Track Record/Private Client

In the early C19th The Vale of Health was a country lane on Hampstead Heath; a short journey out of the smoke and squalor of Camden and a place to spend the weekend at one of the hotels around Hampstead Pond. To this day it feels as though the sprawl of London jumped over the Vale of Health and left this piece of rus in urbe intact. Our clients bought a house with views over the pond, but which needed complete restoration including underpinning and a new roof. A careful study of old maps suggested the site had once housed arbours and “grottoes”; romantic artificial caverns along the lakeside, which explain the extensive groundworks required. These kind of works are often stressful to neighbours, and Camden Council have been careful to review the proposals, but HEAT successfully gained planning consent for the restoration and a new glazed extension at a meeting of the Camden Planning Committee.

HEAT have been appointed to lead the restoration and refurbishment of a Grade II* listed house in the first division of Eaton Place. Thomas Cubitt began work on the Belgravia Estate in the 1820’s and the first houses were sold to his banking contacts. Cubitt sometimes used the houses as his offices until they were sold and – ever the canny marketing man – the unbuilt plots of land were neatly finished with gravel and picket fences; the streets had York stone paving and street lighting, so that, when you bought your new house, you weren’t living next to a building site. At HEAT we are preparing the planning pre-application; restoring missing interior features and correcting unconsented alterations as well as re-constructing the rear extension in painted timber and glass with detailing and proportions taken from the original house.

Project 181