Builders in Wonersh

Wonersh village has a genuinely old core. The Grange, the church of St John the Baptist and the timber framed and tile hung cottages along The Street give it a character that the conservation area exists to protect, and a number of the buildings are listed.

Tile hanging is worth mentioning because it is everywhere here and it changes how a building behaves. It was used across this part of Surrey to weatherproof soft brick and timber frame, and it hides what is behind it, so a wall that looks straightforward from outside can turn out to be frame rather than masonry.

Beyond the historic centre, and in neighbouring Shamley Green, the housing is largely substantial detached property on good sized plots, a mix of interwar, post-war and later. That is where most of the extension work is.

The parish sits in the Surrey Hills and the landscape setting is part of why people live here, which is also why the planning system pays close attention to what gets built.

Blackheath and the lanes towards Shamley Green bring in another type again, the large detached Edwardian and interwar houses built when this was a fashionable place to have a country house. Generous plots, sound construction, and often a poorly considered 1970s or 1980s extension that is now the obvious candidate for replacement. Taking one of those off and doing it properly usually gains more space than adding somewhere new.

A lot of Wonersh property is tile hung, and it is one of those details that is simple to look at and easy to get wrong. The tiles are hung on battens over whatever the wall is made of, and behind them there is often a timber frame rather than solid masonry.

That matters when you want an opening. Cutting into a tile hung elevation means understanding the frame behind it before anything is removed, sizing the support correctly, and then making good the tiling so the repair does not read as a patch. Matching clay tiles from a reclaim yard is usually better than buying new, because new ones sit brighter than a hundred year old elevation for a long time.

The same care applies to insulation. A tile hung timber frame wall needs to breathe, and filling it with the wrong material traps moisture in the frame. It is a slower approach than a standard cavity fill and it is the right one for the building.

Insulating an older Wonersh house is worth doing and worth doing in the right order. Draughtproofing first, because sealing gaps around floors, skirtings and chimneys costs little and makes an immediate difference. Then loft insulation, which is cheap and effective. Walls come last, and on a timber framed or tile hung building they need a breathable approach rather than a standard cavity fill, because trapping moisture in a frame causes far more expensive problems than a cold wall ever did.