Collingtree stone houses get daylight from skylights or rooflights
A small village beside the Wootton Brook valley, with stone buildings from the 1600s onwards: here is how to bring the sky into a Collingtree house.
Stone in the old village, newer homes beside it
Collingtree, in West Northamptonshire, has its own parish council and had a population of 1,138 at the 2011 census; it is a village as well as a civil parish. Its houses fall into two groups, and each asks for a different answer from the roof.
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The older stone buildings around the High Street and Barn Corner
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Newer homes beside the village, around Collingtree Park
The historic core dates from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century. Walls are built in local stone, boundary walls follow old lines, and the village counts ten listed buildings, five of them eighteenth-century buildings on the High Street and at Barn Corner. Rooms under these roofs can be deep and low, with small windows set into thick walls. A conservation rooflight sits close to the roof covering and keeps a slim, traditional profile, so the roofline still reads as old stone and slate or tile while the room below gets light from straight up.
Next to the old village sits the newer housing around Collingtree Park, built on a different pattern: planned streets, extensions at the back, garages turned into rooms, lofts converted for another bedroom. Here the choice is wider. A loft slope suits a roof window, a flat-roofed extension takes a flat rooflight, and a kitchen or garden room that wants light over the middle of the floor suits a roof lantern. Gardens here are bounded by fences and planting, and the side windows look at both.
Light above the treeline in Collingtree
The loft window looks into a tree
The village was named for a tree, and the trees are still here.
Sideways
The name Collingtree is thought to come from an Anglo-Saxon personal name joined to a notable tree, possibly one that marked a boundary. A thousand years on, trees still frame the village. They grow in gardens and along the Wootton Brook, which runs through a small valley and a golf course on the northern side. They are lovely from a distance and awkward from a bedroom.
A loft room has one natural place for a window, and that is the gable. If a tree stands a few metres beyond it, the glass fills with trunk and branch. In summer the leaves close the view and take the light with them. In winter the bare boughs let some daylight through, but it arrives low and thin, and the room still feels like a space you switch a lamp on to use.
The other side of the room is worse. A sloping ceiling means the far wall sits in shadow from one end of the day to the other, and a desk or a bed pushed under the eaves never gets a direct look at the sky.
Straight up
Fitted in the slope, a roof window looks up and out instead of sideways. A tree that blocks a gable window at head height is far below the line of sight from the roof glass, which is angled towards the open sky. Branches may reach it in places, but the broad view overhead stays clear. This is the plain reason straight up is clear: nothing grows in the way of the sky itself.
Placement matters more than size. A roof window set high in the slope throws light deep into the room and over the sloping ceiling, so the far wall brightens too. Set low, it gives a view out and a spill of light near the floor. The best loft can have one of each, and the survey is where we work out which pane goes where on your particular roof.
Inside, the lining around the glass is finished to the same standard as the ceiling, so the new opening belongs to the room from the first day. Fitting a roof window is usually one or two days of work for a single opening.
If the tree is in your own garden, the answer may not require touching it at all. If it belongs to a neighbour, a rooflight is a gentler route than a boundary dispute. The roof is yours, the sky above it belongs to everyone, and the glass takes only what the sky gives.
A terrace room under a canopy
Doors to the terrace bring in some light. The room behind them stays dim.
Sideways
A house in a village like this can end in a terrace or patio and a row of mature trees at the garden boundary. Add a single-storey extension with glazed doors facing the terrace and the room should be bright. Instead, the doors catch the light that gets past the canopy and the back of the room, five or six metres away, sits in a different mood altogether.
The shape of the roof adds to the trouble. A flat or low-pitched extension roof can be a plain, solid cover, so the only daylight comes through the end wall. When a tree stands to the south or west, the doors pick up filtered light for part of the day and nothing for the rest of it.
From the garden the room looks well, and from inside it feels flat. Furniture drifts to the glass, and the middle of the floor becomes a corridor.
Straight up
A roof lantern rises from the extension roof above the centre of the floor. Its glass faces up and slightly out on all four sides, so it takes light from wherever the sky is brightest, long after the low sun has slipped behind the trees. The room is lit from its middle instead of its edge, and the back wall stops feeling distant.
For a smaller or narrower room, a flat rooflight does the same job with a lower profile. It sits on an upstand, with the glass set at a slight fall, so rain runs off and leaves the pane clean to look through.
Either way the work includes the finish inside: plastered returns, a neat junction with the ceiling, and no loose ends. The install meets current Building Regulations, and notifiable work is registered with Building Control by us.
The one question to settle early is the size of the opening against the size of the room. A lantern that suits a kitchen-diner can overpower a small study, and a rooflight sized for the study can look timid over a big kitchen. A free survey measures the room and talks it through before a fixed written quote is set.
Roof words you will hear
Upstand
A raised kerb round the opening that lifts the frame clear of the roof surface so water drains away.
Fall
The slight slope built into a flat roof so that rain runs to the edge instead of settling.
Roof window
A window fitted in the plane of a sloping roof, usually opening and often used in lofts.
Rooflight
The trade word for glazing set into a roof, flat or pitched, fixed or opening.
Lantern
A raised glazed structure on a flat roof, with glass on several faces, that lights a room from above.
Lining
The finished surfaces round the opening inside the room, cut to take light into the space.
Planning in Collingtree: West Northamptonshire Council, a conservation area and ten listed buildings
Planning decisions for Collingtree rest with West Northamptonshire Council. Among the conservation area appraisals on its heritage pages you will find a map headed Collingtree, which tells you the village has one. Permitted development survives inside a conservation area unless the council has made an Article 4 direction for the street. Put the question to the planning team before you assume either way.
Listed buildings are a separate matter. Collingtree has ten, and a listed house needs listed building consent before its roof is altered. If your house is one of them, speak to the council first and we can survey with that in mind.
For the ground rules on roof glazing in an ordinary house, read our planning guide. For questions about your own address, try the planning and building control page; the building control service handles the regulations side.
Fifteen and a half miles north-west of Milton Keynes
The drive from Milton Keynes runs north-west for 15.5 road miles and takes about 19 minutes. That makes the survey a short trip rather than a day out, and an installation here can run as a normal working day for the crew.
The village lies beside the motorway, which runs adjacent to its south-western edge, and a road bridge links it to Milton Malsor, about a mile to the west. Northampton lies beyond the northern side of the valley, and Blisworth and Roade are the other nearby villages we also work in. Whichever way you approach, you will not need to arrange parking in a town centre: the crew carries what it needs and works from the house.
Which rooflight for which Collingtree roof
A stone house in the old village wants restraint. In the roof slope, a conservation rooflight with a slim frame and a bar down the middle looks right on a traditional covering and gives the attic a proper window. Where the house is listed, the council decides; where it is not, the same rooflight is still the better choice on a visible slope.
A converted loft in a newer house suits a roof window. Choose one wide pane for a bedroom, or two side by side across a bed. For the stair landing, a narrow tall window brings light down the stairwell.
On a flat-roofed extension, either a flat rooflight or a lantern can work. Pick a lantern when the room is large and the ceiling is tall enough to enjoy the extra volume, and a flat rooflight when the ceiling is low or the room is narrow. A small, dark inner room such as a bathroom or hall can take a sun tunnel, which pairs a small dome on the roof with a round tube carrying daylight down.
Each of these choices is made at the survey, with the roof in front of us, not from a catalogue.
Valley, brook and motorway: what the setting means for glass
Wootton Brook runs through a small valley on the northern side of Collingtree, past the golf course towards West Hunsbury, where it meets the River Nene before the river reaches Northampton. Where trees or neighbouring roofs close the view to the side, the sky overhead stays open, which is a good reason to look up for light. The skyline you see from a first-floor window is never the same as the skyline from the roof.
The motorway on the south-western side adds the other thing to weigh. If you can hear it in the house, tell us on the day: the glass specification is part of the conversation, and a quieter pane is a sensible choice for a bedroom roof window on that side.
None of this changes the principle. The sky overhead is a view that does not need clearing, trimming or negotiating, and a well-placed rooflight takes its share of it.
What the survey covers at a Collingtree house
Nothing is payable for the survey, which begins with the roof. On an older stone house we look at the covering, the timbers under it and how the roof meets the walls. On a newer home we look at the slope or the flat roof, the structure beneath and the room we are lighting. We measure the opening, check the ceiling below and talk through where the light will fall at different times of day.
Then you receive a fixed written quote that does not change on the day. Fitting is covered by a 10-year workmanship guarantee in writing, the inside is finished tidy, and where the work is notifiable we handle the Building Control notification.
To book a visit, use the form below, write to info@vertexskylightsmiltonkeynes.co.uk or WhatsApp 07880 284133. Homes are our first call, though small commercial jobs are welcome as well.
Collingtree homes, short answers
Is Collingtree in a conservation area?
A Collingtree conservation area appears on West Northamptonshire Council's list, with a map among its conservation area appraisals. Ask the council's planning team if your street lies inside it, and if a direction restricts the street. Being inside a conservation area is not a bar on roof glazing, but it can change the route you take to get it approved.
Can a rooflight help if trees shade my garden room?
Yes, because it looks upwards over the canopy instead of through it. A lantern or a flat rooflight in the extension roof takes light from the open sky and spreads it across the floor. The doors to the terrace still give the view; the rooflight gives the brightness.
Does a listed house in Collingtree need different treatment?
It does. Collingtree has ten listed buildings, and a listed house needs listed building consent from the council before any roof change. A conservation rooflight is the style to propose, and we can survey the roof and describe what would fit before you apply.
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