Riverhead is the northern village of the Sevenoaks urban area, running from Chipstead Lake and the River Darent in the north down along the A21. Its landmark is the church of St Mary the Virgin, built in 1831 to a design by Decimus Burton, extended by Arthur Blomfield in 1882, with a copper spire that can be seen from Dunton Green.
The conservation area covers about ten hectares and contains around thirty listed buildings. The council's appraisal dates the earliest timber-framed buildings to the 16th century, the listed houses mostly to the 17th and 18th centuries, and the older unlisted houses mainly to the 19th century. Brick is the main material, with coursed local ragstone, tile hanging, render and tiled or slate roofs, and ironstone in some boundary walls. The streets it covers include Amherst Hill, The Square, Worships Hill, Chipstead Lane, London Road and Maidstone Road.
Riverhead also has later houses that were never sash country. Montreal Road was laid out in the 1930s on part of the former Montreal Park, with plots built between 1931 and 1937, and the rest of the park became housing from the 1950s. Lakeside Place went up in the mid-1990s on the old Marley Tiles site beside Chipstead Lake. Those houses are better matched with casements.
What the appraisal asks for
The appraisal says windows should normally be painted white, calls uPVC windows poor quality, and recommends restricting unsuitable replacement windows on London Road. It is a recommendation rather than an Article 4 direction, and we have not found a direction covering windows in Riverhead. For the 19th-century brick houses on London Road and around The Square, that points to a slim white or off-white sash with the original bar pattern, set back in the opening. The example below is one of those houses.
Background: Riverhead on Wikipedia.
Illustrative example of a typical job
Riverhead 19th-century brick house: four aluminium heritage sashes
A double-fronted 19th-century red brick house of the kind the Riverhead appraisal describes as the bulk of the village's older unlisted buildings. Two sashes on each floor, symmetrical about the door.
- Four aluminium heritage sashes (slim vertical sliders) in white, two-over-two glazing bars
- Frames set back in the reveal to keep the depth of the brick openings
- Scaffold for the two upper windows
Typically £11,350 to £17,700, supplied and fitted, including VAT