Builders in Cuckfield

Cuckfield was the town here long before Haywards Heath was anything at all. When the railway went through in the 1840s it went through Haywards Heath instead, and Cuckfield stayed a village. That accident of routing is why it still has its High Street largely intact, and why building work here is governed by what came before rather than what came after.

Working in the conservation area

Much of the village is a conservation area and a great many buildings are listed, from timber-framed and tile-hung cottages through to Georgian fronts on considerably older structures.

Two things follow. Permitted development rights are restricted in a conservation area, so work that would be automatic in Burgess Hill needs a planning application here. And on a listed building, consent is required for internal alterations as well as external ones, which is the single thing people most often do not realise until they are already committed.

Conservation officers are not generally trying to stop work. They want to see that a repair has been specified sympathetically, that original fabric is being kept where it can be, and that replacement is a last resort. That is a conversation we are used to having, and getting the specification right first time is considerably faster than appealing a refusal.

What the buildings need

Old Cuckfield houses are solid-walled and need to breathe. Most of the restoration work we do in the village is repairing damage caused by the wrong materials: hard cement pointing that has spalled the face off the brick, gypsum plaster trapping moisture in a wall, and modern masonry paint doing the same from outside. Lime is not a preference here, it is what the building requires.

Where original windows survive, splicing new timber into a rotten cill is usually both cheaper and better than replacement, and it keeps the glass and the joinery that make the house what it is.

The rest of the village

Cuckfield is not only its High Street. The surrounding housing is largely twentieth century and takes ordinary work: extensions, loft conversions, kitchens and bathrooms and glazing. It is five minutes from our yard.