Extensions in Silver End

Extending in Silver End

The hardest planning constraint in this village is not size. It is style, and it is written down.

Silver End was built between 1926 and 1932 by Francis Henry Crittall, to house the workers at his metal window factory. It is a planned garden village, and it contains a complete estate of Modern Movement houses alongside more traditional designs of the same period. Nothing else in Essex looks like it.

That heritage is protected by two instruments working together. The village core is a conservation area, and an Article 4 direction was served on Silver End Garden Village in May 1983 and updated in 1985. The combination means that a number of alterations which would be permitted development anywhere else need a planning application here, and it means the design of anything you add is assessed against the original architecture rather than against general good taste.

Applications are determined by Braintree District Council. Silver End became a separate civil parish in 1982, having previously sat within Rivenhall, so it has its own parish council as well, though the district determines the application.

What the Article 4 direction actually removes

This is the one thing worth knowing before you spend money on anything in this village.

Braintree’s own guidance sets out what the Silver End direction covers. It withdraws permitted development, so that planning permission is required, for:

• replacement front and side doors
• windows on front and side elevations
• replacement fencing to the front or sides
• construction of parking spaces and driveways
• painting of the exterior

Read that list again with a household budget in mind. Repainting a rendered elevation, laying a hardstanding for a second car, and putting in a new front door are three of the cheapest jobs anyone does to a house, and in Silver End each of them is a planning application. None of that makes them impossible. It makes them a process with a timescale, and the expensive version is finding out afterwards.

The direction is administered by the district, and the council publishes an interactive map so you can confirm whether it applies to a specific property. That check is free and it takes minutes. Our page on Article 4 directions explains the mechanism in general terms.

What it does not remove

The direction is specific. It is not a blanket withdrawal of everything.

A rear extension is not on that list. What governs it instead is conservation area status, which is designated land for the purposes of the permitted development order. On designated land, Class A is narrower than elsewhere: side extensions lose permitted development status, cladding the exterior does, and a rear extension of more than one storey does. A single storey rear extension can still be permitted development if it meets every condition, including the depth and height limits and the rules on materials of similar appearance.

Roof work splits in two. Class B, which covers enlargements such as dormers, does not apply on designated land, so a dormer in Silver End needs permission. Class C, which covers other alterations including rooflights, carries no such exclusion, so a rooflight sitting in the plane of the existing slope remains permitted development, front slope included, unless an Article 4 direction removes it. Class C also carries the condition that a side-facing roof window is obscure glazed and non-opening below 1.7 metres, and that condition applies everywhere, not just here.

Given how much is withdrawn locally, a lawful development certificate is worth more in Silver End than in most places. It is the document that proves what you did was lawful, and on a village with an Article 4 direction over it a buyer’s solicitor will ask.

Three families of houses, and they want different things

Silver End is not one architectural style. It is at least three, sitting on the same streets.

The Modern Movement houses, by Thomas Tait and Frederick MacManus, are the ones the village is known for. They are two storey, flat roofed, built of brick and painted or rendered, with a felted flat roof behind a rendered parapet and horizontal-bar steel windows. Twelve symmetrical pairs of cottages and two terraces of four at the northern end of Silver Street are listed Grade II. Silver Street and Broadway carry a long run of them.

The pitched cottages by C.H.B. Quennell and G.E. Clare are the other half of the village and are frequently forgotten in descriptions of it. Semi detached, red brick base and chimney, rendered walls, hipped roofs in clay pantiles, with a floating porch canopy. Slate roofs on the Hennell pairs in buff stock brick.

The managers’ houses on Boars Tye Road are detached, built in fletton brick, with hipped or gable roofs, individually designed door surrounds, vehicular access and gable fronted garages, some of them original.

Outside the conservation area the village has 1970s housing and several more recent developments, which are ordinary Essex estate stock, as at Witham, and are treated as such. The design conversation and the Article 4 direction do not follow you out there, and the boundary is worth knowing precisely.

Designing an addition to a flat roofed house

The commonest mistake here is bolting a pitched roof onto a building that has never had one.

If your house is one of the flat roofed pairs, an extension with a pitched tiled roof and a hipped end is not a compromise, it is a different building stuck to the back of yours. What works is a continuation of the language already there: a flat roof behind a parapet, the same wall finish, and glazing with slim sightlines rather than heavy frames.

Technically a flat roof is not the liability it was in 1928. A modern warm deck, with the insulation above the structural deck and a single ply or high performance felt membrane over it, is a long-lived roof provided the falls are designed and the outlets are where the water actually goes. The failures come from cold decks, no falls and no thought about where the rain leaves.

The parapet is where the detailing has to be right. A parapet needs a proper cavity tray and a coping that throws water clear, or the wall below it stays wet. That is a craft detail and it is the reason these houses look tired when they are neglected and excellent when they are not.

Steel windows are a repair conversation rather than a replacement one. Many of the originals were already replaced in the 1960s. Slim-section replacements that follow the original glazing pattern have been accepted here, and the council’s own record notes permission granted for new windows following original patterns on the village hall.

Ground conditions on the ridge

Silver End is not in the Blackwater valley. It is on the ridge above it, and the ground says so.

The conservation area appraisal records the geology under the village as boulder clay overlying London Clay, on a flat topped ridge between the valleys of the Rivers Brain and Blackwater. That is two shrinkable clays stacked on each other, and it is the reason foundation depth here is a real number rather than a formality.

On a clear plot, something in the region of 900mm to 1.2m is common. Within influencing distance of a mature tree, considerably more, and the depth is a function of species, mature height and distance rather than of the canopy you can see. A handful of trees in gardens and a line of trees along Boars Tye Road are protected by Tree Preservation Orders, and every tree above a certain size in a conservation area needs notice to the council before work. Removing the tree to save the dig is usually not available and rarely wise: ground dried by a tree for decades takes the water back when it goes, and heave acts upwards. See trees, TPOs and foundations.

The garden village layout helps in one respect. Plots are generous by modern standards, most houses have side access, and the roads were laid out wide with grass verges, so a wagon and a skip are rarely the problem they are in a tight terrace.

The front boundary is part of the application

Hedges, verges and gates are not decoration here. They are the character the designation exists to protect.

The tree lined verges and the clipped front hedges are repeatedly identified in the appraisal as material to the village’s character. That is why front fencing and new driveways sit inside the Article 4 direction. A parking space carved out of a front hedge changes the street in a way the council will assess, and it is an application whether or not the work seems minor.

It is also the reason a plain permeable surface and a retained hedge line tend to get through where a full-width block paved forecourt does not.

What people build here

The village pushes work to the back and into the roof, and that suits most of the briefs anyway.

The single storey rear extension is the mainstay, generally flat roofed on the modernist stock and pitched on the cottages, opening the back into a kitchen and dining space. Gardens take it, and the front elevation is untouched, which keeps the planning conversation short.

Loft conversions happen on the pitched stock, where a rooflight conversion under Class C avoids the dormer question entirely and is often the better building anyway. On the flat roofed houses there is no loft to convert, which is why garden rooms and detached studios come up more here than in a village of pitched cottages.

Garage conversions on the Boars Tye Road houses need care, because some of those gable fronted garages are original fabric and part of what the appraisal identifies as worth keeping.

Questions we get asked in Silver End

Do I really need permission to paint my house?

Within the area covered by the direction, exterior painting is one of the works it withdraws. The council’s map will confirm the position for your address, and a straightforward repaint in a colour consistent with the village is not a fight.

Can I put a dormer in?

A dormer needs planning permission here, because conservation area status removes the class of permitted development that covers roof enlargements. A rooflight in the plane of the slope is a different class and is not excluded on designated land.

My windows are rotten steel. What are my options?

Repair where the sections are sound, and slim replacements following the original glazing pattern where they are not. Front and side elevations need permission regardless of what you choose.

Is my house one of the listed ones?

There are 22 listed buildings or groups within the conservation area, including the seventeenth century Boars Tye Farmhouse group and a run of the Silver Street cottages. Most houses in the village are not listed but still contribute to the designation, which is a different set of rules and a lighter one.

Getting a price for a Silver End extension

Our team surveys the property before anyone draws anything: the ground, the trees, the existing construction, whether the roof is flat or pitched and how it was built, and exactly which controls apply at your address.

Most people who call us already have drawings and permission and want a builder to price the work and build it. That is the ordinary job here, and we are glad to work to somebody else’s plans. Where the drawings do not exist yet, we bring in the technician who draws it and the structural engineer who calculates it, we prepare and manage the application with Braintree District Council, we notify Building Control and we run the job as main contractor. In a village with this much control over detail, having one party responsible for the drawings and the argument behind them is the difference between a determination and a refusal.

We carry £2m public liability cover and everything is built to current Building Regulations. The survey and the quotation cost nothing.