Casement and sash windows in Tonbridge, matched to the way your house was built
Most houses in Tonbridge were built with one of two kinds of window. The railway terraces south of the river, the villas on Quarry Hill and the Edwardian streets round Springwell Road were built with sliding sashes. The cottages in Hadlow, East Peckham and Golden Green, and the council houses and 1930s semis that filled the edges of town, were built with side-hung casements. Get that match right and a new window looks as if it belongs.
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Start with what your house has now
Look at the oldest window left in the house, often at the back or in the roof. If the glass slides up and down it was a sash house. If it swings out on hinges, or sits in a frame of small leaded panes, it was a casement house. A surveyor will confirm it, but knowing this before anyone visits saves a lot of back and forth.
Casement houses
Village cottages with tile-hung or weatherboarded upper floors, the 1920s council cottages around Barden Park Road and King's Road, and the 1930s semis on Estridge Way and Deakin Leas. The usual replacement is a flush casement, where the opening part sits level with the frame as the old timber ones did.
Sash houses
The mid-Victorian cottages on Douglas Road, Barden Road and Priory Road, the Slade streets inside the town conservation area, and the bigger houses on Quarry Hill Road and Dry Hill Park Road. These take a vertical sliding sash, in uPVC for most houses and timber where the building is listed.
The guide to reading a Tonbridge house goes street by street, from the medieval High Street to the post-war estates north of the town.
Planning: lighter than people expect, with three exceptions
Tonbridge and Malling Borough Council looks after planning for the town, Hildenborough, Hadlow, Golden Green and East Peckham. Leigh and Penshurst are in Sevenoaks District, so their council is different. We could not find an Article 4 direction on windows in any of these places. For an ordinary house, a replacement that looks similar to the existing windows does not usually need planning permission, even in a conservation area. The exceptions are listed buildings, flats and anywhere a council later brings in a direction. How planning works here.
What jobs cost
We show prices as whole jobs on local houses, not as a price list. There are eight examples, from two small cottage casements in East Peckham to the full front of a 1930s semi off the Hadlow Road, each with a typical total range. See the examples.
Where we cover
The whole of Tonbridge, plus six places around it: Hildenborough up the London road, Hadlow and Golden Green to the north-east, East Peckham down the Medway, and Leigh and Penshurst to the west.
Who you deal with
Your enquiry goes to a FENSA-registered installer that works across west Kent. It sends a surveyor, measures, and gives you a written quote in its own name. More about that. You can also email [email protected].
Tell us which windows you have and roughly how many, and a surveyor will come and measure.