A&F Building Services has already built in Waterbeach. Our Waterbeach extension gave a family home a bright, open-plan space under a dramatic vaulted ceiling, lit by Velux skylights. Inside there’s dark grey shaker cabinetry, slimline worktops and a multi-level breakfast island with built-in seating, finished with recessed LED lighting and hard-wearing LVT flooring. It’s a good example of how a well-planned extension can become the room a family actually lives in.
Around the Green and down Station Road
The heart of the old village is a designated conservation area, centred on the large triangular Green with its line of mature lime trees. South Cambridgeshire District Council’s appraisal of the area says that by far the most common buildings are 19th century brick houses: double-fronted villas, semi-detached pairs and terraces. The earlier ones are plain gault brick, typically with low-pitched slate roofs, sash windows set in their reveals and dentil cornices. Later in the century, builders mixed red and yellow brick with contrasting dressings.
Older houses are mostly rendered timber frames with steep roofs of clay peg tiles, pantiles or longstraw thatch. Along Station Road, near St John’s Church and Waterbeach Hall, gault brick, render, peg tile, slate, weatherboarding and exposed timber frame all sit side by side. The same appraisal notes that many terraces have lost their original doors and windows, so if you’re planning a refurbishment, it pays to look at what the house was built with before choosing replacements.
Around the Green, that also means fewer changes can be made under permitted development, so speak to South Cambridgeshire District Council early. If your house is in the conservation area, or is listed, we advise checking with South Cambridgeshire District Council before you start.
Old village, new town
Waterbeach is changing quickly. The former barracks, which opened as RAF Waterbeach in 1940, was designated a new town in 2018. Planning permission was approved in 2019 for 6,500 homes, and the first residents moved in during 2022. So the parish now has brand new houses as well as a thatched cottage on Station Road dating from the late 17th century.
The two call for different work. On a newer home, the usual ways to gain space are a garden room for working from home or a loft conversion, depending on the roof. Some newer developments carry planning conditions that affect what you can do without permission, so check before you commit. On an older house, it’s more often a rear extension, along with repairs to the original brickwork, roof and joinery.
On the edge of the Fens
Waterbeach sits six miles north of Cambridge on the edge of the Fens, with the Roman Car Dyke along its southern side and the scheduled remains of Denny Abbey to the north. The council’s appraisal notes that the village historically lived with recurrent flooding, which the easy living from fishing, fowling and common land outweighed. Ground conditions and drainage are therefore part of any sensible conversation about building here.
A&F is family-run, established in 1993 and fully insured. We cover the whole job in-house, from the first design consultation through to completion, so there are no separate trades for you to organise.
