Fencing in Sonning Common
Regular plots, known ground — the instant quote is at its best here.
Sonning Common is largely a post-war village. The estates that make up most of it went up on regular plots with regular boundaries, which makes it one of the easier places on our patch to price without seeing.
That is worth saying plainly, because it is not true everywhere. On a village of matching gardens the number we email you is about as close to final as an instant quote gets.
Where the instant quote is at its most accurate
An estate garden here is a known quantity. Eighteen metres of back boundary, level ground, a gate at the side wide enough for a barrow, and clay-with-flints under the lawn like every other house on the road. Put that through the form and it comes out at £2,510 to £2,910 — a range about £400 wide, and one the survey rarely has to move.
The quotes that shift are the ones with unknowns in them: ground nobody can describe, a boundary nobody has walked, access down someone else’s drive. Sonning Common has fewer of those than most places we work, so if the form asks something you can answer confidently, the answer you get back is reliable.
Answer honestly rather than optimistically and the range does the rest. The one thing worth checking before you fill it in is the length — pace the run rather than guessing, because on a regular plot that is the only number with any real slack in it.
Price it now →Front gardens are a different job
Back boundaries are about privacy. Front ones are about the look of the street, and they follow different rules: one metre is the limit where a fence meets a road or footpath, above which you need permission. That pushes most front boundaries towards something low and open rather than something solid.
Picket is the usual answer and it prices differently from a back fence — twelve metres at 1.2m comes out around £960 to £1,120, or £87 a metre. Lighter posts, no gravel boards, no panels. It is the one job where what the neighbours have done genuinely matters, because a single mismatched frontage on an otherwise consistent road tends to be the thing people notice.
What we build in Sonning Common
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 Sonning Common
All of these are a short run for us, and priced exactly the same as the town itself.
- Kidmore End
- Peppard Common
- Rotherfield Peppard
- Gallowstree Common
- Cane End
- Chazey Heath
- Emmer Green
- Binfield Heath
- Stoke Row
- Checkendon
Sonning Common questions
How accurate is the instant quote, honestly?
On a regular plot with answers you are sure of, very. The emailed range is plus or minus seven and a half per cent, so an eighteen metre estate boundary comes out about £400 wide, and the survey usually confirms rather than corrects it. Where it loosens is when you have guessed — at the ground, the length, or how bad the access really is. The form is only as good as what goes in.
Can several of us on the same road book together?
Yes, and it is worth doing. Each household runs the form separately and mentions the others in the notes, and we plan it as one visit with one delivery instead of three. The materials cost the same, but you are not paying for three separate set-ups, and the finished boundaries line up because they went in the same week by the same two people.
What can we do with the front garden?
One metre without permission, where the boundary meets a road or footpath. That rules out anything you would call screening, which is why picket is the usual choice here. Run it through the form as Picket at 1.2m and you will get a figure — around £87 a metre — and remember that at that height it is defining the garden rather than hiding it.
Our neighbour had theirs done. Can you match it?
Usually, and it is a sensible thing to ask for. Tell us in the notes what is already there — type, height, whether it is on concrete or timber posts — and we will build to match rather than butting something different up against it. The one thing we cannot match is age: new timber next to five-year-old timber will look new for a couple of summers whatever we do.
More of the general ones on the FAQ page.