Sash windows in Brasted, on the High Street between Sundridge and Westerham

Brasted lies on the A25 three and three-quarter miles west of Sevenoaks, between Sundridge and Westerham, with the River Darent rising nearby. Its best-known house is Brasted Place, built in 1784 and 1785 for Dr John Turton, physician to George III, and one of only two houses in Kent designed by Robert Adam. Napoleon III lived there for a time. The branch line from Dunton Green to Westerham once stopped here, from 1881 until 1961.

The council revised the Brasted High Street appraisal in 2019 and added five properties to the conservation area. It dates Alms Row Cottages and The Old Manor House to the 16th century or earlier, Combe Bank to about 1725, Hawthorn Cottages and Vine Cottages to the second quarter of the 19th century, and the White Hart to 1885, when it was rebuilt in an Old English style. The village hall followed in 1900 and Tannery Cottages in Rectory Lane in 1907.

Materials are clay tile roofs, with plain Kent peg tiles on the earlier buildings and some slate, timber framing and tile hanging on upper storeys, local red or orange brick often in Flemish bond, cream or grey painted render, and Kentish ragstone for side and boundary walls. The appraisal links the window types to the buildings: casements belong to the Kentish vernacular cottages, sashes to the symmetrical Georgian fronts.

The lesson about pairs

The appraisal records that new windows fitted to one of a pair of cottages in Rectory Lane harmed the architectural interest of the pair. It is the clearest example on this site of why a frontage should be treated as a whole. Where two houses were built as a pair, matching the neighbour's bar pattern and frame proportions matters as much as matching your own. For the Georgian fronts on the High Street, a sash with the right number of panes, in uPVC or aluminium for an unlisted house or timber for a listed one, keeps the street together.

Georgian-style red brick house typical of Brasted, with four white six-over-six sash windows, a black panelled door and a stone side wall

Background: Brasted on Wikipedia.

Planning a frontage in Brasted? Ask for a survey or call 01732 900157.