DH Painter & Decorator repaints shopfronts in Towcester town centre, a little over eight miles from our Northampton base. Most units on Watling Street have kept their traditional timber shopfronts, which the conservation area appraisal wants protected, so we repair and repaint them in colours that suit the historic street.
Traditional fronts the town wants to keep
Towcester’s town centre runs along Watling Street, with shops, pubs and offices on the ground floor and homes above, and the market square by the 1865 Town Hall. The 2012 conservation area appraisal found that most commercial units had kept their traditional shopfronts, but it also named poorly designed shopfronts and signage as a threat and noted constant pressure for changes. In plain terms, a well-kept timber shopfront is something the council would like to see repaired and repainted rather than ripped out and replaced.
That suits a painter. Pilasters, consoles, cornices, fascia boards, stallrisers and glazing bars on a timber front can usually be brought back with careful preparation: scraping and sanding failed paint, cutting out and splicing small areas of rot, re-puttying loose glazing, and building up a proper primer, undercoat and gloss or satin finish. A repaint like this keeps the character the appraisal values and avoids the planning questions that come with a new shopfront.
Colour for a conservation-area frontage
Much of the centre is painted brick and render in white or cream, so the shopfronts are read against a pale, consistent backdrop. Deep traditional colours on the timber, with the detailing picked out, sit well against it; loud corporate colours and large glossy fascias tend not to. Many of Towcester’s listed buildings are on this stretch, and on a listed building a change in character needs listed building consent. Some properties also carry an Article 4 direction. For a like-for-like repaint there is rarely an issue. For a new colour scheme, speak to West Northamptonshire Council first; signage often has its own consent rules too.
Trading hours and a busy A5 pavement
Shopfronts on Watling Street open directly onto the pavement with A5 traffic alongside, and customers need a clear way in. Dean agrees working hours with you before starting, so the dusty preparation can fall early or on a quieter day, and the entrance is done first or last so the door is never blocked for long. Barriers and wet paint signs go up wherever someone could brush the work.
Traffic dirt is the other local factor. Towcester’s centre sits inside an Air Quality Management Area, and fumes and spray leave a film on shopfront joinery that has to be washed off before any sanding, or the new paint will not bond. A hard-wearing, washable top coat means you can wipe the front down between repaints.
Pubs, hotels and carriage arches
Towcester’s coaching-inn past is still visible. Several former inns remain as pubs and hotels, and the Saracen’s Head keeps its carriage arch with panelled double doors. For a pub or hotel those doors are part of the trading frontage, so we schedule them with the joinery either side and finish them in a hard exterior gloss. Elsewhere a blocked-in arch may be the last trace of an inn, and painting its surround with the rest of the front keeps it legible. Around the market square, fronts near the Town Hall are seen from across the open space as well as from the pavement, so upper fascias and cornices deserve the same care as the parts at eye level.
See our main shopfront painting page for the general approach, and commercial painting if the inside of the premises needs work too. Our Towcester area page covers the town’s homes.
Last updated by Dean, DH Painter & Decorator.
