Structural Alterations in Stony Stratford
Openings in coaching town walls that have been altered for three hundred years and are carrying more than they admit.
Five star
Google reviews
£5m
Public liability
10+
Years’ trade experience
Family run
Milton Keynes based
The houses along Stony Stratford High Street and the streets behind it have been inns, shops and homes in turn, and every generation has moved a wall. The result is that a structural alteration here starts with working out what the building is actually doing: which walls are original, which were added, what has been removed above, and where the loads have ended up. Only then does the engineer size the steel.
We take these jobs on regularly. Opening the ground floor of a Georgian house into the garden, joining a shop and the rooms behind it, taking out the wall between two small parlours to make a proper living room. Solid brick, timber lintels, lime mortar and the occasional surprise, all of it approached with the care an old building needs and inspected by Building Control at each stage.
Typical works can include
Every project in Stony Stratford is different. Depending on the agreed scope, works may include:
- Structural engineer calculations, where required and where included within the agreed scope
- Temporary works, acrow props and strongboys
- Opening formed and masonry cut back
- Padstones or spreader plates bedded to specification
- Steel beam installed, levelled and packed
- Fire protection to the steel and boxing in
The full list, and how we run the job, is on the main structural alterations page.
Old walls, party walls and the conservation area
Solid brick in soft lime cannot take a point load the way blockwork can, so the padstones under a new steel are sized generously and bedded properly, and the pier each side is checked down to the ground, because Georgian footings are often little more than a couple of courses of brick on clay. Timber lintels over existing openings are usually replaced while the wall is open. Where a chimney breast comes out, the stack is supported rather than left hanging, and on a terrace the shared flue brings in the neighbour.
Most of the High Street is terraced, so the Party Wall etc. Act is a regular feature: a beam bearing on the shared wall, or work to a chimney in it, can require notices served on the neighbour in good time. Internal structural work on an unlisted house needs Building Regulations approval only; on a listed house, of which Stony Stratford has many, listed building consent can be needed for internal changes. General local guidance, confirmed on the first visit.
I can very happily recommend CB Builders and Sons having had work completed today by them. Turned up on time, tidied up well after themselves. Did a multi task interior job very professionally, and didn’t over charge. Wood work, electric, plaster, all to a high standard. Also, being a lone female I can say I felt safe and totally comfortable having them in my home. I would 100% hire them again. Thank you.
Structural alterations we have built
Our own photographs, some mid build, because that is where you can see how a job was put together. More on the projects page.
Questions from Stony Stratford
Will removing a wall in my Stony Stratford terrace involve the neighbours?
Possibly. If the new beam bears on the shared wall, or the work affects a chimney in it, the Party Wall etc. Act may require notices to be served and a surveyor appointed if the neighbour asks for one. It is framed as a possibility because it depends on the design. We will tell you early if we think notices are likely so they can go in with time to spare.
What if the building turns out to be carrying something unexpected?
It happens in Stony Stratford more than most places. We prop generously before anything is cut, open up carefully, and if the structure is not what the drawings assumed we stop, the engineer looks again, and the design is adjusted before we go further. Better a day’s delay than a crack in a listed frontage.
What is the difference between planning permission and Building Regulations?
Planning is about whether you are allowed to build the thing at all: size, appearance, effect on neighbours. Building Regulations are about whether it is safe and properly built: structure, insulation, fire, drainage, ventilation, electrics.
They are separate approvals. An extension can need no planning permission whatsoever and still require Building Control approval. For structural work we generally prefer the Full Plans route, so drawings and calculations are checked before we start rather than problems surfacing halfway through.
We work alongside Building Control and structural engineers regularly and can manage that liaison where it forms part of the agreed scope. Their fees and appointments are not automatically included unless the quotation says so.
How long will the work take?
It depends on the job, and anyone who gives you a number without seeing the house is guessing. As a rough guide: a bathroom is two to three weeks, a kitchen refit two to four, a single storey rear extension is usually ten to fourteen weeks from breaking ground, and a full house renovation runs three to six months depending on scale.
Weather, Building Control inspections and lead times on windows, doors and kitchens all move those numbers. We build realistic float into the programme rather than promising a date we cannot hold.
Other work we do in Stony Stratford
Structural alterations nearby
Also covering Cosgrove Deanshanger Wolverton Calverton Castlethorpe Hanslope
Planning structural alterations in Stony Stratford?
Send a few photographs and tell us what you have in mind. We will come and look, and the written quotation costs nothing.