Builders in Folkestone

Much of Folkestone was built in the Victorian and Edwardian decades, when it grew into a seaside resort, and that shows in the terraces, villas and large houses of the West End and the streets around the town centre. Those houses are mostly solid walled, built in soft brick and lime mortar, often with rendered or stuccoed fronts, and they need maintaining in the materials they were built with.

Around them sit interwar and post-war estates in Cheriton, Morehall and beyond, and plenty of newer building, where the work is more often extensions, driveways and the upkeep of cavity walled houses.

Folkestone has several conservation areas, including the Leas and Bayle, which holds nearly a hundred listed buildings. Inside a conservation area, changes to the outside of a house, including some extensions, cladding and render, need planning permission that would not be needed elsewhere, and a listed building needs listed building consent for almost any alteration, inside or out.

Like for like repair in matching materials is usually the straightforward route, and it is how we approach period property anyway. Where something more is planned, the conservation officer at Folkestone and Hythe District Council is the person to talk to first.

A lot of Folkestone building work happens on terraces, where the practical questions come before the building ones. A rear extension on a terrace is usually built against a shared boundary, which brings in the Party Wall Act and notice to the neighbours. Chimney stacks are often shared with the house next door. And on a street with no front gardens, scaffolding and skips go on the pavement or the road, which needs a licence from Kent County Council.

None of that is difficult when it is planned for. It causes delays when it is discovered halfway through a job, so we raise it at quote stage.

Two quotes for the same job can differ by thousands for reasons that never appear on a one line price. Ours sets out the scope and the price in writing, and any quote worth comparing it with should cover the same ground.

Folkestone takes the weather straight off the sea, and the West End and the Leas stand high and exposed above it. Driven rain finds failed pointing and cracked render on the seaward walls first, and salt in the air speeds up the decay of soft brick and old ironwork.

Repairs on those walls last longer when the materials are chosen for the exposure, lime mortar and lime render on the older houses among them, and when the gutters above are working, because an overflowing gutter can undo a wall repair within a winter.