Builders in Barnes

Homes in Barnes

Richmond Council's Barnes village planning guidance describes Castelnau growing from the toll road built to Hammersmith Bridge in 1824, with large, mostly detached Victorian and Edwardian villas and steep slate gables. Lonsdale Road has villas mostly from the 1860s, three to four storeys high. Around Barnes Green there are Victorian mansion blocks, semi-detached villas and workers' cottages, Edwardian terraces, and Georgian and Victorian houses on The Terrace, while streets such as Glentham Road, St Hilda's Road and Lillian Road have small Victorian cottages with no front gardens.

Villas like these often suit rear kitchen extensions and careful internal remodelling, while the smaller cottages benefit most from side-return extensions and well-designed rear dormers. The village guidance lists unsympathetic dormers and the introduction of basements among the threats to local character, so both need a considered design.

Planning in Barnes

Barnes is covered by the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames. Its conservation areas include Barnes Green, Castelnau, Barnes Common and Mill Hill, with Thorne Passage and White Hart Lane on the Mortlake side, and each has a statement on Richmond's conservation areas pages. Article 4 directions remove permitted development rights on several Barnes Green streets, including Bellevue Road, Glebe Road, Hillersdon Avenue, Laurel Road, Ranelagh Avenue and The Crescent. Here they cover roof additions and outbuildings visible from public places, as well as front changes.

Flood risk is a real factor. Barnes falls in a Thames Estuary 2100 policy area where further action to reduce flood risk is planned, and parts of it are in the Thames flood zones. Richmond's Local Plan limits basements in higher flood zones: none at all in the functional floodplain, and no basement bedrooms or self-contained basement flats in higher-risk parts of Flood Zone 3a. Check your property on Richmond's flood risk pages and the Environment Agency's flood map before designing anything below ground.

Basements need planning permission everywhere in the borough: Article 4 directions have removed permitted development rights for basements since April 2018. Policy 54 of the Richmond Local Plan (adopted October 2025) resists basements of more than one storey under a house, limits basements under gardens to half of the garden, requires soil and drainage over them, and asks for a construction management plan. A screening assessment, and in some cases a full basement impact assessment, is needed where groundwater or throughflow is a concern. Richmond's basement guidance explains the process.

Worth knowing locally

• Hammersmith Bridge closed in 2020, which still affects access to and from Barnes for deliveries and site vehicles.
• Richmond's extensions guidance asks for side infill extensions on Victorian houses to keep a low eaves height where they go deeper than usual, which is relevant to many Barnes terraces.
• Barnes Common and the London Wetland Centre are important open spaces, and houses bordering them tend to have more sensitive rear views.