Builders in Haywards Heath

Our office is on Eastern Road, so Haywards Heath is not an area we cover so much as the place we work from. A good share of our jobs are within a few streets of one another, because one extension on a road tends to produce the next one.

The housing, and what it needs

Haywards Heath is a railway town. It barely existed before the London to Brighton line arrived in 1841, and almost everything here has been built since, which means the town is really four or five distinct kinds of house sitting side by side.

The Victorian and Edwardian villas around Muster Green and the older streets near the station are solid-walled, often with original joinery worth keeping. These need sympathetic repair rather than modernising, and the common jobs are chimneys, roofs, sash windows and putting right damp that turns out to be a cement render or a raised path.

The interwar and 1930s stock, including Franklands Village, is where most of our rear extensions happen. Cavity walls, generous plots, and a kitchen at the back that was designed as a separate room and is now the main reason people call.

The postwar and 1960s estates are prime loft conversion territory, though roofs from the mid-1960s onwards are often trussed rather than cut, which changes how the conversion has to be engineered.

Bolnore Village and the newer developments need a different sort of work again. The fabric is sound, so the jobs there are garden rooms, garage conversions, kitchens and bathrooms and glazing.

Practical things worth knowing here

Much of the Weald sits on shrinkable clay, and Haywards Heath has no shortage of mature trees on and near boundaries. Both push foundation depths deeper than people expect, and it is the most common reason an extension quote comes back higher than a neighbour’s did three streets away. We dig trial holes where there is any doubt rather than discovering it after the price is agreed.

Planning here is Mid Sussex District Council. Muster Green and parts of the older town are within a conservation area, where permitted development rights are restricted and most external alterations need an application.