Fencing in Cookham
A village that spends part of most winters under water.
Cookham is a few minutes down the road from us and we are in and out of it all year. It is really three places: the village by the river, the Rise around the station, and the Dean up on the hill behind.
What ties them together is water. The Thames comes over the Moor most winters, and how far your garden sits above that line decides more about your fence than the timber you pick.
Water, and what survives it
On the low ground the water table barely goes away. Timber posts sitting in wet soil rot from the ground up and take the whole run with them, which is why we put concrete posts and concrete gravel boards on anything near the river and keep the timber above the line. It is dearer at the start and it is the difference between a fence that lasts twenty years and one you rebuild after a bad February.
Up at the Dean the problem reverses. You are on the hill, the ground drains, and the lanes are steep enough that getting a load of concrete posts to the back of a garden is its own morning.
Down on the low ground you are on river gravel and silt, so pick Soil for the ground. It digs easily, which is not the same as being easy — the difficulty here is water, not hardness, and that shows up in the spec rather than the multiplier. Up at the Dean you are into clay and flint, so pick Clay or Rock. Every post we set goes in postcrete either way.
Price it now →The Moor, the Rise and the Dean
Plenty of gardens in the village back onto common land, and a boundary that meets the Moor is not a boundary you can treat casually. Grazing rights still exist over parts of it. We check where the line actually runs before we dig rather than following whatever the last fence did.
The Dean is the other extreme: single-track lanes, passing places, and driveways you would not reverse a loaded van down twice. We bring materials in one drop and take the barrow the rest of the way.
What we build in Cookham
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 Cookham
All of these are a short run for us, and priced exactly the same as the town itself.
- Cookham Rise
- Cookham Dean
- Cookham Village
- Bourne End
- Well End
- Furze Platt
- Pinkneys Green
- Maidenhead
- Little Marlow
- Widbrook Common
Cookham questions
Our garden floods. What will actually survive?
Concrete posts, concrete gravel boards, and timber kept clear of the flood line. The posts and boards do not care about standing water. Featheredge and panels above them stay dry most of the time and can be replaced on their own in twenty years without digging anything out. Going all-timber on the low ground is a false economy and we will say so.
How soon after a flood can you work?
Once the ground has drained enough to hold a post hole open, which after a bad week on the Moor can be a fortnight rather than a day or two. Digging saturated ground gives you a hole that collapses and a post that never sits true. We would rather push the start date back than build something that leans by spring, and we will tell you straight when we look at it.
We back onto the Moor. Can we just fence the line?
Not without checking it first. Parts of Cookham Moor are common land with rights over them, and the line on your deeds may not match the fence that is there now. We would rather spend twenty minutes on that at the survey than move a run afterwards.
Can you get to Cookham Dean?
Yes, though the lanes decide how the day goes. We plan one delivery rather than several and barrow from wherever the van can sit. Say in the notes if your drive is narrow or shared and we will allow the hours properly.
More of the general ones on the FAQ page.