Builders in Ditchling

Ditchling is the tightest place we work, in both senses. It sits directly under the Downs, inside the National Park, with a village centre of timber framing, flint and brick that has been there a very long time. It is also the one village on this list that is not in Mid Sussex at all.

A different council, and a different policy

Ditchling is in East Sussex, in Lewes district, and it sits within the South Downs National Park. Inside the park boundary the National Park Authority is the planning authority rather than the district council.

That is not a formality. National Park policy is noticeably tighter on scale, massing, roof lines and materials than Mid Sussex policy is a few miles north, and there is real weight given to whether a proposal sits comfortably in the landscape. Designing with that in mind from the start is far quicker than submitting something optimistic and appealing it. Parts of the village are also a conservation area, which restricts permitted development rights on top of everything else.

Flint

Flint walls are common here and they are their own discipline. Flint is repaired in lime, never in cement. A hard cement mix is stronger than the material around it, so it traps moisture and does not give, and when water freezes behind the face it is the flint or the brick dressing that comes off rather than the mortar.

It is slow work. It is also far cheaper to repoint a flint wall properly once than to rebuild the face of one that has been done badly. The same principle runs through the rest of the older housing here: solid walls need to breathe, and most of the damp we get called to look at turns out to be a cement render, a modern paint or a raised ground level rather than anything rising. See refurbishment and restoration.

The rest of the work

Not everything in Ditchling is three hundred years old. The twentieth century housing around the village takes ordinary work: rear extensions, loft conversions, refitted kitchens and bathrooms and replacement windows and doors. The National Park still applies, so materials and design will get more scrutiny than the same job would in Burgess Hill, but these are routine applications rather than difficult ones.

We work across Ditchling, Hassocks, Keymer and Clayton as one patch.