Fencing & Walls in Windsor.

Often, yes — permitted development rights for walls, gates and railings are narrower inside a conservation area than outside one, and can disappear entirely on a listed property. Windsor town centre and Eton both carry conservation area designations along much of their historic frontage. We check the boundary and any listing against your address at survey and tell you plainly which consent, if any, applies before design work is priced.

Because the clay-heavy ground around Datchet and Old Windsor holds water for months at a time, and a wall built without a drainage path behind it takes the full pressure of that trapped water directly on the face. We build a drainage path behind every retaining wall above a certain height on these plots as standard, because it is the single biggest reason a Windsor retaining wall leans or cracks within a few winters otherwise.

Usually, and it matters more here than almost anywhere else we work, given how much of Windsor's boundary walling sits inside conservation areas. We source as close a match to the existing brick and coping as the original allows, and where an exact reclaimed match is not realistic we propose a complementary brick rather than a contrast that will stand out against a period frontage.

Yes, and it is our standard specification for ordinary privacy fencing on the plots that sit outside a conservation boundary — concrete posts and gravel boards rather than timber posts set directly into the ground, which lose their line faster in Windsor's mixed clay and sandy soils than the boards above them wear out. We confirm at survey whether your address is inside a conservation boundary before recommending a style.