DH Painter & Decorator covers Queen's Park, NN2, from our Northampton base about 1.3 miles south of it. Dean, with over 30 years in the trade, decorates the district's bay-fronted Victorian terraces, conversion flats and commercial units, inside and out, and gives free written quotes.
A small district split by the A508
Queen’s Park is one of Northampton’s smaller districts, about a quarter of a square kilometre lying due north of the town centre, with Kingsthorpe directly to its north. It sits in Trinity ward under West Northamptonshire Council, and the A508 Kingsthorpe Road runs straight through the middle of it. The two halves are quite different. To the west of the road is an industrial estate of units and workshops; to the east are the homes, mostly Victorian bay-fronted terraces on streets such as Balmoral Road, Edinburgh Road and Stanhope Road, grouped around Holy Trinity church.
Part of the area once belonged to the old parish of Kingsthorpe, most of which was brought into the borough of Northampton in 1900. Just to the south, the Northampton Freehold Land Society bought land on both sides of Kingsthorpe Road from 1851, and terraces such as St George’s Place and Elysium Terrace went up in the 1850s and 60s. That history explains why most houses here are of a similar age and why the decorating questions they raise are so consistent.
The terraces: what decorating them involves
A typical Queen’s Park house is a two-storey mid-terrace in red brick, with a bay-fronted lounge, an entrance hall with the stairs rising from it, a separate dining room and an enclosed rear garden. Some have four bedrooms. Many now have uPVC double glazing, though original timber detailing often survives on the bays.
Inside, the work centres on original plaster. Lime plaster of this age cracks as the house moves and dries, so ceilings, cornice lines and the walls around old fireplaces usually need filling and making good before paint. Rooms with cornicing and picture rails reward careful brushwork and suit wallpaper or two-tone schemes, which is why interior painting and wallpaper hanging are the services most often relevant here.
The hall and stairs deserve their own mention. With the staircase coming straight up from the front door, the hall takes the most wear in the house, and the stairwell walls are tall enough that a stepladder on a tread isn’t safe. We use a stair platform and, for the walls people brush past, a scrubbable finish. Our hallway, stairs and landing page explains that work in more detail.
Outside: bays, stone dressings and the conservation area next door
On the Queen’s Park streets, exterior work mostly means the bay fronts: timber or rendered bay detailing, window frames, front doors, and the timber fascias and bargeboards along the eaves and bay roofs. Many slate roofs in the wider area have been replaced with concrete tiles, but the timber at the eaves remains and needs regular repainting. Bays need a scaffold tower or properly footed ladders, and the front of most of these houses gives limited space to set up.
South of Queen’s Park, towards the Barrack Road junction, the terraces are older and taller: three-storey Victorian townhouses with bays from basement to ground floor, red brick with painted stone sills, architraves, cornices with console brackets and lintels, some painted stucco, and timber sash windows, typically four panes to each sash. These fall within the Barrack Road Conservation Area, and its Article 4 Direction, dating from 2000, brings a range of works on road-facing fronts under planning control, from new windows and doors to painting the walls.
For painting, that has some direct consequences:
- Changing a front colour or painting unpainted brick should be checked with the council first.
- Sash windows are repainted and eased rather than replaced, since replacement needs permission.
- Painted stone dressings are cleaned and repainted in kind, without over-filling that blurs the mouldings.
- Painted stucco and render need breathable masonry paint compatible with lime-based backgrounds.
- The brick front walls with wrought iron railings and matching gates are protected, so they are rust-treated and repainted, never removed.
We cover that railing work on our metal gates and railings page. The Kingsley Conservation Area, to the south-east around the Racecourse, has its own heritage Article 4 Direction, so properties on that side need the same care.
The road, the slope and getting to the house
Kingsthorpe Road is a wide, busy A-road with lighting along its central reservation, and it falls about 12 metres from the Barrack Road junction down to Kingsthorpe Hollow. Two things follow. Front walls, railings and woodwork facing the road gather traffic grime, so washing down is part of every exterior job there, because paint over road film doesn’t bond properly. And the slope means level changes between neighbouring houses, which affects how ladders and towers are set up on the front.
The residential streets rely on on-street parking, so we plan deliveries and unloading around it. Some terraces have a gated side passage to the rear garden; many mid-terraces don’t, which means anything needed at the back has to be carried through the house. When that’s the case, we protect the hall and the route through before any exterior rear work begins. Rear gardens with fences and side gates can be stained at the same visit.
Flats, rentals and business premises
Queen’s Park also has flats: a modern block on Kingsthorpe Road north of the former Primrose Hill Congregational Church, and flats inside that church since its conversion in 2005. Decorating in converted buildings means working with managing agents, protecting communal areas and agreeing access times.
Across the former Northampton borough, an Article 4 Direction means new small HMOs need planning permission, so rentals here are mainly single lets or licensed HMOs. For landlords, the priority is a fast turnaround between tenants and finishes that wipe clean, which our landlord decorating service is set up for. On the west side of the A508, the industrial estate’s units and workshops need durable coatings on walls, doors and steelwork, scheduled around working hours, along with the small shops on the Kingsthorpe Road frontage.
Arranging a quote
We’re based in Northampton, about 1.3 miles from Queen’s Park, so a visit to look at the job is straightforward. Dean will walk round the rooms or the front with you, point out anything that needs repair before decorating, and follow up with a written quote. For a sense of what affects price, see our painter and decorator cost guide, or call 07539 779 036.
Last updated by Dean, DH Painter & Decorator.
