Home Renovation in Notting Hill

Notting Hill's grid was laid out as estates, and it still behaves like one. The big stucco villas on the garden squares back onto private communal gardens rather than individual plots; the streets between them run from four-storey terraces down to two-storey mews built as stables and coach houses. Almost the whole area is a conservation area, and a significant number of the villas are listed.

The consequence is that the space to be gained is usually below or behind, not above: lower-ground floors excavated or lowered into full family kitchens, vaults under the pavement brought back into use, and rear closet wings rebuilt. The Royal Borough's basement policy is one of the strictest in London — depth, footprint, structural method statements and construction traffic management are all tested — so a basement here is a design and consent project long before it is a build.

We run these projects with the garden committee and immediate neighbours in the loop from the start, because on a communal garden your site access, your hoarding and your working hours affect forty households rather than two. See basement conversions and period property renovation.