1a Scarborough Road, N4 4LX
Thank you for visiting our web page! As we embark on this construction project, we want to invite you – our friends and neighbours – to come along on our journey.
Please visit this site regularly for regular updates about the project, but also to ask questions and to provide feedback.
Chris & Donny
The Current Site
Our house – The Cottage at 1a Scarborough Road – is a two bedroom house attached to the rear of 72 Upper Tollington Park. It became a standalone property sometime in the early 1980s.
We recently purchased the site to the right of our house (between 1a and 1 Scarborough Road) which we are planning to use to extend our home.
The site currently houses a couple of old garages that were built in the 1990s, but which have been largely unused for the past 10 years.
The Plan
The plan is to build a single-storey lateral extension that converts the space occupied by the existing garages into new living quarters, and restoring some of the pavement to green space. The front and rear rooms will be connected by a new triangular hallway.
The front room and the new hallway will be the same height as the current garages, and will be built using the same colored bricks to match the existing structures. All flat roof surfaces will be green roofs planted with sedum.
One additional side benefit of this project is that it will also restore at least one additional parking spot to Scarborough Road for general use.
The room to the rear will become our kitchen and dining room. This room will have a gently sloped “monopitched” roof made of brown zinc.
Because we are keen gardeners, we will be adding two new gardens as part of the plan. The rear garden will be at the rear edge of the property, bordering the gardens of 72 and 74 Upper Tollington Park. There will also be a new central courtyard garden.
Technical Information
As we are living in a Conservation Zone, we are sensitive about making a positive impact on the neighbourhood’s look and feel. One of our key learnings so far in this process is that a Conservation Zone does not necessarily mean you can only replace like-for-like, but that any new projects need to be of a high standard, utilise sustainable materials, and add to the vibrancy of the community.
We are also very conscious that Scarborough Road is a narrow, residential street, so we will do our best to minimize the impact on road access, noise, and construction debris by working with building materials that can be manufactured off-site and assembled rapidly. Also, because many of us now work from home, we will be sure to alert everyone if there are noisy works being planned by the builders.
Timings
We would love to hear your thoughts about our building plans before we engage with Haringey Council by entering the formal planning process. Once the planning application is submitted, it can take up to 12 weeks for a decision from the Council. From that point we have up to 3 years to break ground if we have a positive decision from the Council.
Ahead of applying for planning permission in May, we would welcome any comments via email or in person, and would like to invite you to an open house on Tuesday May 2 from 5-8pm, where we can meet one another, discuss our plans in more detail, and give you a tour of the building plot.
About Us
Chris and Donny have been living at The Cottage, 1a Scarborough Road since 2014. You may have seen our 10-year old miniature schnauzer Daphne on our walks around Finsbury Park and the Parkland Walk. Chris works as an IT professional and Donny works in healthcare at AstraZeneca. Our home at 1a Scarborough Road was our first major project, where we worked within permitted development guidelines to restore and modernize a small 2-bedroom cottage desperately in need of TLC.
Chris & Donny
Chris – chrisdicken@yahoo.com
Donny – dowong@yahoo.com