Aldwick's houses were built with a lot of timber in them
The Aldwick Bay Estate was laid out from 1928, and its builders went in for the Tudor revival: half-timbered gables, leaded and casement windows, heavy boarded front doors, and in a few cases thatched roofs. The Parish Design Statement describes "intricate brickwork" and a range from two-bedroom flats to eight-bedroom detached houses. Much of that timber is original, now nearly a century old, and on the elevations facing the sea it has had a hard life.
Carpentry in Aldwick is therefore more often repair than replacement. A half-timbered gable is usually applied boarding, not structural framing, and the boards rot first at their bottom edges where water sits. Cutting out the decayed section, splicing in matching timber and refixing with stainless fixings costs a fraction of re-boarding the gable and keeps the original pattern. The same is true of the casements: a decayed bottom rail or sill can be spliced, the leaded glazing kept, and the window painted back into service.
The conservation areas, and what they ask of joinery
Aldwick Bay has been a conservation area since 1985, extended in 1994. Craigweil House was designated in 2009, after about nine years of campaigning by residents, and carries the only conservation-area Article 4 Directions Arun publishes: they bring the hard-surfacing of front gardens and verges, and the enclosing of verges, under planning control. In a conservation area, taking down a wall, fence or gate over a metre high beside the road (two metres elsewhere) needs planning permission too.
So gates, fences and boundary joinery at the front of an Aldwick house are not quite the simple job they are elsewhere. The Design Statement singles out Craigweil's Sussex wrought-iron gates, herringbone and tile-creased brickwork and tamarisk hedges as part of the character. A new timber gate or a run of fencing that respects that is fine; ripping out a hedge to put up close-board panels is a planning conversation. We will tell you which side of that line a design falls before it is made.
Thatched and listed: like for like, with consent
Aldwick has around eighteen listed buildings. Among them are 96 and 98 Rose Green Road, a seventeenth-century thatched range with five dormers, Thatched Cottage on Fish Lane, which is probably early eighteenth century, and Old Place and Old Manor Cottage in the old manor core. On Barrack Lane, the Coastguard Cottages built by the Admiralty between 1847 and 1851 sit in one of Arun's Areas of Character.
In a listed building, the windows, doors, staircases and panelling are part of what is listed. Repairing them like for like is the normal route. Replacing them needs listed building consent, and a new dormer casement in a thatched roof is made to the old pattern, not bought in. We measure, draw and make that sort of piece in our own workshop at Middleton.
Big rooms that want furniture built into them
The 1930s houses on Barrack Lane, Gossamer Lane and around Fernhurst Gardens have generous rooms, chimney breasts and long runs of wall, and the joinery that suits them is the furniture-scale kind: alcove bookcases either side of the fireplace, window seats in a deep bay, a dresser built into a kitchen recess, wardrobes along a whole bedroom wall. Our price guide puts an alcove unit at £960 to £5,760 inc. VAT, one alcove, depending on whether it is open shelving or a full cabinet with lighting and doors, and fitted wardrobes at £1,680 to £2,880 inc. VAT per linear metre.
Bungalows, doors and staircases
West Meads, Willowhale and the 1960s and 70s bungalows elsewhere in the parish produce a different list: internal doors rehung or replaced, from £156 per door inc. VAT; doors with new linings and ironmongery at £360 to £660; doorways widened for a wheelchair or frame, with new linings and architraves; and where a bungalow has had its roof converted, a new staircase built to the regulations. A straight softwood flight runs £3,000 to £6,600 inc. VAT on our guide; an oak stair or one with a winder, £6,000 to £12,000.
Salt air on the seaward elevations
Aldwick's front faces open sea, and anything fixed to the outside of a house on the Bay Estate or at Craigweil is specified for it. Stainless steel screws and ironmongery, marine-grade sealants, end grain sealed before the timber goes up, and a paint system with a proper primer and two top coats. Galvanised fixings in this air bleed rust within a few winters; stainless ones do not.
Where to start
The trade in full is carpentry and joinery; the town page is carpentry in Bognor Regis, and Aldwick itself is on builders in Aldwick. Our pool and studio job on The Drive is on currently on site.
Send a photograph of the gable, window or wall and James will tell you whether it can be repaired and what a match would cost if not. Ring 07470 078236. Each item priced on its own line, two years' guarantee on the workmanship.