Joiners in Kirkby-in-Ashfield

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# Joiners in Kirkby-in-Ashfield

The Kirkby Cross direction protects walls, not glazing

Kirkby Cross Conservation Area was designated by Nottinghamshire County Council in 1975, and the appraisal was adopted by Ashfield District Council in September 2004. An Article 4(2) Direction sits over it, which is unusual in this district. Most people hear that and assume their windows are caught. Read the Direction and they are not.

Its Schedule says so plainly. The Direction removes the permitted development rights of Part 2 Class A and Class C, Minor Operations, and Part 31 Class B, Demolition of Buildings, from Schedule 2 of the 1995 General Permitted Development Order as amended. The stated main impact is that the stone walls within the conservation area cannot be demolished or removed without the Authority's approval.

Take those apart. Part 2 Class A is gates, fences and walls. Part 2 Class C is exterior painting. Part 31 Class B is demolition. The class governing alteration of a dwellinghouse, and so the replacement of a window or a front door, is Part 1 Class A, and this Direction does not touch it.

The council said why. The appraisal singled out the numerous roadside stone walls as the one key feature not otherwise protected, notably on the approach to Kirkby Cross up Church Hill, where the wall heights form an imposing streetscape. It is a direction about boundaries, written to save the boundaries.

That still is not the answer for your address

Knowing what a direction leaves out is not the same as knowing you are clear, and we will not tell you that you are.

Two things can still catch a property here. Some of the former farm buildings inside the area are listed, and a listed building needs listed building consent, which is separate from and heavier than planning permission. And whether a given house sits inside or outside the drawn boundary is answered by the council's map, not by the Direction.

Ashfield District Council's conservation officer can settle both. The reply is worth having in writing with your address on it, and worth having before any timber is ordered or any deposit paid. Positions vary street by street, and an enforcement notice is the expensive way to find that out.

What the area actually is

The Direction describes its own site as an historical section of Kirkby-in-Ashfield that still shows traces of the agricultural settlement Kirkby Cross once used to be, with several conserved farm buildings and stone walls. That is the council's line, not ours.

The cross stands at the junction of Church Street, Chapel Street and Sutton Road: the remains of a thirteenth century village cross in dressed stone, a listed structure and a designated ancient monument, thought to have stood there since around 1218. St Wilfrid's is the other fixed point. The medieval church was gutted by fire on 6 January 1907 and rebuilt that year by the Duke of Portland to a design by Louis Ambler. Grade II.

Ashfield District has six conservation areas altogether: Annesley, Lower Bagthorpe, Kirkby Cross, Sutton in Ashfield Church and Market Place, Teversal, and Hucknall town centre. Kirkby Cross is the town's one entry on that list.

The rest of the town is a different building age

Kirkby grew out of several older settlements: Old Kirkby, The Folly or East Kirkby, Nuncargate and Kirkby Woodhouse, with Annesley and Annesley Woodhouse adjoining. The Butterley Company opened Portland Colliery here in 1821 and put up company housing on Portland Row in 1823, long since demolished. That is early industrial workers' housing, well ahead of the famous model villages.

Butterley thought enough of it to reuse the pattern. Its later village at New Ollerton is recorded as very similar to the company's accommodation at Kirkby in Ashfield, put up by a firm from the same town, Messrs Coleman and Blackburn. Victorian growth then followed three collieries and a set of railway junctions, and the pits closed through the 1980s and into the early 1990s.

What that leaves in the openings

Inside the conservation area the documented stock is stone former farm buildings, which normally means casements in stone surrounds. Past that we are reasoning from building age rather than from a record: plain horned sashes and two over two sashes on the colliery terraces, standard modern casements across the later estates. We take the section off the frame that is actually in the wall rather than assuming.

The list runs to bespoke timber windows in casement and box sash, front doors and internal doors, fitted wardrobes, staircases and balustrades and handmade kitchens. Copying an existing profile, or making the one awkward unit nobody else will quote for, is normal work here.

Fifteen minutes from bench to door

The workshop sits on Bleak Hill Way, south west edge of Mansfield, on the A38 corridor beside King's Mill Reservoir. Kirkby is four or five miles south west, twelve to fifteen minutes, along the A38 then south on the B6021 and the A611, the Nottingham to Mansfield road that runs through the town. Those figures are map estimates, not a measured run.

Being that close means we can come and look at an odd opening without it turning into an event.

Tez Cudworth set the business up in 2004 and it has made rather than resold ever since. Tina looks after customers from first call through to fitting, and progress photos come over on WhatsApp so you can watch your work on the bench. Call 01623 530838.