24.2 road miles east-north-east of Bournemouth
skylights & rooflights in beaulieu
Brick cottages near the abbey and the shipbuilders' rows at Buckler's Hard stand along quiet lanes out towards Beaulieu Heath, and a tape goes along every roof.
an old village, roof by roof
- Brick village cottagesLow eaves, clay tile, rafters cut by hand.
- Cottage rowsShared walls and little or no rear access.
- Detached forest-edge housesLarger plots, mixed ages, taller roofs.
- Rear additionsSingle-storey kitchens and garden rooms under flat roofs.
a conservation area to check, then the Park
- planning authority
- New Forest National Park Authority
- conservation area
- Beaulieu: confirm your address
- protected landscape
- New Forest National Park
- road miles
- 24.2
Nearby
beaulieu and buckler's hard
an abbey village under Park rules
Beaulieu grew out of a Cistercian abbey founded in 1204, and Buckler's Hard was laid out as a small planned hamlet in the 1720s and became a naval shipbuilding yard later in the eighteenth century. Conservation areas covering Beaulieu, Buckler's Hard and Exbury were designated in 2009, all inside the New Forest National Park.
Hand-cut timbers under the tiles of an abbey village
A roof of this age seldom repeats its own measurements.
Beaulieu began as the estate village of the abbey, and its listed buildings in brick and stone give the place much of its character. Roofs in a village of that age have been recovered, opened up and extended across several centuries. A rafter bay on one side of a cottage can differ from its neighbour on the other, because the frame was cut to suit the timber to hand and followed no grid.
A window cannot be ordered from a photograph for a roof like this. A roof window is built around a fixed frame width, and the gap it must fit is whatever the carpenters left. Readings are taken at several spots up the slope and written on the survey sheet, and only then do we choose between a narrow code that sits inside one gap and a wider one that needs a rafter trimmed.
Covering matters as much as timber. Old clay plain tiles are small and laid in close courses, and a flashing kit has to be chosen for that tile and no other. Some cottages carry a mix, with a section recovered in concrete tile in the twentieth century. We record the covering in each part of the slope, since the position of a window may move a course or two to land on sound tile.
Buckler's Hard is a different case. Its two rows of cottages face each other across a wide green street running down to the Beaulieu River, laid out in the 1720s and later home to the people who worked the shipyard. Spans are modest and the walls are low. The Authority's character appraisal for the Beaulieu, Buckler's Hard and Exbury conservation areas describes the buildings and the materials used, and it is the right document to read before planning any change to an old roof here.
Readings taken on a cottage like these are examples and describe no particular house.
Park Authority, conservation area and the listed question
Beaulieu is in Hampshire, but the Park Authority is the planning body for its roofs.
Within the National Park, applications go to the New Forest National Park Authority, which must pay special attention to preserving or enhancing the character of its conservation areas when it handles them. A Hampshire postal address says little about where an application goes, so the first look-up is the Authority's own map and planning register.
Owners in a conservation area often arrive with a fixed idea, in one direction or the other. The planning guide covers how the rights for rooflights work in general.
A listed cottage raises a separate matter. A listed building will take a new rooflight only with listed building consent, in nearly every case, and the product most often put forward is a conservation-style unit: slim metal framing and a central glazing bar. Our conservation rooflight installation page describes the range, while the consent process is explained in rooflights for listed buildings.
A house on a back lane toward the heath may stand outside the conservation area boundary yet still lie inside the Park. For that address the Park Authority remains the body to ask, and the conservation area question simply falls away.
Conservation area appraisals are worth reading even for a rear roof. They describe the walling and roofing materials the Authority regards as typical, which is a strong hint at what it will expect to see if an application is needed. For Beaulieu, the section on the village itself is the part to read before planning new work on a visible slope.
Myth
Inside a conservation area, a rooflight is not allowed.
Plenty of owners in an old village assume the designation shuts the door, and give up before asking anyone.
Fact
The designation does not remove the right by itself.
Rooflight rights go only where a direction under Article 4, or a condition on an earlier permission, applies. The register for your address shows which, and we read it for you at the survey.
Fitting a window between rafters set by hand
Three reference numbers account for most size choices on an old roof.
Size codes put the width first and the height after. In MK04 the M means 78 cm wide and the 04 means 98 cm high. A CK code is 55 cm wide, the narrowest in common use and the one for the tightest bays. With rafters 450 mm apart the clear opening is well short of 78 cm, so an MK window there means one rafter trimmed, with a header and trimmer carrying its load.
Cutting a rafter changes the structure and needs Building Regulations approval. BCP Council does not serve Beaulieu, so approval comes from the building control team of the district authority or from a registered building control approver. We confirm the route when we quote.
The third number belongs to flat roofs. Makers specify a lowest upstand height, with 150 mm a common figure, and a rear extension's roof build-up has to leave room for it.
These readings feed one another. Pitch decides which flashing kits are rated for the slope, the covering decides which of those kits suits, and the rafter gap decides the width code. A figure taken wrongly early on carries through every later choice, which is why all of them come from the roof itself.
On a cottage roof, window height is then set by the room below. A sloping ceiling under the tiles may leave only a short run between the wall plate and the ridge board, and a window that is too tall would crowd either. The 04 height of 98 cm suits many such slopes, and the 06 height of 118 cm needs a longer run.
- 55 cm wide frame code
- CK
- 78 cm wide, 98 cm high
- MK04
- common minimum kerb height
- 150 mm
Cottage rows, narrow lanes and flat rear roofs
Getting glass up to a roof in the old village takes some planning.
Cottages in a row share walls, and some have no way to the back except through the house. Glass and tiles then have to be carried through or lifted from the front. Lanes near the abbey are narrow, and the forest verges beyond them are grazed by ponies and cattle, so a delivery vehicle cannot always wait where a driver would choose. At the survey we walk from the nearest place a lorry can stop to the front door and note gates, steps and cables overhead.
Behind many old cottages stands a single-storey kitchen or garden room with a low-pitched or flat roof. A flat rooflight over that room lights the part of the house furthest from the street windows. Water must drain away across the glass, so the fall is either built into the unit or shaped into the kerb beneath it. Because such a roof usually faces away from the street, the planning position can differ from the front slope, and the register for the address says how.
For the forest-edge houses on larger plots the problem is height rather than width. A tall roof needs a tower rather than a ladder, and soft ground or a steep drive changes where it can stand. Lymington, a larger town, has more terraced streets, so the access questions there are different again.
Where a roof is high and the ground soft, a tower base is spread on boards so it does not mark the lawn or sink on a wet day. Skips and deliveries on a lane near the village green may need arranging in advance with neighbours, and we tell owners what we expect to need at the survey so no one is surprised by a lorry.
Pitched cottage slope
- Roof window set into tile or slate
- Flashing chosen to match the covering
- Rafters measured and sometimes trimmed
- Front slopes get the planning check first
Flat rear extension
- Flat rooflight on a raised kerb
- Fall confirmed before the order
- Often out of sight from the street
- Insulation and upstand height confirmed
From first message to measured sheet
The same sequence suits a High Street cottage and a house on a lane toward the heath.
An owner can do the first checks without us, and a few photographs help with the rest. Pictures of the roof from two sides and of the room beneath mean we arrive knowing what to measure, and the survey takes less time on site.
The sheet that comes out of the survey lists every reading with its place on the roof. It works as a comparison tool too. A quote from anyone else can be held against it line by line, and any gap between a size on paper and a rafter gap in the loft shows up at once.
Where the answer from the register is unclear, the safest course is to ask the Authority's planning team before any money is spent. A short written query about a named address gets a written answer, and that answer can sit with the survey sheet in your own file.
Brockenhurst, another village within the Park, shares the same authority and many of the same planning questions, so owners there follow the same first two steps.
Owners converting a loft or a roof space before a window goes in should also think about the stair. The loft room of a bungalow can use a suitable roof window as its escape route, but a house with two full storeys below needs a protected stair for the roof room, and that shapes the whole project.
From enquiry to measured sheet
- Find the boundaryLook up your address on the conservation area map and the national heritage list.
- Search the registerThe planning register for the address may show an earlier condition that touches the roof.
- Measure on the roofWe take rafter centres, pitch and covering, and write each one down.
- Receive the sheetThe measured sheet reaches you in writing before any order is placed.
faq
asked in Beaulieu before the ladder goes up
My Beaulieu cottage is in the conservation area. Can I still have a roof window?
Possibly. The designation does not remove the right by itself, but a direction under Article 4, or a condition from an old permission, might. We read the register at the survey and tell you what it shows.
Which service handles Building Regulations for a roof in Beaulieu?
Either the building control team of the district authority or a registered building control approver. We confirm the route when we quote.
Could a rear flat roof take a rooflight if the front of the house is listed?
The listing covers the whole building, so check the entry first. Listed building consent is the question for any new opening.
Is my lane too narrow for a large pane of glass to be delivered?
We walk the route from the nearest stopping place at the survey, then plan the carry or the lift around it.