Builders in Godstone, from the green outwards.

We are based in Reigate, a short run west along the A25, and we have been building in this corner of Surrey since 1996. Godstone is one of those villages where the buildings tell you what they need. A tile hung cottage looking onto the green asks for a very different approach to a 1960s house tucked away off Ivy Mill Lane, and both are different again from a farm building out towards Tilburstow Hill. So we start every job the same way, by looking hard at what is already there before anyone talks about what to add.

The heart of the village sits around the large green and its pond, and much of the housing there is genuinely old. Timber framed and tile hung cottages, Georgian and Victorian brick frontages along the High Street and Bletchingley Road, and the old church and Victorian almshouses over at Church Town. Move out from the centre and the picture changes quickly. There are inter war and post war houses along the Eastbourne Road, quiet closes put up in the 1960s and 1970s, and then, once the street lights stop, larger detached houses, converted farm buildings and cottages on plots that would be unthinkable in town.

That mix matters the moment you start building. Around the green you are often working with soft old lime mortar, hand made brick and roofs that have settled gently over two centuries, so the work has to be sympathetic and light handed. Out on the clay to the south, foundations go deeper than most people expect, particularly near the mature oaks and hedgerows that make the area what it is. On the greensand slopes towards Tilburstow Hill the ground behaves differently again. We survey properly before we price, because a foundation surprise three weeks in is the quickest way to wreck a budget.

Planning here runs through Tandridge District Council, and it pays to understand the ground rules early. Most of the parish sits within the Green Belt, which limits how much you can add to a house before an application gets difficult. The middle of the village is a conservation area, where some of the permitted development rights you would lean on elsewhere have been taken away, and there are a good many listed buildings that need listed building consent for work touching their character. None of that stops good projects. It simply means the thinking has to happen before the drawings go in, and that is the stage where a builder who knows the district earns their keep.

Godstone is easy for us to reach, with the M25 at junction six sitting right at the top of the village and the A22 and A25 running through it, so deliveries and skips are no trouble. It is the last hundred metres that needs care. The lanes around the green are narrow, the verges are soft and the neighbours are close by. We plan deliveries for quieter parts of the day, keep the site fenced and swept and make sure nobody has to squeeze past a pile of sand to reach their own front door. Where drawings are needed we work alongside architects and designers, then build the whole thing ourselves, from the groundworks to the day we hand over the keys.