skylights & rooflights in winterborne stickland

Where a rooflight can go on a thatched cottage

We do not cut rooflights into thatch, so the survey starts with the parts of the house that are not thatched.

The village has a good number of listed buildings, and the ones recorded by Dorset Council's heritage service include thatched cottages of cob, flint and brick, Stickland Farmhouse and Quarleston Farmhouse, which is listed Grade II*. Their list entries describe cottages of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, two storeys or one and a half, rendered and whitewashed or built in banded brick and flint, under thatch. Old Mill House adds cob and timber framing to the mix.

On a thatched roof the main slope is not where a rooflight goes. Thatch is laid in layers, held down with spars and wire, and a hole cut in it for a frame would break that layering and make the roof harder for a thatcher to maintain. What the survey looks for instead is every other roof the house has: a tiled or slated rear extension, a porch, a lean-to kitchen, a bathroom added in the twentieth century, an outbuilding that has become a studio. These are where light is short and where a frame can sit in a plain tiled or flat roof.

Upstairs in the thatched part of a cottage, light usually comes from small windows tucked under the eaves, so a bedroom can be dim even in daytime. If the thatch comes right down over the window heads, there is little to be done with the roof itself. A sun tunnel or a rooflight in the roof of a landing extension can lift the stairwell, and the bedrooms then borrow some of that light through open doors.

On a cottage visit we go from the first look at the roofs to the sheet we leave with you. On a listed cottage the first stop is the listing, because the consent question comes before any question of size.

Living inside a National Landscape

The whole of Winterborne Stickland lies inside the Dorset National Landscape, formerly the Dorset Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.

The designation is a landscape one. It affects the way Dorset Council weighs new building work, particularly work that is visible from outside the village, and it affects some householder rights, such as the right to add certain dormer windows. It does not ban rooflights, and it does not remove the permitted development right for them on its own.

What does remove or limit that right is more specific: a direction made for the street, a wording in an old planning consent, or a listing. Dorset Council's website holds the maps and registers where you can find out whether any of these applies to your address. Since a listing generally reaches attached additions as well, an old cottage with a rooflight proposed in a modern rear roof still needs the listing looked at first. A listed cottage brings in listed building consent, which is a separate application, and the application goes to Dorset Council.

A conservation area in the village was designated in 1972, and it does not remove rooflight rights on its own either. Dorset Council's records show where its boundary runs, so check the exact address rather than a general memory of it. Where permitted development stops is explained in the planning guide.

The one misunderstanding we meet more than any other is the idea that a protected landscape rules out a rooflight altogether.

Lanes, thatch and getting to the roof

Some Winterborne Stickland homes sit close to narrow lanes, and the day's work depends on getting materials in.

Parking matters in a village like this. Delivery vans need a place to stop that does not block a neighbour's drive, and the survey notes where that is, along with where glass can be carried through the house if the side access is too tight for a full pane. Glass units of the larger sizes weigh enough that two people carry them, so a clear route matters. Access settles how a job is run before anything else does. Where the lane is narrow, glazing arrives in smaller deliveries and the tower or ladder goes up where the ground allows. If the front elevation has thatch down to head height, we plan the working position so nobody leans on or climbs onto the thatch, which is fragile and easily damaged.

The same applies to what lies under the new opening: a wardrobe, a staircase, a bathroom with pipework in the ceiling void. We trace these on the survey and move the opening along the roof if a pipe or cable runs where the frame would sit. A few centimetres sideways costs nothing at survey stage and a great deal once the roof is open. We also look at what is under the rooflight. Cottage ceilings can be low, and a shaft or splay that brings the light down has to clear beams. Where there is an old oak beam, we measure its position and plan the opening around it.

For help with the nearest places we cover, see our pages for Blandford St Mary and Milton Abbas, and the full list on our services. The roof lantern page suits larger flat-roofed kitchen extensions, and the sun tunnel page covers dark landings.