Replacement windows in Penshurst for timber-framed, tile-hung and sandstone houses

Penshurst lies west of Tonbridge in the valley of the Medway and the Eden, and it is in Sevenoaks District. The village has grown up around Penshurst Place, the fourteenth-century manor house held by the Sidney family since 1552.

The conservation area

Penshurst's conservation area was first designated in 1976 and updated in 1991 and 2001. Sevenoaks District Council's appraisal calls Penshurst Place the most important building in the village and says the house has shaped the local style. Sandstone was used for Penshurst Place, the church of St John the Baptist and many houses and cottages. Red brick is common, and exposed timber framing, the Kentish vernacular, predominates.

George Devey's village

Devey's first commission here was additions to the rectory. He went on to build estate cottages for Lord De L'Isle and Dudley, worked on Penshurst Place and added to the Leicester Square cottages in 1850. His style brought back exposed timber framing, tile-hanging and roughcast render. At 1 to 3 Leicester Square, listed Grade II, No 1 has a brick and tile-hung front from the mid-nineteenth century, while Nos 2 and 3 are sixteenth-century houses with plaster-filled timbering.

What goes in

Many buildings in the centre are listed, Leicester Square among them. For those, listed building consent comes first and timber or leaded casements are normally expected. The 2001 appraisal pointed to uPVC windows on the sheltered housing at Forge Close as the kind of change it would like to have prevented. For an unlisted house, uPVC does not usually need permission, but in Penshurst we would keep to flush casements with the original bar pattern and a colour that sits with sandstone and tile. Houses out towards Chiddingstone Causeway, near Penshurst station on the Tonbridge to Redhill line, are generally later and freer.

Background on the village: Penshurst on Wikipedia.