A block paved frontage taken neatly around a bay window with a charcoal soldier course, and a low brick boundary wall separating the drive from the pavement.

Paving taken cleanly around a bay with a contrasting soldier course. On a shallow period frontage, where the cuts land is most of the finish. From one of our completed projects.

St Margarets is Victorian and Edwardian terraces and villas, a village-scale centre around St Margarets Road, and front gardens that were laid out for railings and rose beds rather than for cars.

Which makes it one of the more interesting places to design a driveway. There is rarely enough space to be casual about the layout, so every decision counts: where the cuts fall, how the paving meets the path, whether the bay window is worked around or paved up to.

It is also an area where the front boundary is doing real architectural work, and taking it out to make a driveway can cost the house more character than the parking gains.

The St Margarets frontage

What actually constrains these jobs

Depth, not width

On most terraces here the front garden is barely a car length. That matters enormously if you are applying for a new crossover, because Richmond upon Thames requires the vehicle to sit fully within the property with no overhang across the footway.

Measure from the back of the footway to your bay. If it is much under five metres, an ordinary car will overhang, and the application is likely to fail on that alone. It is worth knowing before you pay a non-refundable charge.

Conservation areas

Richmond upon Thames has more conservation areas than any other London borough, and parts of St Margarets fall within designated areas. Where they apply, permitted development rights are narrower and the front boundary treatment is often what the council cares about most.

Check your specific address before assuming anything can be removed. See our planning guide.

The front wall is part of the street

On these roads the rhythm of low walls, piers and gate posts is a good part of what the street looks like. Removing one entirely leaves a gap that reads as a gap for as long as the house stands.

Taking out a section for the crossover and rebuilding the ends into proper piers keeps the rhythm, frames the entrance and usually sits far more comfortably with the council. See edging and boundary walls.

Materials that suit the house

A standard concrete block can look out of place against a stock brick Victorian frontage. Clay pavers hold their colour over decades and sit far better with period brickwork, and on some frontages natural stone setts are the right answer.

They cost more. On a small frontage, where the total area is modest, the difference is often much less painful than it would be on a large drive, which is worth knowing.

Working here

Practicalities on a St Margarets street

Access

Narrow roads, residents’ parking and no rear access on most terraces means material comes in and spoil goes out through the front. Grab lorry access has to be planned rather than assumed, and on some roads it means barrowing, which is slower and shows in the price. We would rather set that expectation at quote stage.

Small areas, same specification

A fifteen square metre frontage still needs the full excavation, the membrane, the compacted sub-base and a properly haunched edge restraint. There is no scaled-down version for a small drive, which is why the rate per square metre on a small job looks higher than on a large one. The fixed costs are the same.

Where the water goes

With almost no soft landscaping left on a small paved frontage, the drainage has to be deliberate. Permeable construction, or a channel drain to a soakaway inside the boundary. It cannot run to the footway, and on these frontages it will do exactly that if nobody designs against it. Permeable paving and drainage.

St Margarets is well within our patch and we work these streets regularly. For the wider picture, see block paving driveways in Twickenham.

Most asked for here

On a period house, lifting and re-laying existing paving is often the better value job, because the blocks are frequently a discontinued range you could never match.

Before the tape measure

If the frontage is genuinely too shallow to park a car fully off the footway, we will tell you. It is a better conversation to have with us for free than with the council for £295.

Free, no-obligation quote

Driveways in St Margarets

Tell us about your driveway and your plans. We’ll get back to you within 24 hours.

Tell us the road as well as the postcode. Half the decisions on a St Margarets frontage are about how it sits with its neighbours, and we will very likely know the street.