New Alresford
Which roofs in a Georgian market town can take a rooflight without changing how the street looks?
A wide main street, a protected centre, and a ring of newer houses where the roof is rarely the problem
New Alresford is built around one very wide street. Broad Street slopes gently down from the town centre towards the river with a long run of brick fronts on either side, and most of the roofs you see from it are clay tile or slate, pitched fairly steeply and broken up by chimneys and the occasional dormer. Behind that frontage the town splits quickly into streets of different ages: narrow lanes off West Street and East Street, the climb of Pound Hill, and then the estates that have spread outwards since the middle of the last century. The unit that suits one of those areas is often wrong for the next, so a survey here starts with the street.
Most enquiries from the town come from one of three situations. Someone is converting a loft or the space over a garage and needs roof windows that light the new room properly. Someone is adding a kitchen or garden room at the back and wants daylight from above as well as from the garden doors. Or a flat roof is coming due for a new covering and an old dome or lantern has to be dealt with at the same time. In each case the sooner the rooflight is on the drawings, the less the builder has to rework later.
Broad Street and the roofs behind it
The brick frontages of Broad Street and the streets that join it are the part of town where a rooflight is noticed. Many of these houses are Georgian in character, with tall chimneys, parapets in places and a roof pitched steeply enough to be seen from the pavement. The slope facing the road is the one that matters. A roof window there is usually wrong in proportion, and a conservation rooflight, with a slim frame that sits down in the tiles and a single glazing bar, is the unit that most often suits. The rear slopes are a different matter, and a larger window or a pair of them is often possible out of sight of the street.
Roofs of this age are rarely regular. Rafters wander, old timbers have been added to over the years, and the battens and tiles around an opening need to be taken off with care and put back in the same pattern. We measure the opening on site, give your builder the trimmed size for the exact unit, and agree who is carrying out the carpentry and who is making good the tiling. Where tiles are being stripped for a re-roof anyway, that is the best moment, because the opening, the flashing and the new covering can all be planned as one piece of work.
Pound Hill, the lanes and the attic rooms
On Pound Hill, where several older houses are listed, and along the lanes running off the centre, the rooms in the roof are often small and low. Attic bedrooms with a low sloping ceiling, landings with no natural light and box rooms over a back kitchen are all common in town centres of this age. For these a single well-placed roof window often does more than two badly placed ones. The position has to be worked out from inside the room first: where the bed or desk will sit, where the ceiling meets the rafter, and where a head will meet the window frame when someone stands up.
A centre-pivot window sits lower in the slope and gives a long view out, while a top-hung window opens further and gives more headroom at the bottom edge. Which is better in a low attic depends on the room. We talk through both with you at the survey and write the choice into the quote, so your builder is working to one size rather than two possibilities.
Rear extensions on brick terraces and cottages
Behind many of the older houses sits a single-storey extension from some decade in the last century, often a kitchen or a utility room with a flat roof of felt or a newer single-ply membrane. These rooms are usually dark because the house stands between them and the street. A flat rooflight, or a pair of them, changes that without needing any change to the walls. The kerb is a timber upstand built on the roof deck, built to the height the maker's instructions call for, and the roofer dresses the membrane up it before the glass goes on.
Where an older extension is being rebuilt or re-roofed, a lantern may be possible. A lantern needs more head height than a flat rooflight and a deeper kerb, so the ceiling below has to be considered at the same time as the roof. We give you the size and weight of the unit early so that whoever designs the joists can check the roof will carry it.
Newer streets around the edge of town
Outside the centre, New Alresford is mostly houses from the twentieth century and later: semi-detached pairs and bungalows in concrete tile, and more recent estates with trussed roofs. Here the job is usually plainer. A bungalow or chalet loft being turned into a bedroom wants two or three roof windows in a row, spaced to match the room below. A trussed roof cannot have a truss cut away for a window, so the window is chosen to fit between two of them, or a sun tunnel brings daylight to a landing or bathroom that cannot take a window at all.
Pitch is the other thing to check. Concrete-tiled roofs from the post-war years can be shallow, and every maker publishes a lowest pitch for each window and flashing kit. We measure the pitch on the roof rather than reading it from the street.
Trees, water and the glass
The Arle gives the town its character and its gardens, and plenty of those gardens are shaded by mature trees. Under trees, glass collects leaves, seeds and a green film faster than glass in open sky, so a rooflight there needs reaching for cleaning. We bear that in mind when we place a unit on a roof: a flat rooflight on a garden-side extension under a lime or a beech will want an occasional wipe, and it is better planned to be reachable from a ladder than discovered later.
If the room below is a bathroom or a kitchen, an opening rooflight placed where warm moist air gathers helps to move it out, working alongside the extractor fan the room already has. It is a help to ventilation, not a substitute for it.
The council, the conservation area and the check we make
New Alresford lies in the Winchester City Council district, and the council decides planning applications for the town. The centre of the town is a conservation area, and a number of the older buildings are listed. Whether one rooflight needs an application turns on the house, the slope the unit sits on and whether permitted development rights have been removed by a condition or a direction. Our planning guide for rooflights explains the general position. For your address we look up the planning record and any designation on the street, report back to you, and the decision stays with the council. The council's site is at winchester.gov.uk if you want to look yourself.
Consent is needed for roof changes on a listed building however small the unit, and the conservation officer will usually want to see the rooflight drawn on the elevation with its frame size and glazing bar. We prepare that drawing information from the survey so your architect or agent can submit it.
Timing it with your builder
Made-to-measure rooflights and lanterns are built by the maker to your size, and the quote states a lead time that comes from the maker. The practical consequence is that the order should go in before the tiles go on and while the roof is still timber. We count back from the date your builder expects the roof to be ready, confirm the delivery date to you and to them when we order, and put the kerb or opening dimensions on paper for the specific model before the deck or the rafters are cut.
On the day, the order of trades is the same wherever the job is. The roofer completes the covering or membrane to the kerb, the electrician has already run the cable for an electric unit or reveal lighting, and the plasterer returns to the reveals once the glass is in. For a straight replacement, such as a failed roof window or a clouded dome, the timing is simpler: a survey, a quote in writing, and a fitting day that suits you.
New Alresford is a straightforward drive from our Southampton base, so a survey can be fitted to your builder's calendar, with a second look at the opening before the order goes in.
