21 road miles west-north-west of Bournemouth
skylights & rooflights in milborne st andrew
Milton Road and Chapel Street have the cob and thatch cottages, other houses string along the Milborne Brook, and the newer lanes lie at the village edge. Every roof is measured by hand, and the survey sheet records the readings.
cob walls, flint plinths and tiled lanes
- Cob and thatch cottagesThick walls on flint plinths, older roofs, extensions behind.
- Brick and tile village housesPitched roofs with lofts that take a bedroom or a study.
- Bungalows on the newer lanesSingle-storey homes with a lit living room and a dark hall.
- Barn and outbuilding conversionsLong low roofs where daylight is wanted along the whole length.
the designation we look up on a village address
- planning authority
- Dorset Council
- conservation area
- designated 1995: check your address
- road miles
- 21
rooflights on village roofs around Milborne St Andrew
milton road and the brook
a stream-side village of cob and tile
Milborne St Andrew grew from two settlements, St Andrew and Deverel, that joined where the road crosses the Milborne Brook, and the older cottages still show their age: cob walls above flint plinths, some under thatch, in a parish whose church keeps a twelfth-century doorway.
Walls that move, roofs that were never level
The older cottages in the village are built of materials that make a survey take longer.
Cob is a mixture of clay, sand, straw and water, built up in layers without formwork. Several cottages and farmhouses in the village are recorded in the county heritage record as having cob walls, some on a flint plinth or base, most of them under thatch and one, Deverel Mill House, now under slate. Cob has been in use in this part of Dorset for centuries, and a house built of it settles and bows over time. The wall plate, the timber the rafters sit on, may not be level, and the rafters themselves can vary in size and position.
For a rooflight, that means readings are taken at more than one point along the slope. A single rafter centre at one end tells us little about the other end of a cottage roof. We measure the gap between rafters at the ridge, the middle and the eaves, record the depth of the timber and note any that have been spliced or doubled by earlier owners.
The church of St Andrew has a Norman south doorway of the mid twelfth century, and the parish also takes in Milborne Stileham, which remained a separate civil parish until 1933. That pattern of small clusters explains why the village has no single style. A seventeenth-century farmhouse such as Staddlestones on Milton Road can be three centuries older than the bungalow around the corner, and the roofs differ in the same proportion. We treat each house as its own survey, and we do not carry readings across from the neighbour.
Damp and movement are the two things an owner of a cob house should raise with any builder. Cob is sensitive to water, and a badly formed opening that lets rain run down inside the wall can do harm slowly. The flashing and the lining of a new window are therefore detailed to shed water clear of the wall head, and we note on the sheet where the wall plate sits relative to the opening.
Brick and tile houses from the Victorian period onward are more regular, and the newer lanes at the edge of the village have bungalows and family houses with standard spacings. Readings like these go on the sheet for an older cottage. The ones shown are examples, and each roof gets figures of its own.
A slope the lane can see, and a slope it cannot
In a conservation area, the face of the roof towards the road is where the design matters most.
The village has a conservation area, designated in 1995. A 2018 background paper published by Dorset Council noted that there was no current appraisal or management plan for it, so unless one has appeared since, the boundary map is the useful document, and the detail of what is expected has to be read from the planning register and from advice given by planning officers on earlier applications.
A rooflight in the rear slope of a cottage, out of sight of the lane, is a different proposition from one in the front. For a front slope facing the road, the design to expect is one lying level with the tiles, and the glazing bar and colour of the frame are chosen to sit quietly against the covering. Our conservation rooflight page explains what makes a unit suited to that setting.
A conservation-style unit and a standard roof window differ in how they look and in how they are fitted.
The lane is not the only audience. A neighbour's first-floor window may look straight onto the slope, and a rooflight in the rear of your roof can be overlooked from there. We check the sight lines at the survey, because an opening that suits the house can still cause a conflict across the garden fence.
Conservation-style rooflight
- Sits flush with the tiles, with a slim, dark frame
- A central glazing bar echoes old iron rooflights
- Suited to a slope that faces a lane or a listed neighbour
- Picked for appearance first, with the size matched to the rafters
Standard roof window
- Stands slightly proud of the tiles on a flashing kit
- A wide choice of sizes, blinds and opening methods
- Suited to a rear slope or an outbuilding
- Quicker to supply, with sizes held in standard codes
What a village designation does to a rooflight
A common idea about conservation areas, tested against the rules.
Owners in conservation areas hear that nothing can be changed on the roof. The rules are narrower than that. A conservation area is a designation about the character of a place, and it sits alongside the national rules for householders. Whether a rooflight needs an application depends on the national rules and on any local restriction.
The restriction that matters is an Article 4 direction, which a council can make to take away a specific permitted right in a defined area. Another is a condition on the original planning permission for the house, which can remove permitted development rights for the whole property. Both are looked up, not guessed. Dorset Council's website and planning register are where to search, and the planning guide covers the rules in detail.
Listed cottages follow their own route. Several buildings in the village are listed Grade II, among them The Nest on Milton Road, a late eighteenth-century cob cottage on a flint base under a hipped thatched roof, and for a listed building the consent question comes before anything else.
For an owner, the sensible order is to look up the address, read any decision notice, and then speak to us. The survey sheet records what the council's maps and register showed on the day we looked, with the date, so you have something to show a planning officer if the question comes up.
Myth
A conservation area means no rooflights
Designation is taken to mean the roof is frozen, so many owners never ask and settle for a dark room.
Fact
Designation alone does not remove the right
Only a council direction under Article 4, or a clause in the first permission, takes it away, and listing brings its own consent rules. Each of these is looked up on the council's records for the exact address before a design is drawn.
Choosing a window that suits the timbers you have
Size codes translate directly into centimetres, and the centimetres have to fit the roof.
A VELUX size code is a width and a height in a pair of figures. In MK04, the first letter M stands for a width of 78 cm and the digits 04 stand for a height of 98 cm. A CK04 is narrower, at 55 cm wide. The code matters because old rafters are not on neat centres, and a window that would sit comfortably between two rafters in a post-war house can need one of them trimmed in a cottage.
Trimming a rafter is a structural alteration, so it needs Building Regulations approval and a timber trimmer fixed across the gap to carry the load. In an old cottage the timbers can be softwood that has aged well or oak that is harder to cut and fix, which we find when the tiles come off around the opening. The roof window page and the guide to sizes and rafter spacing show how the choice of size changes the work.
A narrower window between rafters can be the right answer where the timbers are old and the roof wants disturbing as little as possible. Two narrow windows side by side can give as much light as one wide one.
Rooflights in the roofs of barns and outbuildings follow the same rules on spacing, though the timbers are often larger, and a long run of windows at a regular gap can suit a converted building well. A conversion that already has Building Regulations approval is a good starting point, because the loft layout and the escape routes were designed once already.
- a common roof window size code
- MK04
- the width an M in the code stands for
- 78 cm
- the height that 04 stands for
- 98 cm
Getting a roof window from the A354 to a village loft
Access across a village is part of the survey.
Milborne St Andrew sits on the A354 between Dorchester and Blandford, and most of the old cottages stand close to the lanes that branch off it. Some have no drive, a narrow gate or a step down to a rear garden. Where the lane is tight, delivery of a window and the flashing kit is planned in advance, so that it does not block the road while it is unloaded.
The installation follows the survey. First the covering is stripped back round the opening. A rafter is trimmed if the plan says so, the frame and flashing go in, and the tiles are laid back up against them. Inside, the lining and the plasterwork are finished. If the cottage is thatched, a new opening is usually far easier to form in a tiled or slated part of the house, such as an extension, a porch or an outbuilding, and a window in the thatch itself is a matter to settle with a thatcher first.
When a whole rooflight is fitted or replaced, the work is notified to a building control body, and the survey sheet says who handles that. For the neighbouring villages, Winterborne Whitechurch and Milton Abbas both sit close by.
Rural jobs also depend on the weather window, since a roof is open while the covering is lifted. The programme is built so that the opening is made weathertight each evening, and a day with heavy rain forecast is rescheduled before the tiles come off.
How a village roof window job runs
- Tape on the roof, torch in the loftWe take rafter gaps, slope angle and covering details, and photograph what we find. You receive the measured sheet in writing.
- Records checkedConservation area, listing and planning history are read for your address, and what each one shows goes on the quote.
- Order and deliveryThe window, flashing kit and any blind are ordered to the size on the sheet, and delivery is planned around the lane.
- Fitting and finishThe roof is opened up, the frame goes in, the tiles are laid back and the inside is lined. Last comes a walk-through of how to open it, clean it and work the blind.
faq
questions about rooflights in the village
My cottage is inside the Milborne St Andrew conservation area. Can I still have a roof window?
Possibly, and the answer depends on the address. We read the planning history and the council's maps at the survey and put in writing whether an application looks likely.
Can a rooflight go into a thatched cottage roof?
It is rare and needs a thatcher involved from the start. The usual place is a tiled, slated or flat part of the building, such as a rear extension or an outbuilding. We look at which parts of your house have an ordinary covering.
How do you deal with the uneven rafters in an old cob house?
We measure the gap at the ridge, the middle and the eaves, and choose a window size that fits the narrowest reading, or plan for a trimmed rafter and the approval that goes with it.
Do you survey outbuildings and barn conversions as well as houses?
Yes. A long low roof can take a row of windows or a run of flat rooflights, and the survey covers the structure, the covering and the access in the same way.