Fencing in Beaconsfield
Two towns wearing one name, and they want different fences.
Beaconsfield is two places sharing a name. The Old Town runs along four street ends off a crossroads, largely listed and largely conservation area. The New Town went up around the station from 1906, and its gardens are among the biggest we work in.
Both sit on clay and both are full of mature trees. Those two facts do more to the cost of a fence here than anything else you could tell us.
Clay, and what is under the lawn
Beaconsfield sits on London Clay rather than the chalk you meet closer to the river. Clay digs kindly in spring and sets like concrete by August, and it never stops moving — swelling wet, shrinking dry. That is why a post set shallow here is leaning inside two years. We dig deeper on clay and set every post properly rather than ramming.
The other thing under a Beaconsfield lawn is roots. The New Town gardens came with the houses, and most have mature limes, beech and horse chestnut along the boundary. A root plate does not show up on any plan, and a post hole that meets a four-inch root turns into hand work.
Pick Clay in the quote form unless you know different. If your boundary runs under mature trees, say so in the notes box. We would rather put the hours in the price than find them on the morning.
Price it now →Old Town, New Town
In the Old Town — London End, Wycombe End, Aylesbury End, Windsor End — the frontages are listed, the parking is metered, and the garden behind is reached through the house or not at all. We work small there, carry everything in, and leave the street as we found it.
The New Town gives you the opposite problem. Access is easy and the drives are wide, but the boundaries are long. One side of a garden off Grove Road or Ledborough Lane can run sixty or eighty metres, which is a week of work rather than an afternoon, and worth getting the spec right the first time.
What we build in Beaconsfield
All services →Closeboard / featheredge
The workhorse. Built on site, board by board. 20+ year life.
from £140/mPrice thisPanel (lap / waney)
Fast, tidy and kind to the wallet. Great for garden boundaries.
from £112/mPrice thisPicket
Cottage-front charm. Low, friendly, painted if you like.
from £116/mPrice thisSlatted / contemporary
Clean horizontal lines. The one architects ask for.
from £183/mPrice thisPost & rail (agricultural)
Paddocks, drives and field boundaries. Stock-proof options.
from £65/mPrice thisRepairs & replacement bays
Snapped posts, blown panels, storm damage. Sorted.
from £108/mPrice this
In and around Beaconsfield
All of these are a short run for us, and priced exactly the same as the town itself.
- Holtspur
- Knotty Green
- Forty Green
- Seer Green
- Jordans
- Penn
- Coleshill
- Hedgerley
- Gerrards Cross
- Wooburn Green
Beaconsfield questions
Do we need consent in the Old Town?
Possibly. Permitted development still gives you 2m, or 1m where the fence meets a road, but much of the Old Town is conservation area and a great many of the buildings are listed, which can tighten both. Listed building consent covers the curtilage as well as the house. If your job looks like one that needs a word with Buckinghamshire Council, we will tell you before we start rather than after.
There is a preservation order on our tree. Can you still fence?
Usually, but not by machine and not wherever we like. Damaging the roots of a protected tree is an offence, so near one we hand-dig, move a post along rather than cut through a root, and lose a bay to a gate or a gap if that is what it takes. Tell us in the notes and we will allow for it. Finding out on the day helps nobody.
Does a long boundary work out cheaper per metre?
No, and we would rather say so than pretend. Eighty metres costs almost exactly four times what twenty metres costs, because the materials and the hours both scale. The only place the arithmetic bends is at the very small end, where a minimum job charge applies. What a long run does buy you is one visit, one set-up and one straight line rather than three.
Which panel suits a Beaconsfield garden?
On a long, visible boundary a lap panel starts to look like what it costs. Most people here go for a closeboard panel or tongue and groove, and a fair few want the decorative range. The quote form asks you which grade so the price reflects it — the spread between the cheapest panel and the smartest is wider than most people expect, so it is worth clicking through them before you decide.
More of the general ones on the FAQ page.