Steel staircases in Orpington, Chelsfield and Farnborough

Steel staircases for Orpington's inter-war houses

Petts Wood, Crofton, Goddington and Chelsfield Park were built out between 1925 and the late 1930s on garden-suburb lines, and they set the pattern for staircase work in Orpington: two-storey semis and detached houses with a side garden, a low front boundary and a rear garden that in Petts Wood often runs past 120 feet. A rear extension or a loft room with its own entrance on one of these houses is served by a straight or quarter-turn flight in hot-dip galvanised mild steel, powder coated to a RAL colour picked against the brick, or against the white render and bow windows of The Knoll, where the pitched-roof garages joining the semis at the hip decide where the stair can land. Chelsfield Park is a different scale: its 370 or so five- and six-bedroom houses stand on very large hedged plots, so a stair there carries a landing and usually glass or timber infill to suit the elevation.

Fire escape and access stairs for the town centre and Cray Avenue

Enquiries from Orpington High Street and the Walnuts Shopping Centre, an early 1970s complex that now holds a multi-screen cinema and a college campus, are mostly for fire escape staircases and external access stairs to upper floors rather than anything domestic. The industrial estates along Cray Avenue in St Mary Cray, in the Cray valley north of the centre, take the heavier version: galvanised flights with open mesh treads and mid-landings that stand up to weather and constant use. Both kinds are drawn to scale with structural calculations for Building Control where they are needed, fabricated in sections at Westerham Hill so they can be carried through a service yard, and bolted up outside trading hours where a shop or unit has to stay open. Balustrades to a new balcony and railings to a shopfront are made in the same run.

Conservation areas, listed houses, ASRCs and the Green Belt

Of Bromley's 47 conservation areas, thirteen are around Orpington: Broomhill and The Priory, Chelsfield, Farnborough Village, Farnborough Park, Keston Park, Downe, Cudham Village, St Mary Cray, St Paul's Cray, and Petts Wood's The Chenies, Chislehurst Road and Station Square. Inside them Policy 41 asks a stair to respect the building's layout, scale, form and materials, and trees get extra protection, which matters when a flight is craned in. Listed houses in Chelsfield or Farnborough village need listed building consent for nearly any alteration, stairs included.

Areas of Special Residential Character at Petts Wood, Chelsfield Park, The Knoll, Holmwood Cottages on Rushmore Hill and Orchard Road at Pratt's Bottom add a second layer, with Article 4 Directions used where the council sees fit. We check the Article 4 list and the planning register before drawing. Green Street Green sits inside the Green Belt.

Access and site conditions around Orpington

Side gardens and low front boundaries in Petts Wood and Crofton let galvanised flights and landings be walked through to the rear without lifting over the house, and a garden of 120 feet or more gives room to lay sections out before assembly. Where a two-storey side extension has taken the side space down to the metre Policy 8 requires, sections come through the house instead, which caps their length. Chelsfield Park, bounded by the railway and the A21, has hedged plots protected by covenant: room to work, but the hedges are left as found. Keston Park and Farnborough Park, the gated estates either side of Locksbottom's Crofton Road parade, need entry arranged and deliveries timed to suit. South of Green Street Green the ground climbs: Pratt's Bottom is about 100 metres up on Rushmore Hill and Downe sits on an outlier of the North Downs, so garden steps there start from a level survey, not a sketch.

From Westerham Hill to Orpington

Our workshop at 4 Fort Cottages stands on Betsom's Hill, the highest ground in Kent, and the run down to Orpington High Street is 7.1 miles by road, about 17 minutes on the A233 and A21 in clear conditions and longer at peak times. Chelsfield's historic village lies east of the A224 Court Road, Downe is 3.4 miles south-west of Orpington and Knockholt 5.7 miles south, so a survey in one is paired with the others on the same morning. A phone photo of the opening, the drop or the existing flight is enough for a written estimate the same day, and the free survey that follows gathers the measurements for scaled drawings and the loadings that Building Control will want to see. Every staircase for Orpington is fabricated at Westerham Hill and installed by the people who made it, so the fixings into the wall are theirs to answer for.

Where we work across BR5 and BR6

BR6 takes in Orpington itself with Locksbottom, Farnborough, Crofton, Green Street Green, Chelsfield, Downe and Pratt's Bottom, and crosses the county line to Well Hill in Sevenoaks District; BR5 covers Petts Wood, St Mary Cray, St Paul's Cray and Ruxley, part of which is in Bexley. We fit steel staircases, balustrades and gates throughout both, and carry on into Broom Hill, Goddington, Kevingtown and Derry Downs, Keston and Keston Park, Bromley Common, Cudham, Biggin Hill, Knockholt, Badgers Mount and Halstead, and Swanley and Crockenhill. The historic village cores at Chelsfield, around the part 12th-century St Martin of Tours, and at Farnborough, around St Giles and the Grade II listed 5 Church Road, are where consent questions come first; the 1950s streets that spread Green Street Green and St Mary Cray, and the post-war detached houses of The Knoll, are where the plainer extension stairs and replacement flights come up.

Questions from Orpington customers