Arched Accoya
sash windows —
Heworth, York.

The brief

The house is a classic York Victorian villa — red brick with painted rendered dressings around every opening and a moulded eaves cornice running the width of the frontage. Five sash windows sit across the front elevation: three at first floor level, two flanking the entrance door below, each with a curved arched head sitting inside its white rendered surround. The homeowner wanted a like-for-like restoration of the appearance — same proportions, same arch, same sight lines — with a modern spec beneath the paint. Accoya was chosen from the outset, along with Mighton brass sash furniture across every window.

Why spring-balance

Every sash on the front elevation was made as a spring-balance unit rather than traditional weighted cord-and-pulley. On arched sashes especially, spring balances give you a cleaner box profile without the deep side chambers a weight system needs — the sashes glide smoothly, hold at any height, and there are no cords to fray or replace. Both top and bottom sashes open, giving proper convection-driven ventilation on warm days.

The arched heads

Curved heads are one of the details that mark out a properly built sash from a "close enough" one. Each frame was set out from the original openings, with the arch profile faithfully machined to the sweep of the rendered arch dressings above. The top sashes carry that curve through their meeting rails and top rails — geometry that takes time in the workshop but reads instantly right on the elevation.

Timber & finish

Accoya throughout, sprayed white in our in-house finishing bay to a microporous paint system. Accoya's 30-year above-ground guarantee and paint hold — roughly three times that of unmodified softwood — means the frontage will still look freshly painted a decade from now, not two summers from now. Internal beading holds our standard 24mm double-glazed units, made with Planitherm One glass for a centre-pane U-value of 1.0 W/m²K.

Ironmongery

Mighton brass-finished sash furniture across every window — sash lifts, fitch fasteners and travel stops in a matched brass, which reads warm against the white paint and gives the windows the "period-correct" feel the homeowner was after.

"Really impressed — better than I was expecting them to be. I'll be back to have the rear of the house done next."

Two days on site to fit the frontal elevation — clean removal of the originals, frames set true to the reveals, sashes hung and adjusted, ironmongery bedded in. The rear of the house is now on the schedule.