What is a side return extension?
The side return is the narrow strip of land alongside the rear back addition of a Victorian terrace, usually one to two metres wide and almost always wasted. Filling it in widens the back of the house across its full width, turning a dark galley kitchen into a full-width family room.
Victorian terraces were built with an L-shaped footprint: a main body across the full plot width, and a narrower back addition projecting into the garden. The gap left alongside that back addition is the side return. It is typically too narrow to use for anything, gets no sun, and often just collects bins and bicycles.
Building into it squares off the ground floor. The kitchen goes from a corridor two metres wide to a room five or six metres wide, and because the new roof is usually glazed, the middle of the house — historically the darkest part of a Victorian terrace — gets daylight for the first time. That change in light is what people notice more than the floor area.
In Fulham a side return infill is typically 18 to 22m² and costs £60,000 to £90,000 for the shell and services before the kitchen. It is the single most common extension we build here because nearly every terrace in the borough has the same wasted strip, and on the Peterborough Estate the returns are so consistent that the project is close to a standard product.
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