Builders in Southfields

Homes in Southfields

Wandsworth's Urban Design Study describes the Southfields grid as coherent streets of Victorian and Edwardian terraces of similar design, two to three storeys high, with prominent gables, low red-brick front walls and original tiled paths. Parts of the old estate were sold for building from the 1870s, and the railway and Southfields station arrived in 1889. The study rates the area as highly sensitive to change and encourages reinstating original windows, doors and front walls.

Around the edges the character changes. The Wimbledon Park Road conservation area has uniform red-brick gabled terraces from the 1910s and 1920s with clinker-brick front walls and granite-column porches, while the Sutherland Grove conservation area, designated in 1992, is mostly 1920s and 1930s semi-detached houses in a late Edwardian suburban style, mixing Arts and Crafts, Tudor and Queen Anne details. Victoria Drive has large detached houses from the late 1920s and 1930s.

Planning in Southfields

Southfields is covered by the London Borough of Wandsworth. Its conservation areas include Wimbledon Park Road, Sutherland Grove and Victoria Drive, each with a published appraisal on Wandsworth's conservation areas pages, while much of the grid itself sits outside a conservation area. Wandsworth lists no householder Article 4 directions in Southfields on its Article 4 page at the time of writing.

The Wandsworth Local Plan expects roof extensions and dormers to be confined to the rear, rear extensions to stay subservient and leave a substantial part of the garden, and side infills not to create a terraced effect. The council's Housing guidance is specific about lofts on mid-terrace houses: where the party walls rise through the roof, it favours raising them and building a full-width, mansard-style rear extension with traditional dormers. Where they do not, a rear dormer set below the ridge and in from the sides is preferred. On corner houses it asks for a rear dormer rather than a mansard, and it advises against two-storey extensions built right on a neighbour's boundary.

Basements in Wandsworth are governed by Policy LP6 of the Wandsworth Local Plan (adopted 2023). It allows no more than one storey below ground, limits a basement to half of the existing rear garden, requires at least a metre of permeable soil and a drainage layer above any part under the garden, and asks for a pumped device to protect against sewer flooding. Lightwells must leave at least half the depth of the front garden, and in the higher flood zones basement bedrooms are not allowed.

Worth knowing locally

• The Urban Design Study notes that the grid was built just west of the River Wandle's floodplain, while parts of Southfields near King George's Park are in Flood Zones 2 and 3, so check your flood zone before planning anything below ground.
• Paved-over front gardens and altered corners are singled out as detracting from the area, so keeping front walls, paths and gardens intact is part of doing an extension well here.
• The Wimbledon Championships bring heavy crowds and traffic to Southfields each summer, so deliveries, skips and parking suspensions are best planned around the tournament fortnight.