Titchfield
How much glass can an old village roof take before it stops looking old?
Clay tile and slate around the abbey ruins and the Square, old cottages with steep pitches, and newer houses beyond the village edge
Of the places we cover around Fareham, Titchfield feels the oldest. The village stands on the River Meon a short way inland from the coast, with the ruins of Titchfield Abbey on the edge of it, the parish church of St Peter at its heart, and a High Street and Square that still read as a small market village. The marshes and reedbeds of Titchfield Haven lie to the south, and the old canal follows the water along the valley. Walk through it and the roofs you pass are the first thing that tells you a rooflight here is a different matter from a rooflight on an estate.
Listed houses and cottages stand close together in the village centre, and a conservation area covers it. Beyond that centre, Titchfield has grown the way most Hampshire villages have: ribbons of interwar and post-war houses along the approach roads, then estates, and a working area at Segensworth to the north. This page covers both. The rooflight for a sixteenth-century cottage and the one for a 1970s detached house have almost nothing in common except the builder's need for a clear opening size.
Clay tile, slate and steep pitches in the old village
The older cottages and townhouses around the Square and the streets running off it have roofs in handmade clay tile or natural slate, and the pitch is usually steep. Rafters on these buildings were cut by eye and are rarely straight or evenly spaced. Battens may have been swapped section by section over the decades, and the roof can carry a few extra layers of felt that nobody on the current team put there. A rooflight opening in a roof like that is a job for a carpenter who is used to old timber.
The unit that suits these roofs is a conservation rooflight. It has a slim metal frame, usually in black or dark grey, a central glazing bar that echoes the divisions of an old casement, and a profile that sits flat with the covering instead of standing proud of it. The effect from the street is of a small window in the roof, not a bright rectangle. Our page on conservation rooflights explains the construction, and the glazing bar page shows why the central bar matters to the look.
Positions that work with old timbers
Attic rooms in old cottages tend to have exposed beams, low eaves and an odd ceiling line. A rooflight set in the wrong place can land against a collar or a purlin that the owner wants to keep on view. We go up with the builder and agree the position against the timbers, not against a tidy plan. That means a small number of slightly smaller rooflights is often a better answer than one big one, and the trimming of the roof structure becomes a conversation about which timbers can move.
The exact opening size goes to the builder in writing, along with the lead time and the date the unit will arrive, so the roofer can work out how many tiles come off, the carpenter can plan the trimmers and the plasterer can allow for the splayed reveal inside. Where the covering is clay, the tiles around a new opening have to be matched, and if reclaimed tile is wanted the roofer needs to source it well before the day.
Listed buildings and the conservation area
In the conservation area, and on any listed building, a rooflight needs more than a building control notice. Changes that affect the character of a listed building need consent of their own, and a new opening in the roof is one of them. Planning permission may also be needed in the conservation area where a direction or a condition has removed permitted development, and the records held by the council show whether one applies. Fareham Borough Council makes both decisions, and the Historic England website explains how listing works. We do not guess: we find out whether your property is listed or sits in the conservation area, and tell you what the position looks like before you commit to a design.
It helps to begin with a drawing. The conservation officer will want to see the position, the size and the make of rooflight, and a sample of the finish. Our page on listed building consent for rooflights describes the sequence, and the page on rooflights in conservation areas covers the wider rules. Allow the council's time before the builder's start date, not after it.
The edge of the village and the newer houses
Away from the centre the roofs change. There are interwar semis and bungalows along the roads leading to Fareham and to the coast, and newer estates behind them, with concrete tile on trussed roofs. Those need ordinary roof windows, positioned to light the loft room and sized to suit the engineer's design for the opening. A loft conversion here is much like one anywhere else in the borough, and our loft conversion roof window page covers the sequence.
Rear extensions are the other common job. A modest flat-roofed kitchen extension on a village house can take a flat rooflight or a lantern, and where the extension joins an older part of the house the rooflight can bring light into what would otherwise be a dark junction. A frameless flat unit is kept low and quiet, and the guide to frameless flat rooflights describes how it looks and works.
Water, trees and the Meon valley
The village sits low, near the river and the reedbeds, and the roofs are often surrounded by mature trees. Trees drop leaves, twigs and moss onto a rooflight, and a flat unit with a low kerb can hold debris at its edge. A rooflight positioned with a view of how it will be reached, and a surface that can be cleaned, is a better choice than one tucked into a corner. Our page on self-cleaning rooflight glass explains what that coating does and does not do.
Birds and damp air near the water also matter on older roofs. If there is a roof void with a bat or nesting use, the builder or an ecologist should be told before work starts. We note it on the survey if we see signs, but the legal duty lies with whoever disturbs the roof.
Keeping the warmth in under old tiles
Old roofs lose heat, and a rooflight in one is judged on what it does to the room as well as how it looks. Current rules for existing homes set the limit for a roof window at 1.4 W/m²K and for a rooflight at 2.2, and a double-glazed conservation unit with a warm-edge spacer is designed to meet them while keeping a slim frame. The insulation around the opening matters as much as the glass. If the rafters are being lined with insulation board, the board is cut tight to the rooflight's lining and the vapour control layer is taped to the frame, so the opening does not become a cold line across the ceiling.
A conservation rooflight in an attic bedroom is a ventilation help as well as a light source, because many are made to open on a pivot or a bar. An open pane gives warm, damp air a way out of a room with no other window. That is a comfort measure, not a promise about damp, and we describe it that way in the quote.
Narrow streets, scaffolds and deliveries
The streets around the Square are not wide, and parking is limited. A scaffold on the frontage may need a licence, a delivery lorry may not reach the door, and a lantern or a long rooflight may have to be carried through the house. We ask the builder at the survey how the glass will reach the roof, and we plan the delivery to match: a van to the door, a hoist from the street, a carry through the garden. On a Titchfield job this is usually the question that decides the day of the fitting, not the fixing of the rooflight itself.
Neighbours matter more in a village. A scaffold or a skip, a few days of noise, and a request to park somewhere else are all easier if the neighbours have been told first. Builders here usually know this, and we follow their lead.
Replacing a rooflight that is already there
Some of the older houses already have a roof window from a past conversion, often one that has clouded or whose seal has gone. If the frame has held up well, new glass in the old frame can be enough. Where the whole thing has aged, a complete replacement is the better course, and building control must be notified of it as a controlled fitting. Either way the first step is the measurement. Our page on replacing an old VELUX describes how we match the new window to the existing opening so the surrounding tiles and the plaster do not need to be disturbed.
Programme, timing and the old-village builder
A lot of Titchfield work is done by small local firms with a few trades. We fit in with them. A listed building adds a consent period before work can start, and that period is the part of the programme that nobody can shorten. Order, delivery and fitting are planned after the consent, counting back from when the builder expects to have the roof finished, and the confirmed delivery date goes to the homeowner and the builder.
On site the sequence is the usual one: covering first, wiring at first fix where an electric unit is specified, glazing after, plastering of the reveals last. The page on working with your builder describes how the paperwork is handed over so each trade has what it needs.
By road Titchfield lies 10.7 miles south-east of our Southampton base, so a survey, a second visit with the builder and a fitting day are each a single run out along the A27.
