Nearly half of Britain’s 27m homes are over 100 years old, 1m are in conservation areas and 400,000 are listed

The cost of heating these beautiful but draughty properties has soared in recent years, and people are finding them too expensive to live in.

Ensuring that Britain’s period homes are warm and energy efficient, so people want to live in them, is essential to preserving these properties for posterity. For many of us, heritage buildings are part of the beauty and character of Britain and are a source of great enjoyment.

On a practical level, rebuilding Britain’s old housing stock would take 270 years so is impossible in the foreseeable future. According to the BBC, 80 per cent of the homes that we will inhabit in 2050 have already been built, so it’s imperative we retrofit them with insulation and thermally efficient glazing. And we need to do so at a rate of 1.4 homes per minute.

Mitchell & Dickinson have a love of old buildings and a commitment to bring them up to modern standards of thermal efficiency sympathetically and without compromising their character and beauty.

Our signature product, CosyGlazing, is a better solution for listed buildings than Slimlite double glazing:

  • It doesn’t alter the historic fabric of the window

  • All of the superior-quality original timber and glass are preserved

  • It is virtually invisible and allows windows to open as usual

  • It adds minimal weight, putting little strain on hinges and requiring little extra weight to be added to sash windows

  • Slimlite double glazing requires the window frames to be altered – the frames must be routed out to fit a thicker glazing unit, often altering the original mouldings and meaning the old glass is thrown away

  • With Slimlite glazing, the spacer bar changes the look of the window and is very expensive while only carrying a five year guarantee due to the small glue area in the slender spacer bars