7.7 road miles west of Bournemouth
skylights & rooflights in hamworthy
Turlin Moor has plain pitched estate roofs, the roads towards Lake have older semis and the streets beside the Poole bridges are newer. Every Hamworthy roof is measured by hand, to its own timbers.
Hamworthy roofs, from semis to flats
- Older semis and detached housesPitched tiled roofs with lofts deep enough to convert.
- Estate housesPlain pitched roofs with regular timbers, around Turlin Moor.
- BungalowsOne storey, a dark inner hall and a loft above it.
- Newer flats and townhousesBuilt on regenerated ground near the bridges.
before a rooflight goes near a Hamworthy roof
- planning authority
- BCP Council
- listed or conserved
- look up the address first
- road miles
- 7.7
hamworthy roof survey notes
a suburb built in layers
Hamworthy is the part of Poole that lies west of the harbour. Its roofs date from several periods, and the age of a street tells us most of what we need to expect before we reach the loft hatch.
Older roads, a planned estate and the newest streets
Lower Hamworthy, the roads towards Lake and Turlin Moor were built at different times, and the roofs show it.
Hamworthy sits on a peninsula of about three square kilometres, with Poole Harbour, Holes Bay and Lytchett Bay around it and Upton on the landward side, and its housing falls into bands by date. On the older residential roads there are semis and detached houses, many of them with hipped clay or concrete tile roofs and lofts with real height under the ridge. Lower Hamworthy, where the docks are, has older and more varied houses, where no two roofs are quite alike and the rafters tend to differ from one house to the next. The parish history runs back a long way: the rectory dates from around 1604 and St Michael's church was rebuilt in 1826.
Turlin Moor is a planned estate between Hamworthy and Upton, and its church, St Gabriel's, was built in the 1970s to serve it. Estate roofs like these are plain pitched roofs, and the structure is far more regular than on the older streets. Regular is useful: where rafters sit at an even spacing, we can often find one window size that drops between two of them with no timber cut at the sides.
The newest layer sits close to the bridges. The closure of Poole Power Station in the early 1990s freed land for regeneration, and the major house building that followed, along with the Twin Sails bridge opened in 2012, brought modern streets where newer homes and flats have low-pitched and flat roofs. A rooflight on a flat roof is a different job from a window in a tiled slope, which is why the service hubs for a flat roof rooflight and a pitched roof window are kept apart.
Whichever band your house falls in, the first visit sorts out the same few things: the roof covering, the rafter spacing, the pitch and how much loft there is above the room that needs light.
| Type of house | Typical roof | First thing we check |
|---|---|---|
| Older semi | Hipped or gabled, clay or concrete tile | Rafter size and loft height |
| Older house near the docks | Slate or tile, uneven timbers | Whether rafters line up |
| Estate house | Plain pitch, concrete tile | Even centres for a window |
| Bungalow | Hipped, loft over the hall | Depth between ceiling and tiles |
| Recent flat or townhouse | Flat or low pitch | Kerb height and the fall |
Top-floor flats and the paperwork behind them
Plenty of Hamworthy homes are flats or maisonettes, and that changes who has to say yes.
Flats and maisonettes have no permitted development rights under Part 1, so a rooflight over one needs its own enquiry to the planning authority, which for Hamworthy is BCP Council. Our planning guide explains how the rules work for houses and what changes for flats. For a flat there is a second hurdle that has nothing to do with the council: the roof is very often not yours. The freeholder or the management company owns it, and the lease will say whether you can alter it.
Read the lease before you book a survey, and ask the managing agent in writing. Many leases allow works to the roof only with the freeholder's written consent, and some leave roof alterations out entirely. A top-floor flat with a flat roof is the most common case, and a rooflight there is a good fit physically, since the roof is directly above the room.
Where the answer is yes, the freeholder will want to see what is going in and how the roof stays watertight. The written survey sheet gives them kerb dimensions, the existing covering and the fall, which saves a round of questions.
Terms you may meet on a flat or maisonette roof
- Freeholder
- The owner of the building and its roof, who can grant or refuse consent to alter it.
- Managing agent
- The company that runs the building for the freeholder and is usually the first contact for consent.
- Kerb
- The upstand that a flat rooflight is fixed to, set above the finished covering so that water runs away from the joint.
- Fall
- The slight slope on a flat roof that carries water to the edge, which a flat rooflight must respect.
- Membrane
- The waterproof layer of a flat roof, which has to be dressed up and around the new kerb.
- Maisonette
- A flat on two floors with its own front door, often with a roof or top floor under shared ownership.
Dim halls in bungalows and estate houses
The rooms that lose out in a Hamworthy home are usually the ones with no outside wall.
A landing on a Turlin Moor semi, the inner bathroom of a bungalow and the hall of an interwar house share the same problem: no outside wall, so no daylight. The roof is the only side open to the sky. A small sun tunnel is the usual answer for a bathroom or short hall, and a wider space is better served by a roof window carried down through a boxed light shaft. Sun tunnel against roof window for the same space is covered in the comparison of the two.
What goes into a quote on these jobs depends on the roof more than the product. A tiled pitched roof needs the covering lifted and made good around the opening. A bungalow with a deep loft needs a long shaft. A roof with a water tank, or one crossed by old services, needs them moved or avoided. Two similar-looking Hamworthy houses can therefore quote differently.
Access matters here as much as the product. On an estate terrace we plan where the scaffold tower stands and where the glass is unloaded before the day is booked. Where the only approach is from the front and a tower has to stand on the pavement, a licence from the highway authority is needed, and we arrange it in advance.
What moves a quote on a Hamworthy roof
- Reaching the roofA terrace with no rear access needs scaffold at the front; a detached house with a drive needs less.
- Roof coveringConcrete tile, clay tile and slate each need different lifting and flashing.
- Size of the openingA window that fits between rafters costs less to trim than one that needs a wider opening.
- Shaft lengthA deep loft over a hallway means a longer lined shaft or a longer tube.
- Glazing and finishOpening or fixed, blind or no blind, white or painted internal lining.
Checking a Hamworthy address with BCP Council
Hamworthy has been part of Poole for a long time, and Poole is now part of the BCP Council area.
BCP Council is both the planning authority and the local authority building control service for Hamworthy. For planning, the council's website carries a map of conservation areas and a search for past applications. Listed buildings are held on the National Heritage List for England, which is searchable by address. The older streets near the bridges are the ones to check first, though no street should be assumed clear without looking.
A new opening in a pitched roof means trimming rafters, which counts as a structural alteration under the Building Regulations. The council's building control team or a registered building control approver handles it. Swapping an existing roof window for a new one, frame and glass together, is also notifiable, whereas a new sealed unit fitted into the frame you already have is outside that. We explain which applies to your roof in the survey notes.
Looking up a Hamworthy address before a survey
- Find the address on the conservation mapBCP Council publishes the boundaries of its conservation areas online. Enter the full postcode, since a boundary can follow the back of a row of gardens rather than the road.
- Search the National Heritage ListA listing covers the whole building, roof included. Search by address on the Historic England site.
- Read past applications for your propertyThe planning register shows earlier permissions. A condition attached to an old consent can limit later changes, so read the decision notice if one exists.
- Ask us to include it in the surveyWe run the same searches before quoting and write up what we found.
Reading a 1930s semi's loft
An example set of readings from one hipped interwar roof, to show what ends up on the survey sheet.
Take an interwar semi with a hipped tiled roof and an unconverted loft. In the loft we measure the rafters, the gaps between them and the height from the floor joists to the underside of the ridge. On the outside we take the pitch of the slope that faces the road or the garden, whichever you want the window to serve. Those readings decide the size of window, the type of flashing and whether a trimmer is needed.
The figures for one roof will not match yours: the survey sheet carries the real numbers for your own rafters. Our guide to window sizes and rafter spacing explains how a size code maps onto a gap between rafters.
On the same roof we also note what sits close to the planned opening: a chimney stack, a soil vent pipe, a roof hatch, the edge of a hip. A hipped roof has short rafters at the corners that do not run the full height, so the window position is chosen on the long rafters of the main slope. Where the loft is going to be boarded for storage, the opening is placed over a spot where a person can stand beneath it to open the window.
Some Hamworthy owners use the loft for storage only and want a light to see by. Others plan a bedroom or a study. The spec for each differs, and that is worth settling before the order is placed. Nearby, the same questions come up in Poole and across the border into Upton, where the planning records are held by Dorset Council.
faq
what Hamworthy owners ask
I live in a top-floor flat near the Poole bridges. Can I have a rooflight?
You need the freeholder's consent as well as an enquiry to BCP Council, since flats do not have the permitted development rights that houses do. Start with the lease and the managing agent.
Can one roof window fit a Turlin Moor semi without cutting a rafter?
Often a narrower size code drops between two rafters on an even spacing. We take the real gap on the roof and confirm it on the survey sheet before ordering.
Is a sun tunnel enough for a bungalow bathroom with no window?
For a small room it usually is. The length of the tube and the number of bends affect how much light reaches the ceiling, so we measure the loft run before suggesting one.
Who handles building control for work in Hamworthy?
BCP Council runs the local authority service, and a registered building control approver is the other route. We explain both on the survey sheet and notify whichever you choose.