Winchester
How do you put new glass into a roof that has been looked at for centuries?
In Winchester the rooflight is the easy part. The harder work is knowing which roofs are protected, and which are not
Winchester is a cathedral city on the River Itchen, and we travel 12.6 road miles north from Southampton to reach it. Its roofs come with more heritage attached than most. The streets near the cathedral, the college and the water meadows are full of listed buildings, and a conservation area wraps around the historic centre. A rooflight in the wrong place on the wrong building can be refused, or can go in and later be the subject of a complaint.
The city is not only a museum. Beyond the centre, Winchester is an ordinary place to live, with Victorian streets, post-war estates and modern suburbs, and the homes in those areas are generally far easier to deal with. The skill in a Winchester job is sorting one from the other early, so the builder and the owner know which kind of conversation they are in.
Listed buildings and the cathedral quarter
A listed building is a different matter from the rest of the city. Altering the roof of a listed house, a new rooflight included, usually needs listed building consent from the council, whatever the size of the opening. Permitted development rights, which allow a rooflight on many ordinary houses, do not apply. The consent application is made to Winchester City Council, normally by an architect or a heritage consultant, and our page on listed building consent for a rooflight describes the process.
What the conservation officer is likely to look for is restraint. A conservation rooflight with a thin black frame and a central glazing bar, placed on a back slope hidden from the road, stands a better chance than a large roof window on the front. Natural slate or handmade clay tile is typical on these roofs, and the rooflight should lie close to its surface. The reasoning is visual: the roof should look like the roof of the house it always was.
We can supply the unit specification, the frame finish and the drawings of the opening, and we are glad to work with the architect on how the rooflight sits against the slate. The application itself belongs to the owner and the professional who prepares it. A rooflight is not ordered for a listed building until the consent has been granted.
Victorian terraces west and south of the centre
Away from the core, streets of late Victorian and Edwardian terraces run out in several directions: around Fulflood, along the roads towards St Cross and across the area near the railway station. Their roofs are mostly natural slate on regular rafters, and many have long since had their lofts converted. A roof window on the back slope is the usual answer, and where the street is not a listed one the owner may be able to use permitted development, subject to the planning checks described below.
These terraces have a feature that suits rooflights well: the rear outrigger. A narrow rear wing, often with a kitchen below and a bedroom above, may have a flat or lean-to roof where one or two flat rooflights sit neatly. Older kitchens in a terrace are often dark, deep and narrow, with a single window at the far end, and a run of flat rooflights above the worktop changes the whole room. We provide the kerb and upstand dimensions in writing so the roofer can build to them while the extension is going up.
Extensions behind the historic fronts
Some of the neatest Winchester rooflights are never seen from the street. The old houses have deep plots and walled courtyard gardens, and a modern single-storey extension at the back, with a lantern or flat glass overhead, brings a dark, narrow house into the present without touching the front. Because the glass is hidden by the building around it, the council tends to find these easier to accept than anything on a visible slope, although the decision is still the council's.
The roof of such an extension is often a flat one in single-ply membrane, GRP or lead, and each covering wants its own upstand. A glazed lantern is also tall, and its height against the neighbour's wall or the boundary is something the planners look at. The drawings should show the profile from the garden side, with the kerb height and the glazing type marked, so the officer sees it all at once. Our roof lantern planning page covers the questions that come up.
Attic rooms and dark landings
Inside the older houses the problem is usually a stair that rises through the middle of the building and arrives at a landing with no window. A roof window over the stairwell, where the roof allows, sends light down the whole flight. Where the top of the stair is under a ridge or a purlin, a sun tunnel can do a similar job on a smaller scale, with a dome that is barely visible from the street.
Attic bedrooms in these houses often have low sloping ceilings, and the position of the window matters more than its size. Set too high and the room feels closed in; set too low and it can be hit by furniture or hidden behind the bed. We stand in the room with the owner and the builder, mark the proposed positions on the rafters and agree them before the opening is cut.
Lead flats and parapet roofs
Some of the older houses in the city have flat roofs hidden behind a parapet, covered in sheet lead. A rooflight in a lead roof is a job that needs a leadworker, because the metal is dressed up the kerb and over its edge by hand, and the work needs to match the rest of the roof. We send the dimensions for the unit and the kerb to the builder or the specialist, who then makes the roof watertight around it, and we fit the glazing once that work is finished.
Flat roofs and roof terraces on larger homes may also suit walk-on glass, set level with the surface so daylight reaches a room beneath. These need a structural engineer's input on the load, and the page on walk-on rooflights for terraces explains what is involved.
The suburbs: Stanmore, Harestock, Badger Farm and beyond
The twentieth-century suburbs of Winchester sit on a different footing. Stanmore, one of the city's earliest council estates, was laid out between the wars, and Harestock, Weeke and the estates further out, including Badger Farm, followed in the decades after. Their roofs are mostly plain or concrete tile on simple pitched frames, with trussed roofs common on the later houses. These are straightforward for roof windows, sun tunnels and flat rooflights over extensions, and a number are subject to no special restriction beyond the normal checks.
Even so, some newer developments carry planning conditions that limit what can be done to a roof, and these are not always obvious from the street. The documents that came with the house at purchase may mention them, and the council's planning pages are the next place to look. We make the same check for every address before an order is placed.
What the council decides
Winchester City Council decides planning and listed building matters in the city, and its householder pages are at winchester.gov.uk. Our rooflight planning guide explains when permitted development applies and when it does not. For a conservation area, a house may have lost some freedoms, and an Article 4 direction can remove others across a whole area. The council holds the record, and a short conversation with its planning team before spending money is time well used.
Our part is to look the address up, report what the records show and size the rooflight to suit whichever route applies. We do not tell anyone they are free to proceed unless the evidence says so, and the council has the final word. Historic England publishes the national list, and searching it for your address will show whether a building is listed.
Fitting around a Winchester build
Heritage projects take a long time, and a long lead time sits at the centre of the work. Between the consent, the builder's availability and the maker's production time, the rooflight can easily become the item that decides the date. We help by writing each step into the quote: which unit, what glass, the maker's own lead time and the information the builder must supply, and by placing the order at the point your roof schedule makes sense.
When the order is in, the glass is booked against the day your roof is expected to be ready, and the arrival date goes to you and the builder once it is confirmed. At fitting, the roofer or tiler gets the opening ready, we put the unit in, the electrician connects anything powered and the plasterer finishes the reveals. In an old house where lime plaster is used, the plasterer may need extra drying time, which the programme allows for.
From Southampton we drive 12.6 road miles to the north to reach Winchester, so we book a survey as a planned visit, ideally when your builder or architect can be there too.
