Skylight and rooflight fitting in Meopham

Cottages, listed houses and estate rows

The area has listed buildings, Weavers Cottage among them. Benedictine monks founded a priory hospital here in the 12th century, and through the Middle Ages three medieval manor houses, Meopham, Dodmore and Nurstead, governed the land that now makes up the parish. Nurstead has Nurstead Court beside the parish church, with former estate workers' cottages nearby, and Camer has a few cottages near Camer Park. Cottages of that type usually have modest window openings and low eaves, and a bedroom tucked under the slope may have one small window or none. A window set into the back slope puts daylight on to the bed or a desk and leaves the front elevation, the one you see from the lane, as it was.

If the building is listed, the survey is where we start to judge whether an opening is likely to be workable; listed building consent decides. Our listed buildings page explains how consent runs.

Thick old walls matter too. A cottage wall can be deep enough to turn a window into a tunnel, with the glass at the outer face and a long reveal inside, and a room lit that way gets a narrow beam rather than a wash of light. That is a reason to think about the roof for the room's main light, and leave the wall window for the view.

The later houses near the station

Near the station, to the north of the village, the developments are newer. Houses from a later period are often planned around a central hall and staircase, with living rooms to the front and back, so the hall, the landing and a downstairs cloakroom end up in the core of the plan.

In a house like this, a kitchen extension can go sideways. The kitchen grows into a garage bay or the side passage, and the cloakroom and hall lose the little light that came through that side wall. Daylight from above can be carried in two ways. If the extension roof is flat, a kerbed rooflight over the new kitchen throws light back towards the old wall line. Where the loft sits between roof and ceiling, a sun tunnel takes light down a tube from a small unit on the slope to a ceiling diffuser over the hall. The diffuser sits in the ceiling, so the hall keeps a plain finish overhead.

Upstairs, the same houses can have a landing with no window and a box room behind the stairs. A window in the rear slope above the landing lights the stairwell, and the bedroom doors can then be closed without leaving the passage in the dark. The loft room is the other upstairs space to think about: if it is a study or a spare bed, a pair of roof windows side by side gives it an even light across the desk. On a south-facing slope the glass can be specified with solar control, and a blind on the unit helps on the brightest days.

Conservation areas in the village

Conservation areas around the village include The Street, Meopham Green and Hook Green. Living in one does not by itself remove Class C permitted development for a rooflight on a house; only an Article 4 direction does that. Should an application turn out to be necessary, the type of unit and the slope it faces start to matter, and a low conservation rooflight that sits flush in the tiles is a different proposition from a raised dome. The conservation area rooflight guide covers what changes. Boundaries follow individual streets and plots, so your address is checked against the council's own mapping before we give any advice.

A garden room with a flat roof

A large plot may carry a timber or brick garden room at the end of the lawn. These rooms are usually one span of flat roof, with walls on three sides and glazed doors on the fourth, and the middle of the floor is the part that never gets enough light. Over a flat roof, a lantern usually rises past the 150 mm Class C allowance, which normally means planning permission unless Gravesham confirms otherwise. A shallow rooflight on a low kerb is a different case. We measure the finished height at the survey, and the position for lanterns has its own page, roof lantern planning and Building Regulations.

The survey, the quote and the road in

The written quote that follows the survey is a single fixed figure; the finished work has our 10-year workmanship guarantee, also in writing. We spend the visit in the room that is dark, at the time of day it is darkest, and then go up to check the covering, the structure and the loft.

Getting to the work matters as much in a ribbon village as anywhere. A house that sits well back from the A227, or at the end of a track, may mean carrying frames and glass a long way on foot, so we agree the route and what to lay down in the hall before the day. A detached house with a long drive is easier. A cottage on the green may need the delivery timed around passing traffic.

Inside an older cottage, the roof structure is the other thing we read closely. Rafters in a hand-built roof can sit at uneven spacing, so a unit sized from a catalogue may not drop between two of them, and we measure the actual gaps before a size is ordered. Where a rafter has to be trimmed, the opening is framed with a new header, and the plaster lining is taken down to the ceiling line so the finished window looks as if it was always there.

Hand-built roofs also vary in what covers them. Old clay tiles may need lifting by hand and re-laying round the frame, and a slate roof wants its own flashing, so the covering is looked at before a unit is chosen.

You can reach us on WhatsApp at 07880 284133 or by email at info@orchardskylightsmaidstone.co.uk, and there is a quote form at the foot of the page. We also cover Culverstone Green and Istead Rise, the nearest places on our list.