Cheltenham Fence Company: How to Replace a Fence Right

The fence came with the house. You didn’t pick it—some previous owner did, maybe back during the Ridge administration, and it’s been losing an argument with gravity ever since. One section leans toward the neighbor’s driveway, a couple of pickets vanished one winter when you went someplace warm, and the gate does that thing where it only latches if you lift and shove at the same time. That’s how most fence projects start in Cheltenham: not with a blank yard and a catalog, but with an old fence that’s finally due for the gold watch and retirement party. But replacing a fence on a hundred-year-old lot around here is a different job than putting one up new in a subdivision that got paved last spring. That’s the part a good Cheltenham fence company sorts out before it quotes you a number.

Cheltenham isn’t one kind of place, either. It’s six old villages wearing one township, from the Gilded-Age estates and Tudors up in Elkins Park and Wyncote down to the twins and rowhouses of Cheltenham Village, most of it on SEPTA lines older than the trees. The fence that fits one block would look imported on another. So before you fall for a style, figure out which Cheltenham you’re fencing.

What the Old Fence Is Trying to Tell You

Before you fall for a new style, read the one you’re tearing out. An old Cheltenham fence usually failed for a reason, and the reason repeats if nobody’s paying attention. Posts that lean were set shallow, or set in dirt instead of concrete, or both, and on these old lots a poorly set post starts drifting toward the neighbor within a few seasons. Rot along the bottom rail means somebody ran the wood tight to the grade with no gap to breathe, so it wicked up every wet spring until it turned to mulch. A gate that never hung right was the last thing installed and the first thing rushed. A good Cheltenham fence builder reads all of that on the walk-through, because the point of a new fence isn’t just a new look—it’s not repeating the old fence’s mistakes on your dime.

Cheltenham’s Rulebook, and Why a Cheltenham Fence Company Reads It First

Cheltenham Township is particular about fences, and two of its rules catch people off guard. First, the good side faces out. The township wants the finished face—the smooth side, no rails or posts showing—pointed at your neighbor and the street, not at you, which settles a century of who-has-to-look-at-the-ugly-side arguments. Second, no solid fence in the front yard. Out front you’re capped at four feet and it has to be open—spaced pickets or aluminum, something you can see through—while the back and sides can go to six.

The short version of what the township wants:

• A permit, at about fifty cents a linear foot
• Four feet and open in front; up to six in back and along the sides
• The finished face pointed out
• Nothing blocking the sight triangle at a corner

None of it is hard once you know it, but all of it can stall a project if you don’t file right. The easy solution is to let a professional like Superior Fence & Rail make sure the fence permitting is stress-free.

Matching a New Fence: In La Mott or Wyncote, the Board Goes First

Two of Cheltenham’s neighborhoods play by stricter rules. La Mott and Wyncote are designated historic districts, and the township’s Board of Historical and Architectural Review gets a say on what goes up there. A fence counts as a “landscape structure,” the same as a wall or a trellis, so a new one needs a Certificate of Appropriateness approved before the township will issue your fence permit. The board meets once a month over on Old York Road and weighs your design against the district’s standards. In these two pockets, “what fits the house” isn’t yours to settle alone—it’s the board’s call, and they lean toward what suits a street of century-old homes.

One break for the replacement crowd: swapping an existing fence for the same thing, in kind, is generally exempt from review; it’s a new look or a new material that trips the wire. So if you’re in La Mott or Wyncote, start with the district guidelines and a Cheltenham fence company that’s sat in front of this board before, and design to what clears the first time.

Everywhere Else, Let the Fence Agree With the House

Most of Cheltenham lives outside those two districts, where nobody’s grading your fence against a preservation standard—and people spiral anyway. They get a stone colonial in Glenside or a porch-front twin in Cheltenham Village and decide the fence has to be a historically perfect statement. It doesn’t.

The move is simpler than that: let the fence agree with the house instead of competing with it. On the grand old homes, the fence should get out of the way, lower and open, so the porch and the stonework stay the main event. On the tighter twin blocks in Cheltenham Village or Melrose Park, where your fence sits close enough to the neighbor’s that you could pass a plate over it, privacy in the back is the whole point. You don’t need a different fence for every architectural era on the block. You need the right style for the house it’s attached to, and a Cheltenham fence company that works these neighborhoods points you there fast.

The Stuff Under the Ground and Along the Line

Two more old-suburb realities before the trucks roll. Cheltenham’s tree canopy is gorgeous, and it’s been there longer than the fence, so on a lot in Wyncote or Elkins Park the post holes have to negotiate with root systems that aren’t moving. A Cheltenham fence company that knows these neighborhoods plans the run around the big roots instead of hacking through them and hoping the oak forgives it. Then there’s the property line: on a lot that’s changed hands a dozen times since the house was built, the property line you think is yours and the line the survey says is yours aren’t always the same. A crew worth hiring would rather nudge a post onto your own side than have you tearing out a finished run next spring over a corner pin nobody checked. A quick survey settles it, and a Cheltenham fence installation that starts from the real line is the one that never turns into a property dispute.

Hand the Old Fence to Someone Who Knows the Township

So don’t start with the catalog. Start with the fence that’s failing, the block it sits on, and the township rules that decide what you can build—and the style part gets easy. When you search “fence company near me” in Cheltenham, the one worth calling is the Cheltenham fence company that’s pulled permits all over town and knows the good-side-out rule by heart. Reach out to Superior Fence & Rail of Southeast PA and let a Cheltenham fence contractor walk the property and build you the fence the old one wishes it had been.