Dean carries out commercial painting in Weedon Bec, 8 miles west of Northampton town centre, for shops, pubs, offices and business units. The village has two small trading centres, a trading estate off Daventry Road and the former Royal Ordnance Depot, where much of the building fabric is listed Grade II*.
Working inside a Grade II* depot
The Royal Ordnance Depot was set up by Act of Parliament in 1803 and largely built in 1805-06. Since the Ministry of Defence sold it in 1984, its storehouses have been used for storage, offices and light industry, and 27 separate Grade II* entries cover the storehouses, the East and West Lodges, the magazines and the walls. The 2016 draft neighbourhood plan recorded the site as being on Historic England’s Heritage at Risk Register. Since 2018 the Eastern Gatehouse has also held a visitor centre, so parts of the site now see the public as well as tenants, and finishes there have to suit both the listing and the footfall.
For a business renting a unit there, that changes what a repaint involves. The storehouses are Flemish bond brick with gauged brick arches and stone dressings, with late 19th-century horned six-over-six timber sashes and 12-panel timber double doors, plus cast-iron hoppers and handrails. Those are part of the listing. In practice:
- Bare brick and stone stay unpainted.
- Sashes and doors are repainted like for like, with an oil-based or traditional joinery paint rather than a modern system that changes their look.
- Cast iron is wire-brushed, rust-treated and primed with a metal primer before a matching top coat.
- Changes of colour or material are a listed building consent question, and the landlord or site owner should confirm what is allowed.
Where office or storage space has been divided with modern partitions, repainting those is straightforward. We ask about the lease and the owner’s rules before quoting.
Two shopping centres with different settings
Weedon trades in two places. Most commercial interiors here are small premises: a supermarket, a post office, a newsagent, hairdressers and a dentist around Church Street and Bridge Street, and a convenience store, specialist traders and a vet on the A45 High Street in Road Weedon.
Inside a shop or surgery, the work is planned around opening times and the floor plan, a section at a time so customers can still come in. A dentist or hairdresser needs a finish that can be cleaned often, and a low-odour paint where clients sit close to the walls. Outside, frontages in the conservation area are usually painted in colours that sit with the white and off-white render and the ironstone around them. Shop frontages themselves are covered on our shopfront painting page.
Pubs and the hotel on the old turnpike
In 2016 the village had four pubs and a hotel. The Maltsters Arms on West Street is an 18th-century listed building of coursed limestone with ironstone bands, and the Heart of England Hotel is a former farmhouse and hostelry on the turnpike. Hospitality buildings like these take heavy wear in bars, corridors and toilets, and often have a mix of old solid walls and later additions. Breathable paints suit the older walls, while hard-wearing scrubbable finishes suit the high-traffic modern areas. Work is phased room by room so the business can keep trading.
Deliveries, HGVs and pinch points
HGV traffic to the depot passes through residential streets, and the canal and railway viaducts at the east entry to the village restrict large vehicles. We work from a small van, which avoids both problems, and bring towers in sections. The trading estate off Daventry Road has easier access. How we plan commercial work around a business is on our main commercial painting page, and the village is described on our Weedon Bec area page.
Last updated by Dean, DH Painter & Decorator.
