Fencing and gates in Edgbaston, Harborne & Bearwood

Two kinds of front garden meet along the Hagley Road. On the Birmingham side, Edgbaston has gravel carriage drives behind brick piers and railings, and Harborne mixes Victorian terraces with the Moor Pool garden suburb. Cross into Sandwell and Bearwood and Smethwick are packed with bay-fronted terraces whose forecourts are a metre or two deep, while Oldbury, Langley and Warley are mostly 1930s semis with room for a car. The work ranges from restoring a Regency villa's boundary to squeezing a single parking space out of an Edwardian terrace.

B15, B17 and B32 are Birmingham City Council. B67 and B68 are Sandwell Council. B16 is mostly Birmingham and B66 mostly Sandwell, with the line running close to Bearwood Road. Both the kerb process and the planning rules change at that line.

Ground and Gate introduces; it does not build. We pass your enquiry to one local specialist for this patch, who agrees the scope and price with you directly.

Private estates, conservation areas and Article 4

Birmingham conservation areas in the patch include Edgbaston (with an Article 4 Direction), Barnsley Road, Lee Crescent, Ryland Road and St Augustine's in Edgbaston, and Greenfield Road (Article 4), Harborne Old Village and Moor Pool (Article 4) in Harborne. Birmingham's Article 4 guidance brings the removal or breaching of front walls, fences and railings, and the removal of gates, under planning control, and says front-garden hardstandings are likely to be refused unless well placed or screened.

The Calthorpe Estate. Much of Edgbaston is covered by the Calthorpe Estate's Scheme of Management under the Leasehold Reform Act 1967, which binds freeholders as well as leaseholders. External alterations, including new boundaries, gates and hard surfaces, generally need the estate's consent through its managing agent, on top of planning permission.

Moor Pool. The garden suburb built from 1907 has cottage fronts with planted boundaries and small gates. The Moor Pool Heritage Trust and the Article 4 Direction both have a say over changes to those fronts.

Sandwell. Four of Sandwell's nine conservation areas are in Smethwick: Galton Valley, Smethwick Town Centre High Street, High Street and Crocketts Lane, and Cape Hill Town Centre. Bearwood's residential streets appear to sit outside them.

Villas, terraces and 1930s semis

• Edgbaston: Regency, Victorian and later villas on large plots, many with gravel in-and-out drives, gate piers and long brick side walls. Access is usually easy; the constraints are legal rather than physical.
• Harborne: Victorian and Edwardian terraces off the High Street with tunnel entries, plus bigger semis towards Harborne Park Road. Moor Pool has small cottages on shared lanes.
• Quinton and Bartley Green: interwar and post-war semis and council-built estates with open-plan fronts and verges, often sloping.
• Bearwood and Smethwick: dense terraces with small forecourts, bay windows, rear entries and small back yards.
• Oldbury, Langley and Warley: 1930s semis with side drives, and some 1960s estates.

Boundary brick: Staffordshire blue, Etruria red and Rowley Rag

The Black Country supplied the materials for this patch. Staffordshire blue engineering bricks form plinths, copings and whole walls in Smethwick and Oldbury, and red bricks made from Etruria marl face most of the terraces. Setts and kerbs of Rowley Rag, the dark dolerite quarried in the Rowley Hills, still turn up in old entries and forecourts. Edgbaston villa walls tend to be soft handmade red brick with stone or brick copings and cast iron railings.

Victorian encaustic-tile paths are common in Bearwood and Harborne. If the drive or wall is being rebuilt, ask the specialist to lift and relay the tiles rather than break them out. Walls under a metre cost £150–£250 per metre. A brick wall on the line between two properties is a party fence wall, and work to it falls under the Party Wall etc. Act 1996. In the Edgbaston and Moor Pool Article 4 areas, taking down or altering a front wall needs permission.

Fencing and gates in Edgbaston, Harborne & Bearwood

In Edgbaston the typical job is a long side or rear boundary behind a villa, often replacing old panels with featheredge on concrete posts at £95–£135 per metre, or restoring a pair of gates. Timber driveway gates cost £900–£1,800 a pair and metal £1,500–£3,500, before automation. Estate consent may be needed for a change of style. See driveway gates and the driveway gates cost guide.

In Bearwood and Smethwick, back yards are small and fences short, but access is through the house or a shared entry. Slatted screens at £130–£190 per metre are popular to make a small yard feel private. A lockable side gate on a shared entry costs £250–£450 in timber.

Quinton's sloping plots often need stepped fences, where each panel drops to follow the ground. Fences next to a road or its footway are limited to 1 metre without planning permission; our guide to fences next to a road explains. See new fence, the fence cost per metre guide and the Edgbaston and Harborne fencing and gates page.