevertheless faced towards the road on the fourth side. The new design cleverly re-orients the entire house so that it relates to the garden and incorporates a new extension. By breaking up the roofline and creating a lofty extension with roof planes that match the existing house the planning impact of the development is mitigated and the house becomes suitable for a large family.

Project 202

West London in the summer. The top floor maisonette in this house in Hammersmith is cramped and stuffy. The only relief is to a tiny roof terrace which is accessed by climbing out a sash window. Once out there – there are spacious views over the city at sunset. HEAT won planning consent for a new roof extension with a beautiful roof terrace at tree canopy level and access via full height glass doors. The main planning issues were overlooking the neighbouring houses; but these were solved with a glass screen that also gives shelter from the wind.

Project 182

The Church Missionary Society trained young Anglican missionaries to work around the world. In 1820 they built this handsome college in the fields and pastures West of Upper Street in Islington and this occasioned a small outbreak of property speculation in Barnsbury. The College is long gone – to be replaced by a housing estate in the early C20th, but the Georgian terraces remain and HEAT have obtained planning consent to restore and extend one of these terraced houses. Later in the C19th Islington houses were built with a raised ground floor, to allow more air and light into the basement, but these early houses have a basement that is completely below pavement level and our intervention has been to create a glazed extension at the rear, with a generous lightwell, to bring natural light into the lower floor for the first time in two hundred years. Together with a new mansard roof and a complete refurbishment this house will be ready for another two hundred years as a family home.

Project: 185

We’ve bought the house opposite! It can be hard to define what you want out of a project at the start, but in this case our client had lived opposite this house for several years and when she saw it come on the market she knew exactly what needed doing. HEAT won consent for a new mansard roof extension and created a palatial master bedroom suite on the top floor of this pretty Fulham home. Three new dormer windows bring light in at the front and 120mm of insulation keep the temperature on the top floor even throughout the year.

Project: 186