Boiler service in Sidcup

The houses in Sidcup

Substantially one decade

Sidcup sits just over the border in the London Borough of Bexley, close enough to Orpington and Chislehurst that it comes up constantly in my work. Its defining character, more than any other town I cover, is how thoroughly one building period dominates: Sidcup is substantially a 1930s interwar suburb, built rapidly as the commuter belt pushed into Kent, with cavity brick construction that became standard through that decade. DA15, covering Sidcup itself and Lamorbey, carries the bulk of this. DA14, toward Foots Cray Meadows and Lamorbey Park, adds some newer apartment blocks alongside the same interwar stock.

The standard Sidcup job

That consistency simplifies the practical picture. The standard Sidcup job is a 1930s semi with a boiler in a kitchen cupboard or, in a fair share of properties, relocated to the loft during a kitchen refit, which brings the usual loft issues: condensate pipe freezing in cold snaps and perished flue seals where a roof has been re-covered around an existing flue. Original systems were often gravity-fed with a vented cylinder in an airing cupboard, most have since been converted to a combi, and undersized combi replacements in the larger detached examples around Lamorbey, which can run to four bedrooms, are a common complaint. The newer apartments near Foots Cray Meadows are the exception to the general 1930s pattern rather than the rule.