Builders in Farnham

Farnham has the finest Georgian townscape in Surrey and it is protected accordingly. Castle Street and West Street are lined with eighteenth century brick frontages, many of them listed, and a great deal of what looks Georgian is in fact an older timber framed building refronted in brick when that became fashionable.

That refronting matters practically. Open up a wall expecting brick and you can find a timber frame behind it, which changes the structural approach and sometimes the consent position. It is one of the reasons we survey properly here before quoting rather than pricing from a plan.

Away from the centre the town spreads into Victorian terraces, substantial Edwardian villas in the Hale and Upper Hale direction, and interwar and post-war housing on the edges. The surrounding villages of Rowledge, Wrecclesham and Tilford add period cottages and larger detached houses on generous plots.

The local brick is worth knowing about. Farnham was a brickmaking town and the older buildings use a distinctive soft red and grey headers laid in patterns. Matching it on an extension takes sourcing rather than a trip to a builders merchant.

Away from the historic centre, the Victorian and Edwardian terraces off West Street and the interwar housing towards Badshot Lea behave more conventionally. Cavity walls, standard foundations, no consent complications beyond the ordinary. The distinction matters, because Farnham gets talked about as though every building in it is Georgian, and pricing a straightforward extension as though it were a listed building serves nobody.

The single thing that makes or breaks an extension in Farnham is whether the materials look like they belong. A well proportioned addition in the wrong brick reads as an addition forever, and in a conservation area it is also the thing most likely to attract an objection.

We source reclaimed or specially matched brick where the existing wall warrants it, and we match the mortar as carefully as the brick. Mortar colour and joint profile do more for how an elevation reads than most people expect, and a modern grey cement joint against soft red brick is immediately obvious.

The same applies to windows. Slim sightlines, correct glazing bar widths and the right opening pattern cost more than a standard unit, and on a protected frontage they are usually the difference between a consent and a refusal.

Damp is the other recurring theme. Solid walled buildings manage moisture by letting it move through and evaporate, and the usual modern responses of injected damp proof courses, cement render and impermeable paint tend to trap it instead. On older Farnham property the durable answer is nearly always breathable: lime plaster and render, mineral paints, and fixing the drainage and ground levels outside before treating anything inside.