Made-to-measure steel staircases in Sevenoaks, Brasted, Sundridge and Knockholt

The staircase jobs that come up in Sevenoaks

Sevenoaks grew north from the High Street once the railway reached Bat and Ball in 1862 and Tubs Hill in 1868, and by 1898 the streets around Granville Road, Eardley Road, Argyle Road and St John's were built up with two-storey Victorian and Edwardian terraces and semi-detached pairs on narrow plots, with larger villas on a regular building line. The council's Residential Character Area Assessment records extensions as a common form of development here, and its Residential Extensions SPD steers loft extensions to the rear and does not normally allow front dormers. That pattern produces our most frequent Sevenoaks job: a straight or half-landing galvanised flight from a first-floor room, or from the roof of a rear extension, down to the garden, held to the rear elevation in line with the assessment's note that intrusive extensions visible from the street have been kept to a minimum.

Kippington, Oakhill Road and the Wildernesse estate are different work. Kippington has large, individually designed late-Victorian, Edwardian and Arts and Crafts houses, three of them by Baillie Scott, in substantial plots with mature planting; Wildernesse was laid out between the late 1920s and mid-1930s with Arts and Crafts houses on spacious plots. There we are asked for a spiral staircase from a first-floor balcony, a replacement internal flight with oak treads and a glass balustrade, or steel-framed garden steps taken down through the planting. The 1930s estates up London Road and Otford Road, the public housing at Greatness and Hillingdon and the open-plan layouts at Beaconsfield, Brittains Lane and Chesterfield Drive call for plainer work, usually a straight external stair or a galvanised replacement for a timber flight that has rotted or a steel one that has rusted through.

Conservation areas, listed buildings and the Green Belt

Eight of the district's 41 conservation areas lie in Sevenoaks town: Hartslands, High Street, Kippington and Oakhill Road, Brittains Farm, Granville and Eardley Road, The Vine, Vine Court and Wildernesse. Brasted has two of its own, Brasted Church and Brasted High Street, Sundridge has one, and Knockholt has none on the council's list. Sevenoaks District Council warns that even minor external work in a conservation area, down to repainting or paving a front garden, can affect its character, and asks owners to contact the Planning Team at Argyle Road first. A steel staircase that will be seen from the road therefore goes to them before we cut any steel. The district also has over 1,650 listed buildings, and listed building consent covers the whole of one, not just its front, which means a stair bolted to the rear wall of a listed house needs consent alongside any planning permission.

Outside the built-up areas the district is almost all Metropolitan Green Belt, 93 per cent by area, where Policy GB1 of the council's Green Belt SPD treats an extension of more than 50 per cent over the original floorspace as disproportionate and counts original outbuildings within 5 metres of the house towards the total. Inside the town, Policy C4 of the Sevenoaks Town Neighbourhood Plan, made in May 2023, expects applications in residential areas to show how they respond to the character assessment, and there are protected views towards the Kent Downs from London Road, Granville Road, The Vine and Hollybush Recreation Ground. Each of these ends up in the drawing: the flight is sized to the extension it serves, the balustrade kept low and open where a view is protected, and the finish chosen to sit quietly against brick or ragstone.

Access and site conditions in the town

Sevenoaks stands on elevated ground where two old routes from London climb the Greensand Ridge, with Knole Park hard against the centre on the south-east side. On the ridge side of town the ground can fall away sharply between house and lawn, which is where a garden staircase with a mid-landing beats a long single run. On the Victorian and Edwardian streets the plots are narrow and a terrace has no side passage. We therefore fabricate external flights in bolted sections, hot-dip galvanised, then powder coated before they leave Westerham Hill, carry them through the house and bolt them together at the back. The survey measures the front door, the hall and the back door, and if a section will not make the turn we shorten it at the drawing stage rather than on the day.

Kippington and Wildernesse present the opposite problem: room to work, but a long route in. The plots are substantial, the planting mature, and the boundaries are the brick, Kentish ragstone, railings or fencing that both appraisals say should be retained. Before the design is fixed we walk the route from the road to the back of the house and plan to lift over hedges rather than through them. On the Wildernesse estate the verges are kerb-less and most houses started with five-bar gates, and the van is parked where it damages neither. Where a Kippington house is listed, any new gate, fence, wall or railing around it needs consent, and so does drilling a listed wall for a stair bracket, which is another reason our flights there stand on their own posts.

Brasted, Sundridge and Knockholt

Brasted is 3.75 miles west of Sevenoaks on the A25 and nearer to us than the town, a village of Georgian and Victorian buildings inside the Kent Downs National Landscape with parts of its conservation area in the Green Belt. Staircases here are mostly external flights and garden steps behind older houses, and the larger properties run to the scale of Brasted Place, the Robert Adam villa now split into seven apartments; a stair for a building of that age is designed to stand clear of the fabric on its own posts. The appraisal lists the substantial gate piers, boundary walls, cast-iron front-garden railings and estate railings as key features, and names poorly maintained estate railings and unsuitable replacement fencing as detractors; when a railing is part of the order we copy the pattern already in the street.

Sundridge, next along the A25 in the Darent valley, has timber-framed buildings clad in tile hanging or painted weatherboarding. Walls like that will not carry a stair on brackets. A Sundridge flight normally stands on its own steel posts on concrete pads and touches the house only at the landing; the recent office park east of the village is the other kind of work, galvanised fire escapes with half landings drawn up for Building Control. Knockholt, 5 miles north-west of Sevenoaks on top of the dip slope of the North Downs and against the Greater London boundary, is mostly ribbon development in two parts, the church end and The Pound, with Green Belt fields behind. Open ground with a view over London means every Knockholt stair goes out hot-dip galvanised under its powder coat and fixed with stainless bolts.

Getting to Sevenoaks from Westerham Hill

Our workshop at 4 Fort Cottages stands on Westerham Hill, the stretch of the A233 that climbs Betsom's Hill, 251 metres up and the highest point in Kent, towards Westerham Heights. The road drops into Westerham, 6 miles west of Sevenoaks, and joins the A25, which runs east through Brasted and Sundridge, past Chipstead Lake and Riverhead, and across the north of the town along the Vale of Holmesdale. The town centre is 7.4 miles from the workshop, about sixteen minutes in free-flowing traffic and longer at peak times; from Warlingham it is 13.1 miles. Coming in along the A25 puts the 1930s estates up London Road and Otford Road, Greatness and Bat and Ball on the way, with the centre, Kippington and the rest of the town a turn south. For Sevenoaks Weald, immediately south of the town, the A21 bypass keeps us out of the High Street.

Distance shapes the way we deliver as much as the way we quote. A spiral staircase leaves Westerham Hill assembled and a long straight flight in two or three bolted sections, so before loading we already know whether the van can come along the A25 through Riverhead or should use the A21 bypass, and whether a Kippington drive or a kerb-less Wildernesse verge will let us park close enough to carry. The survey settles that, and it is free. For the first conversation a photo from your phone is enough for a same-day written estimate; we then measure on site before any steel is cut, bring the drawings and calculations back for Building Control if they are needed, and fit with our own team on a fixed quotation.

Places we cover around Sevenoaks

Steel staircases are most of what we make for TN13, TN14, TN15 and TN16, and those postcodes run well past the town. Riverhead, Chipstead by Chipstead Lake, Dunton Green 3 miles north in the Darent valley and Bessels Green in Chevening parish belong to the built-up area or its edge, and Chipstead, Bessels Green, Chevening and Riverhead each have a conservation area of their own. Brasted Chart is the hamlet south of Brasted; Ide Hill, about 3 miles south-west, has the highest church in Kent at 216 metres, and Toys Hill at 248 metres and Crockham Hill sit on the same Greensand Ridge. North and east we work in Otford on the Darent, Kemsing on the Pilgrims' Way, Seal on the A25 with Godden Green in its parish, and Halstead, 6.1 miles north-west of the town near the Greater London border. Sevenoaks Weald lies immediately south.

What changes from place to place is the ground and the rules, not the product. A garden stair at Ide Hill is built for a sandstone ridge that falls towards the Weald, a fire escape at the Sundridge office park for the drawings Building Control will want, and a replacement flight in Otford's conservation area, with its forty or so listed buildings, for a setting where the view from the lane counts as much as the treads. All of them are made on Westerham Hill in mild steel, hot-dip galvanised, then powder coated to any RAL colour, or in stainless steel, with glass, timber or steel infill, and any balustrade, balcony, gate or railing for the same house is made afterwards to match the stair rather than the other way round.

Questions from Sevenoaks customers