Mill Hill runs from a protected village at the top of the ridge down through some of North London's best interwar suburban housing. Two very different kinds of project, both of which we take on.
About 20 minutes from our Kitts End Farm yard
Mill Hill Village, along The Ridgeway, is a conservation area containing much of the area's oldest property — Georgian and early Victorian houses, a number of them listed, on a ridge that has been built on far longer than the suburb below it.
The bulk of Mill Hill, though, is 1920s and 1930s suburban development: substantial semi-detached and detached houses with bay fronts, tile-hung and pebble-dashed elevations, hipped roofs and generous rear gardens. It is some of the best-preserved interwar stock in North London.
That interwar housing has a very consistent set of project characteristics — roof spaces that take a hip-to-gable conversion well, rear elevations that suit a full-width extension, original suspended timber ground floors, and services that in many houses have been extended piecemeal rather than replaced.
Barnet Council is the planning authority. Permitted development generally applies across the suburban areas but not in Mill Hill Village or the other conservation areas, where an application is required for work that would be permitted a few streets away.
A 1930s semi is one of the most rewarding houses to refurbish, because the bones are usually sound and the improvements available are substantial. The rear elevation takes a full-width extension without fighting the structure. The hipped roof converts. The rooms are well-proportioned and the gardens are long.
What they almost always need is services. Original suspended ground floors are typically uninsulated and draughty, the electrical installation has usually been extended rather than renewed, and the heating is frequently a boiler swap on top of pipework that has never been replaced. Doing those together, once, while the floors are up, is far cheaper than doing them separately over a decade.
The other common item is the floor build-up. Insulating a suspended timber ground floor and adding underfloor heating changes the levels, and that has to be resolved against the existing thresholds and the extension slab before the screed goes down — not after.
Usually yes. Hipped roofs of that period commonly have the head height for a hip-to-gable conversion with a rear dormer, and outside the conservation areas that frequently falls within permitted development. The two things to check first are the head height from ceiling joist to ridge and whether there's a compliant route for the new staircase.
Across most of the suburban parts, single-storey rear extensions often fall within permitted development. In Mill Hill Village and the other conservation areas, they don't. Barnet Council is the planning authority — we check the constraints on your address before designing.
On an uninsulated suspended timber floor, yes — it's one of the more noticeable comfort improvements available in a house of this age, and it's the moment to run underfloor heating if you want it. It has to be planned against the existing floor levels and thresholds, which is why it belongs in a refurbishment rather than as a standalone job.
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