Skylights and rooflights in Faversham

Almshouses, a church and old roofs

The Faversham Almshouses were founded and endowed by Thomas Manfield in 1614, with additional houses built by Henry Wright in 1823. St Mary of Charity, the parish church, has been a Grade I listed building since 1950. Buildings from those centuries were built with the glass the builders could afford and the walls they needed, so a ground-floor room may be a long way from the nearest window. Upstairs, where the ceiling follows the slope, a roof window is an option worth looking at, and a sun tunnel can bring a little light to a hall or a bathroom that sits under a loft. The tunnel gives less light than a roof window, so the length of its run through the loft is measured before we recommend one.

Faversham's Victorian years saw the Wreights School founded in 1856 and the Gibbs School established in 1883. Houses from those decades tend to be tall and narrow on their plots, with rooms stacked behind one another, and the long floor plans give the middle of the house little to work with.

A town with a charter granted in 1546 and regranted in 1685, and a grammar school established in 1587, has been building for a long time. A single street can hold houses from several centuries, each with a different roof structure, so no two roofs are read the same way. A hand-cut timber roof and a Victorian one need different checks before anything is cut. Inside the back bedroom, the view counts: a window that frames sky and chimney pots feels very different from one that faces a neighbour's roof, so we stand in the room and look before a position is marked.

The through-lounge and the back bedroom

Anyone who has lived in a through-lounge knows what happens at about four in the afternoon in winter: the front window gives up, the back window gives up, and the centre of the room needs the lamp on. A roof window cannot reach a ground-floor room under an upper storey, but a single-storey section at the back of the house can take a flat rooflight or a lantern over the part of the room that borders the garden room or kitchen. Where there is a bedroom above, the ceiling follows the slope and the rear roof is a place for a window of its own. If the lounge sits under an upper storey along its whole length, a rooflight cannot reach it, and the work turns to the other dim rooms, which still gain from the roof.

The back bedroom deserves its own look. In an older house it is often the smallest bedroom, with a ceiling that tilts in on one side and a window set low in the wall, so the bed ends up where the headroom is. A roof window in that slope raises the amount of light in the room and gives a view of sky from the pillow. We check the rafter spacing and the insulation in the slope before we say which size will fit. We specify a blind with the window, because a bedroom is used at both ends of the day. Headroom matters on the sloping side, so we measure from the floor where the bed will stand.

The kitchen extension is a separate story. When a kitchen is pushed out into an old yard, the old back wall of the house becomes an interior wall with a door in it, and the part of the extension next to that wall is its dimmest. Light over that strip, away from the garden end, is what lifts the whole room, and the shape and size of the unit follow from how deep the plan is. Over a flat roof the choice is a low rooflight on an upstand or a taller lantern, and the ceiling height inside decides which of the two looks right. Our flat roof rooflights and roof lanterns pages show the range.

Conservation areas and listed houses

Conservation areas around the town include Faversham Town, Ospringe and Preston-next-Faversham. Sitting inside one does not by itself remove Class C permitted development for a rooflight on a house; an Article 4 direction does that, and it applies only where the council has made one. If you do need to apply, the slope, the size and the type of unit start to matter, and a flat conservation rooflight that sits in the line of the tiles is a gentler change than a raised dome. The conservation area rooflight guide covers the choices, and Article 4 and rooflights explains the direction itself.

A house that is listed is a separate matter. It keeps Class C on paper, yet a new or altered roof window will almost always need listed building consent. The page on listing and roof windows takes you through what an application involves. For other houses, the skylight planning guide gives the permitted development rules. Where the front slope is on show from the street, the rear slope is the usual place to look first.

Photographs of the front and back of the house, and of the room that bothers you, help us prepare, and the visit is where we confirm what the roof allows. If you know roughly when the house was built or last altered, mention it in your message, because the age of the roof structure shapes what we bring to the survey.

What we do on the visit

The written quote that follows the visit is a single fixed figure. We start where you notice the problem, in the through-lounge at the dim hour or in the back bedroom with the sloping ceiling, and note how far each window reaches. After that we climb to the roof to look at the covering, the rafters or joists and what lies under the tiles. A peg-tile roof needs a different flashing detail from a slate one, and for that kind of roof we point you to our page on conservation rooflights on peg tiles.

A new roof window takes the 1.4 W/m²K window limit (or Window Energy Rating band B) under Part L, and a rooflight or lantern the 2.2 W/m²K limit. We choose a unit that meets the right figure for the job and specify the finish inside, so that the work to the ceiling and the reveals is priced with the glass. Ten years of workmanship cover come in writing with the finished job, and we deal with the Building Control notification where the work is notifiable.

Where a new window is cut into a sloping ceiling, the lining between the glass and the plasterboard is angled so the light spreads across the ceiling, and the reveals are plastered and left ready to paint. Over a through-lounge, the same attention goes to the junction between the old wall and the new ceiling, because that is the line your eye follows. Painted white, the lining reflects more light into the room than a dark or timber finish would.

Close to the town, Teynham and Boughton under Blean are on our list too. Visits in Faversham are booked on WhatsApp at 07880 284133, by email at info@orchardskylightsmaidstone.co.uk or from the quote form.