One of the houses on Eccles Road is smaller than the others, but with a much larger garden. Regular readers can probably already see where this is going!…  Developers love houses like the one above – with a huge garden, as well as several garages and outbuildings.  We presume it was built on the site of a World War II bomb site, as it’s one of a small cluster of non-Victorian houses. 

And sure enough – there are plans in to demolish it all, and build a rather larger building, covering most (though not quite all) of the plot, and containing five flats (one has a single bedroom, three of them are two-bed, and one is three-bed).  Every flat has a balcony or a terrace.  The two pictures above show the current layout, and what’s proposed.The proposed design is modern, but with some nods to the general shape of the Victorian houses around.  The general design is fairly inoffensive and has some parallels with the existing much-extended house to the north, at the Eccles Road / Lavender Sweep corner.

It’s already had a few objections though – partly as it’s a major densification of one of the few relatively open spots in the area, replacing the current house which is set well back from the road with a low and fairly open garden hedge, with three storeys of building right up to the pavement.  It does seem the architects of the current house deliberately left some space here to make the street feel a bit more open, and this would inevitably be lost.  It also removes quite a lot of sunlight form the back of the houses to the north.

If you want to see the detailed plans, and maybe make a comment (whether to support, oppose or just make a general comment) you can do this on Wandsworth’s planning website – where you should search for planning application number 2020/0906.  In theory comments had to be in by the 14th April, but our Council planners are pretty sensible people and will usually pay attention to late comments if they can.