Timber box sash windows in Lewes for listed houses and Article 4 fronts

Timber box sash windows are from £2,650 installed per window, supplied and fitted, including VAT. In Lewes they are the right answer for a listed building and usually the expected one on a street-facing wall in the conservation area. Elsewhere, they are a choice to make with your eyes open.

When timber is the answer

• Listed buildings. New sashes are made to the pattern of the old under listed building consent. See listed buildings in Lewes.
• Article 4 fronts. On an elevation covered by the direction, timber to the existing pattern is the route most likely to be approved by the South Downs National Park Authority. See the conservation area and Article 4.

When it is a choice, and what it costs to own

Outside those cases, compare timber honestly with a uPVC sash at a little over half the price. Painted timber wants its first fresh coat roughly three years after fitting and then at regular intervals for as long as you own it, with the bottom rail and sill watched closely. The installer fits timber sashes but does not offer a repainting service, so keeping them painted is a job for you or your own decorator. Parts of the town, including the Cliffe and the Pells, lie on the low ground of the Ouse floodplain, where paint on the lower joinery has a harder time. In return, a good timber sash can be repaired piece by piece for generations, which a plastic window cannot.

What a Lewes timber sash usually includes

• A box frame with weights and cords, or spiral balances where the box is shallow.
• Glazing bars to the house's pattern, and horns where the originals had them.
• Slim double glazing where the planners accept it, or single glazing for a listed building where they do not.
• Draught seals in the beads and parting beads.
• Primed and painted, with the colour agreed with the Authority if the building is listed.

Bow windows and mathematical tiles

Georgian bow windows near the High Street, and fronts in mathematical tiles such as Nos 199 and 200 High Street, need a joiner who has made them before. Bow sashes are priced individually after survey.

A priced example

A similar front with the two sashes in painted timber. From £7,500 installed, supplied and fitted, including VAT. Scaffold for the upper sash adds about £500. See it beside the uPVC version.