DH Painter & Decorator paints house exteriors in Sywell, a conservation village in NN6 about 5.9 miles north-east of Northampton town centre. Here the job is mainly timber and ironwork on the 1860s estate cottages, plus newer houses and park homes elsewhere in the parish, with the stone walls of the listed rows left as they are.
One street, one estate scheme
The Main Street you see today is largely the product of 1860 to 1864, when Sywell was rebuilt for Lady Overstone. The result is a run of two-storey cottages in pairs and short rows of four or five, all in coursed lias with brick dressings, flat brick arches and slate roofs. Because they were built as one scheme, they still read as one street. That shapes every exterior decision: a single cottage painted out of step with its neighbours stands out far more here than it would on a mixed road in town.
The walls themselves are not what gets painted. Lias is a solid, porous stone, and a coat of acrylic masonry paint would hold moisture inside it. On these cottages the exterior work is the timber and metal fixed into the stone.
What actually gets painted on a Main Street cottage
- Two-light wood-mullioned windows, where the mullion and the frame need the same attention as a sash, and the cast-iron lozenge glazing bars inside them are treated as metal, not wood.
- Double sashes in ashlar surrounds, painted without getting paint on the stone around them.
- Gabled porches with arched openings, where the porch timbers and the head of the arch catch the rain.
- Oversailing eaves and half dormers, the timber at the top of the wall that sits under the slate overhang.
- Front doors, many of them 20th-century replacements hung in the original openings.
For this kind of timber we lean towards microporous or oil-based exterior finishes that let old wood breathe, and we keep paint off the surrounding stone and brick. Full details of how we prepare and coat exterior woodwork are on our main exterior painting page.
Listed buildings and the conservation area
Sywell’s conservation area was designated in 1977 and covers about 6.8 hectares. Inside it sit 15 listed buildings: Sywell Hall and the parish church at Grade II*, and thirteen Grade II entries that include most of the Main Street rows, 32 and 32A Church Lane, and the Old School House and Village Hall. No Article 4 direction turned up in the sources we checked, but listing is a separate matter.
Repainting a listed cottage in the colour it already is, with a compatible finish, is the safe default. A change of colour or a new type of coating on a listed building could require listed building consent from North Northamptonshire Council; ask before work starts rather than after. We will not book a colour change on a listed front until you have checked.
Rows, porches and getting round the back
A cottage in the middle of a row of five usually has no side passage, so ladders and materials for a rear elevation have to come through the house or over a neighbour’s garden by agreement. We sort that out at the quote visit. Main Street and Church Lane are rural village roads rather than town streets, so a tower or ladder base has to be placed with passing traffic and neighbours’ gateways in mind.
The half dormers and deep eaves put the upper joinery at awkward angles over a slate edge. On some cottages a short tower is safer and steadier than a ladder leaning on the overhang.
Newer homes and park homes in the parish
Not everything in Sywell is Victorian. The parish also has more recent houses, and the residential park homes at Overstone Lakes on Ecton Lane. Park homes are factory-built with board and cladding exteriors, which take a different primer and topcoat from either stone cottages or brick houses. Newer houses with standard fascias, windows and render are a more ordinary exterior job, though the open farmland and aerodrome grassland around the village leave them more exposed to wind-driven rain than a sheltered street in Northampton.
Other kinds of work in the village are set out on the Sywell area page. Before picking a start date, read our guide to choosing a season for exterior painting.
Last updated by Dean, DH Painter & Decorator.
