skylights & rooflights in lilliput

Evening Hill, the Salterns parade and what was built after

Five broad roof types turn up in Lilliput, and each calls for a different first measurement.

Building in Lilliput started later than in its neighbours. Apart from a small enclave behind Evening Hill, the district was farmed and estate land until development gathered pace in the later 1920s. The houses of that first wave include some in the art-deco style, and the Salterns Court building stands at the shopping parade that came with them. Roofs from this period are timber, cut on site, with rafters that sit where the carpenter put them and not always where a modern plan would. Replacement tiles over the decades add weight and sometimes change the batten spacing, which is another reading for the survey sheet.

Between the wars and after, the roads running back from Sandbanks Road filled with detached houses on generous plots, then bungalows and chalet-style homes in the gaps. Many of the older houses have since been extended sideways or upwards, so one street can hold an untouched 1930s hipped roof next to a house with a flat-roofed rear addition and a loft conversion. Over the last few decades a number of plots have been cleared and rebuilt as large contemporary houses with low-pitch or flat roofs.

Flats add another layer. Lilliput has purpose-built blocks as well as houses, and in a block the roof usually belongs to the freeholder or a management company. A leaseholder cannot cut into it alone, and a top-floor flat that wants a rooflight starts with a letter to whoever holds the freehold. We can supply the measured sheet to go with that request, which gives the freeholder the opening size, the pitch and the position in plain figures.

That variety is why roof windows and flat rooflights both come up on the same afternoon in this district. We carry that range in mind when we pull up outside a Lilliput address.

Looking up a Lilliput address with BCP Council

Poole became part of BCP Council in 2019, and every Lilliput application now goes there.

Lilliput lies within the area of BCP Council, which took over planning from the old Borough of Poole. Old decision notices headed with the borough's name remain valid, and the council's online planning register shows them against the property. If your house was extended or rebuilt at any point, the conditions attached to that permission are worth reading before you plan a rooflight.

BCP Council lists an Evening Hill conservation area, designated in 1992 and amended in 2014, but we do not assume a given Lilliput street is inside it, or outside it. BCP Council publishes its conservation area map, and the National Heritage List for England shows listed buildings by address. A search on both takes a few minutes, and the planning register also shows whether a neighbour's rooflight was approved, which tells you how the council has treated similar roofs on the road. Our planning guide explains how the permitted development rules for rooflights work and what can remove them.

If you would rather not search yourself, ask us to check the address at the survey. The same records get read on our side, and the findings come back to you in writing, address by address.

Light for the rear of a rebuilt or extended house

Contemporary Lilliput houses and rear extensions have flat roofs that suit a different kind of rooflight.

Where a plot has been rebuilt, or a kitchen extended across the back, the new roof is flat or nearly so, and the room below is deep. A flat rooflight or a roof lantern puts daylight into the middle of that room. The two behave differently, and the choice depends on the ceiling height, the kerb and the look from the garden.

Water has to drain from a flat roof, so it needs a slight fall, and a flat rooflight stands on a kerb that makers set at about 150 mm or more above the finished covering. Some units build the fall in and others need it in the kerb. A walk-on rooflight in a terrace or balcony floor has its own load and glass specification, and it is worth raising early if you want one. We measure the existing upstand and the roof covering before a unit is ordered, because a kerb that is too low is a problem found on site when it could have been found at the survey.

A sun tunnel is the alternative where a flat roof is too shallow for a lantern, or where the room below is a landing or a bathroom. A sun tunnel needs a dome on the roof, a reflective tube and a diffuser in the ceiling, and its light output falls as the tube gets longer or bends. We measure the run from roof to ceiling before saying whether one will light the space.

Neighbouring Canford Cliffs and Parkstone share much of this roof stock, and we visit both on the same rounds. Between them, the three districts contain most of the large-plot housing we are asked about in this corner of Poole. Each address is measured separately, whatever the street next door looks like.