Sliding doors in Fletching, Piltdown and Splaynes Green

Fletching lies about three miles north-west of Uckfield, next to one of the entrances to Sheffield Park, with the A272 crossing the parish. Piltdown is part of the same parish.

A village with a long story

The church of St Andrew and St Mary the Virgin dates from the 12th century. Simon de Montfort is said to have prayed there before the Battle of Lewes in 1264, and the historian Edward Gibbon is buried in the Sheffield Mausoleum attached to its north transept; he died while staying with his friend the 1st Earl of Sheffield. The village keeps two pubs, the Griffin Inn and the Rose and Crown. Piltdown gave its name to Piltdown Man, the 1912 find exposed as a forgery in 1953.

With about a thousand people across nearly ten square miles, this is a parish of old cottages along the village street, farmhouses, and scattered later houses, rather than estates.

The conservation area

Wealden District Council lists a conservation area called Fletching with Splaynes Green. Many of the buildings in the village centre are old and some are listed. For those, listed building consent comes before any order, and timber is often what the council expects. For an unlisted house, a like-for-like replacement is usually permitted development, but a wide new slider on a street-facing wall would be worth discussing with the council first.

What usually suits

Garden doors here are mostly at the back, out of sight of the street. On a later house, an aluminium slider onto the garden is straightforward. On a cottage, French doors in a modest opening keep the proportions right. Where windows are being done too, flush casements look closer to the old pattern than standard ones.