Stone worktops in New Southgate

Most of New Southgate is shared between Barnet and Enfield, with a corner reaching into Haringey. The N11 postcode doesn't follow the borough lines, so if you ever need planning permission for kitchen works, such as an extension, check which council covers your street first. A straightforward worktop replacement inside your home doesn't need permission at all.

The biggest building in the area was the Colney Hatch Asylum, opened in 1851 for 1,500 patients and later known as Friern Hospital. It closed in 1993 and was converted into homes at Princess Park Manor and Friern Village. Friern Barnet's 1941 town hall has become apartments too.

If your kitchen is in a converted building, check what your lease says about works and whether the managing agent has rules on deliveries, lifts and working hours. Long corridors and tight stairwells affect how big each piece of stone can be, so tell us about the route from the front door to the kitchen.

The Great Northern Railway opened its own cemetery here in 1861, with a mortuary station so that the dead could be brought out from King's Cross by train. Now New Southgate Cemetery, it is the resting place of Shoghi Effendi, a leader of the Bahá'í faith.

The earliest streets grew up in the decades after the asylum and the railway arrived. Barnet Council's historians name the Holly Park estate (Beaconsfield, Parkhurst and Bellevue Roads and Holly Park) as the first. Kitchens in these houses are usually at the back, often extended. A replacement worktop on existing units is a common job here.