The Stray and patio rules

Open grass and the houses that face it

The stone villas along the Stray stand on a mild fall of ground, with open grassland in front of them and a private garden behind, and that split is the first thing to settle before a patio is drawn. The Stray is public open land in the middle of Harrogate, about two hundred acres whose name comes from the old right of animals to stray on the unenclosed grass, and it is held as a landscape the town looks onto. A terrace belongs on the household's own side of the fence, where the view can still be enjoyed with planting kept low and the paving kept off the green. If you live on the southern edge, the Oatlands page describes the family gardens just beyond the grass, which is where the paving actually goes.

What the Harrogate Stray Act keeps open

The Harrogate Stray Act 1985 puts the care of the Stray with the local council, now North Yorkshire Council, and it is written to keep the place open. The council maintains and preserves the aspect of the Stray, protects the trees, turf and other growth, and keeps the land free from encroachments, with only limited room for the temporary events the Act itself allows. People have free access for recreation. Fences, posts and other structures, and any new road across the grass, are reserved to the council under that Act, which is why a private terrace stops at the boundary. We need the line of the Stray, and we stay on the house side of it. If a boundary is unclear, the council and the plans that belong with the Act are the authority.

Conservation areas around the town centre

Much of central Harrogate, including land associated with the Stray and the streets of stone villas around it, lies in conservation areas mapped on the Planning Data conservation area dataset. A conservation area looks after the character of a place: the buildings, walls, trees and open space that make the centre feel like Harrogate. A back garden can still take a terrace, and the council will look harder at work that changes a frontage, a boundary wall or a listed building. The map is the reliable way to know whether a particular house sits inside the line. Trees in a conservation area need notice before they are cut, so a design that depends on felling a mature tree waits on that notice. The villages have their own areas, and Ripley is the estate-village example on our areas list.

What a back garden usually needs checked

For a private back garden the question we put to North Yorkshire Council is usually straightforward: the paving stays close to the ground that is already there, it sits within the garden, and it leaves a listed building and any protected tree alone. The point at which the conversation changes is height. When the finished surface stands more than about 300 millimetres above the ground beside it, the council normally expects a planning application before anyone starts. A front garden is assessed more strictly: once a new hard surface between the front wall and the road covers more than about five square metres, it is expected to let rain through or to shed it onto a border within the plot.

Designing the private side of the fence

A villa that faces the grass often has a quieter back, sometimes with a mild fall and a high wall, and that is where a sandstone terrace in the colour of the house earns its place. Wide rear doors on a later alteration may call for porcelain, whose even module and narrow joints suit a clean opening, while a path in block paving can take the practical traffic. Natural stone is the surface we return to when the walls are gritstone and the garden is part of the older town. The quote form needs the postcode and a short description of the plot, including whether you face the Stray. Sloping gardens elsewhere in the town are covered in the steps guide.

Questions