Builders in Lindfield

Lindfield High Street is one of the finest village streets in Sussex, running from the church down to the pond with an almost unbroken line of listed buildings on both sides: medieval timber framing, tile hanging, Georgian fronts, and a good deal of one quietly hiding behind another. It is five minutes from our yard, and it is the most demanding work we do.

Building on the High Street

Almost everything here is listed or in the conservation area, usually both. Listed building consent covers internal alterations as well as external, and it is a separate application from planning permission.

The buildings themselves set most of the constraints. A timber-framed house moves with the seasons and is built to. Problems in these houses are rarely age and are usually something added later: cement pointing and render sealing walls that need to breathe, a raised path or a concrete apron holding water against a sole plate, or a modern plaster trapping damp in a wall that was drying outwards perfectly well for two hundred years.

Our restoration work here is mostly lime: repointing, plastering, limewash, and splicing new timber into frames and cills rather than replacing them.

Away from the street

Most of Lindfield is not the High Street. The Victorian and Edwardian housing off it, and the twentieth century roads beyond, take the same work as anywhere else: rear extensions, loft conversions, refitted kitchens and bathrooms, and replacement windows and doors. Plots tend to be generous, which gives an extension somewhere to go.

Access

Worth mentioning because it affects the price rather than the design. The older parts of the village have narrow frontages, limited parking and no rear access on many properties, so materials come through the house or over the roof and muck-away has to be staged. We would rather build that into the programme at survey than discover it in week two.

Planning is Mid Sussex District Council.